Synergy?

Ethan Winer · May 29, 2012

I see "system synergy" mentioned often, and I don't think there really is such a thing. Yes, each component should be high quality, and any one can be the weakest link. But the only way I could imagine "synergy" occurring is when there are two components that have exactly opposite skewed frequency responses. Distortion in one device can't be countered by another device, unless it was specially designed just for that purpose. Same for noise. So all that's left is frequency response.

I supposed there could be a sort of "synergy" between a room and the loudspeakers. In that case it's possible to have sort-of opposing frequency responses. But so far as preamps and cables etc, I'd like to hear a logical science-based explanation.

--Ethan

Bruce B · May 29, 2012

You can not have synergy with system impedence mismatches... ala' DartZeel

Also you can not have synergy when you try to use consumer -10dB and pro +4db together.

Phelonious Ponk · May 29, 2012

Bruce B said:
You can not have synergy with system impedence mismatches... ala' DartZeel

Also you can not have synergy when you try to use consumer -10dB and pro +4db together.

This was going to be my question for Ethan - what about when components are simply incompatible? And unless it is deliberate, as is the case with DartZeel, and is clearly communicated, why is it even acceptable?

Tim

LL21 · May 29, 2012

Just so I am clear on synergy

- Take a tower speaker with 18" woofers, etc...2 ohm impedance and 83db sensitivity...and a CJ tubed 50 watt amp...underpowered; now take a Vitus 50-watt SS Class A amp that doubles all the way down to 2ohm (200 watts)...better. Put that same tubed amp with a Sonus Faber Guarneri...magic. Synergy?
- Even on the less scientific note, if one manufacturer chooses to voice his component with, say, a lot of golden hue (2nd order harmonic distortion or midrange hump)...you might find that having all components voiced similarly might be too much...stick in a a component with a more linear response, and the sound may blend to something more acceptable. Synergy?

Isn't that matching components together well? Isn't that synergy?

rockitman · May 29, 2012

lloydelee21 said:
...matching components together well? Isn't that synergy?

That's how I view it. I don't need an rigorous sciencific dissection of the concept. If it sounds good, I have achieved synergy with my system.

microstrip · May 29, 2012

Ethan Winer said:
I see "system synergy" mentioned often, and I don't think there really is such a thing. Yes, each component should be high quality, and any one can be the weakest link. But the only way I could imagine "synergy" occurring is when there are two components that have exactly opposite skewed frequency responses. Distortion in one device can't be countered by another device, unless it was specially designed just for that purpose. Same for noise. So all that's left is frequency response.

I supposed there could be a sort of "synergy" between a room and the loudspeakers. In that case it's possible to have sort-of opposing frequency responses. But so far as preamps and cables etc, I'd like to hear a logical science-based explanation.

--Ethan

We debated it in 2010. Happy to know you did not change. And I think most of us also did not!

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?1827-Is-There-Such-A-Thing-As-quot-SYNERGY-quot-Between-Components-In-An-Audio-Chain&highlight=synergy

NorthStar · May 29, 2012

Ethan, Synergy works with everything in life; even with electronics. ...No doubt about it. :b

Cheers,
Bob

P.S. Bruce's above post is a perfect example.

Johnny Vinyl · May 29, 2012

If we now have to scientifically justify what is meant by synergy, perhaps it's time for me to get out of this hobby alltogether.

Phelonious Ponk · May 29, 2012

lloydelee21 said:
Just so I am clear on synergy

- Take a tower speaker with 18" woofers, etc...2 ohm impedance and 83db sensitivity...and a CJ tubed 50 watt amp...underpowered; now take a Vitus 50-watt SS Class A amp that doubles all the way down to 2ohm (200 watts)...better. Put that same tubed amp with a Sonus Faber Guarneri...magic. Synergy?
- Even on the less scientific note, if one manufacturer chooses to voice his component with, say, a lot of golden hue (2nd order harmonic distortion or midrange hump)...you might find that having all components voiced similarly might be too much...stick in a a component with a more linear response, and the sound may blend to something more acceptable. Synergy?

Isn't that matching components together well? Isn't that synergy?

I'm with you most of the way, actually. Matching impedances? Check. Compatible amplifier power/speaker efficiency? Check. Balancing against an amp with 2nd order harmonic distortion by matching it with a more linear preamp? I wouldn't call that synergy, I'd call that compensation. I'd simply choose a different amp in the first place, unless I love the sound of 2nd order harmonic distortion in which case I'd probably buy the pre that the amp manufacturer recommends, figuring I'd get all the harmonic goodness my heart desires. Of course then you're going to get to transducers, where linear response is evasive. What will happen to your balance then? All bets are off. Fooling around trying to achieve a balance of colorations sure sounds like the hard way to me. Always did. I'd much rather go for the more linear response in all electronics and then pick speakers by ear. YMMV.

Tim

rockitman · May 29, 2012

I believe it is easier to achieve component synergy when one sticks with the same brand for amp, preamp especially. It is not a requirement by any means.

Phelonious Ponk · May 29, 2012

rockitman said:
I believe it is easier to achieve component synergy when one sticks with the same brand for amp, preamp especially. It is not a requirement by any means.

I'm sure it is, especially if you stick with the same brand and series. Easiest of all? Actives mated to the most linear DAC/Pre you can afford. When they're done right the amps are matched to the individual drivers and the crossover circuits are in front of the amplification and about as unobtrusive as crossovers can be. Very synergistic.

Tim

treitz3 · May 29, 2012

Hello Ethan, synergy is something that is a hard thing to come by in order to reach an audio nirvana on the true audiophile/high-fidelity level. Case in point;

I begged and begged a friend of mine to let me try out a Cary tube amplifier in my rig that I had been drooling over for a long time. I did this for months and one day, he caved in. That amplifier sounded SOooooo good in his rig, that I heard in 3 different rooms, I just knew I had to hear it on my rig. I told him as he was handing it to me that he would not be getting it back. He said, "Over my dead body". I very quickly responded with "Where do you want me to start digging?"

Anyhoo, I took it home and hooked it up to my rig and man, something was off. It sounded worse than my amp at the time. I immediately went through every single SC, PC and IC I had in the house [about two boxes worth] and it still didn't sound right. I tried everything that I could think of to get it to sound good and couldn't get it to sound right, so I started swapping tubes. Input tubes, power tubes, going back to trying more cables with different combinations of tubes, buying more cables, trying out different tubes in other parts of the chain.....nothing, I mean nothing got it to sound good.

I finally called him up and told him that he is not going to believe this but that I would be bringing the amplifier back down to him. After close to 3 months of trying to get this amplifier to sound good on my rig, it just didn't have any synergy with it. Brought it back down to his pad and hooked it up to his rig. It sounded as wonderful as it did when I was drooling over it months prior to giving it back to him.

I had to give back one of my dream amps because it just didn't have any synergy within my system. I thought my heart would be broken if I ever had to give it back but when I handed it back to him, I couldn't wait to get back home and hook the ol' Anthem1 tube amp [at 1/3rd the power and 1/4 the price] back up. When I did get back home, I almost broke my jaw when it hit the floor after hearing once again what I had been missing in my rig during the time I had the Cary. The Anthem1 tube amp had synergy in my rig.

This had nothing to do with frequencies. One amp worked well with my rig and the other one simply didn't. Both are great amps but it depends on how the synergy is within any given rig as to whether it they will sound stellar or not.

Mike Lavigne · May 29, 2012

Phelonious Ponk said:
This was going to be my question for Ethan - what about when components are simply incompatible? And unless it is deliberate, as is the case with DartZeel, and is clearly communicated, why is it even acceptable?

Tim

to be clear about darTZeel; the dart amps and preamps work as well as any products with conventional interconnects. they have no synergy problem with RCA's, and work as well as any with XLR's as other non-differentially balanced designs.

they do offer the choice of using the 'zeel' 50 ohm interface, which does take synergy to another level. and this added level of synergy does help to make the case for a set of darTZeel units. you can also add the Playback Design digital which has the 'zeel' and i've also had my King-Cello tape repro built with the 'zeel'.

you can mix and match darTZeel with other fine audio products and they certainly hold their own and then some. read Fremer's many preamp reviews where he compares a number of very spendy preamps to his darTZeel preamp and prefers the dart to them all while never using the 'zeel' interface. he did finally like the twice as expensive Yipsilon better than the dart....although were he using the 'zeel' who knows?

LL21 · May 29, 2012

Phelonious Ponk said:
I'm with you most of the way, actually. Matching impedances? Check. Compatible amplifier power/speaker efficiency? Check. Balancing against an amp with 2nd order harmonic distortion by matching it with a more linear preamp? I wouldn't call that synergy, I'd call that compensation. I'd simply choose a different amp in the first place, unless I love the sound of 2nd order harmonic distortion in which case I'd probably buy the pre that the amp manufacturer recommends, figuring I'd get all the harmonic goodness my heart desires. Of course then you're going to get to transducers, where linear response is evasive. What will happen to your balance then? All bets are off. Fooling around trying to achieve a balance of colorations sure sounds like the hard way to me. Always did. I'd much rather go for the more linear response in all electronics and then pick speakers by ear. YMMV.

Tim

Hi Tim,

Thanks....i think with respect to 'balancing colorations'...i see where you are coming from. At the same time, i also think about this hobby as ultimately balancing imperfections in any event. Whether the imperfection is coloration, lack of bottom-end in a stand-mount speaker, or beautiful midrange, but lousy damping on bass, i think these amount to similar balances we all must strike. So whille i DO think some of us end up in a never-ending circle of poor choices and end up chasing our tails to find a compromise on top of a compromise to fix a broken area by putting another broken component on top...a recipe for disaster (and a much lighter wallet)...i do find that some of us end up falling in love with characteristics of a particlar component...and living with compromises elsewhere where all we can do is try to shore them up within the context of the rest of the system...great midrange but no bass? Add a sub...ok, now poor blending, overpowering bass in the low end but still not punch enough in the upper bass...but hey, 'it works (sorta). I did this when i had fallen in love with my Celesion SL6si...my very first speakers...but i was also (and still am) a bass freak...i just could not get away from the midrange of the Celestions for the money ($200 bucks for a demo unit). Got a velodyne.

Funny thing...got X1/Grand Slamms...got a bigger Velodyne!

mep · May 29, 2012

John72953 said:
If we now have to scientifically justify what is meant by synergy, perhaps it's time for me to get out of this hobby alltogether.

There are some people on this forum that demand that you provide scientific proof for everything John. There are times that the use of the word ‘synergy” in audio could be substituted with the words ‘electrically compatible.’ As Bruce brought up, if two devices don’t have the correct impedance for each other, you will have problems. For instance, some tube preamps’ output impedance is too high for the input of some SS amplifiers. The rule of thumb is that the impedance input of the power amplifier has to be 10x the impedance output of the preamp. You can certainly assemble components that won’t meet that criteria.

There are other cases where the word ‘synergy’ could be substituted with the word ‘serendipity.’ Sometimes with a certain combination of gear, speakers, and cables (and that will start another food fight with some of the crowd on this thread), you will achieve results that simply sound outstanding-better than how the individual pieces of gear sounded with other components you tried them with. You could also use the words ‘system matching,’ in place of synergy, but that would cause another round of demanding some type of proof.

Johnny Vinyl · May 29, 2012

mep said:
There are some people on this forum that demand that you provide scientific proof for everything John. There are times that the use of the word ‘synergy” in audio could be substituted with the words ‘electrically compatible.’ As Bruce brought up, if two devices don’t have the correct impedance for each other, you will have problems. For instance, some tube preamps’ output impedance is too high for the input of some SS amplifiers. The rule of thumb is that the impedance input of the power amplifier has to be 10x the impedance output of the preamp. You can certainly assemble components that won’t meet that criteria.

There are other cases where the word ‘synergy’ could be substituted with the word ‘serendipity.’ Sometimes with a certain combination of gear, speakers, and cables (and that will start another food fight with some of the crowd on this thread), you will achieve results that simply sound outstanding-better than how the individual pieces of gear sounded with other components you tried them with. You could also use the words ‘system matching,’ in place of synergy, but that would cause another round of demanding some type of proof.

Thanks Mark!

I never really looked at it the way you described, but it makes a lot of sense and I should thereby admit that scientific analysis of "synergy' has a place, if I'm reading you correctly.

I'll sit this one out and just read instead.

Vincent Kars · May 29, 2012

You have some speakers way to dull in the treble.
You have a DAC way too harsh in the treble.
Combine them and it sounds right.
So synergy is compensating one wrong choice by another wrong choice.

BTW: I wonder why somebody could request a “scientific explanation” for synergy.
Science quite rightly doesn’t deal with this vague notions.

microstrip · May 29, 2012

mep said:
There are some people on this forum that demand that you provide scientific proof for everything John. There are times that the use of the word ‘synergy” in audio could be substituted with the words ‘electrically compatible.’ As Bruce brought up, if two devices don’t have the correct impedance for each other, you will have problems. For instance, some tube preamps’ output impedance is too high for the input of some SS amplifiers. The rule of thumb is that the impedance input of the power amplifier has to be 10x the impedance output of the preamp. You can certainly assemble components that won’t meet that criteria.

There are other cases where the word ‘synergy’ could be substituted with the word ‘serendipity.’ Sometimes with a certain combination of gear, speakers, and cables (and that will start another food fight with some of the crowd on this thread), you will achieve results that simply sound outstanding-better than how the individual pieces of gear sounded with other components you tried them with. You could also use the words ‘system matching,’ in place of synergy, but that would cause another round of demanding some type of proof.

Mep,

Excellent clarification.

However I am not so sure about this rule of thumb. Many SS preamplifier have impedance's in the order of tens or hundreds of ohms and will not sound at their best with X10 amplifier input impedance . Tube preamplfiiers usually prefer higher than X 100 input impedance at the amplifier. I think that the only rule is following manufacturer recommendations. They should know at which load their preamplifier sounds the best!

PS: You deserve an accolade for your help keeping John in this hobby!

jkeny · May 29, 2012

Mike Lavigne said:
they do offer the choice of using the 'zeel' 50 ohm interface, which does take synergy to another level. and this added level of synergy does help to make the case for a set of darTZeel units. you can also add the Playback Design digital which has the 'zeel' and i've also had my King-Cello tape repro built with the 'zeel'.

Is this not a case of a manufacturer making an SPDIF interface that is out of spec (the spec being 75ohm) & through marketing turning this into some kind of "special synergy attribute" when out of spec 50 ohm "Zeel" cables are used?

jkeny · May 29, 2012

Vincent Kars said:
You have some speakers way to dull in the treble.
You have a DAC way too harsh in the treble.
Combine them and it sounds right.
So synergy is compensating one wrong choice by another wrong choice.

BTW: I wonder why somebody could request a “scientific explanation” for synergy.
Science quite rightly doesn’t deal with this vague notions.

Yes & when you start down this route you are locked into ever more limited choices in the future i.e. you will judge new equipment by it's interaction with your system & may well reject neutral sounding equipment because it sounds "bad" in your system

Synergy?

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