What’s the consensus on the physics behind Synergistic Research cables?
Do you believe they are so much of a research oriented company as the name would imply?
In terms of sound quality, they are revered cables, yes. They aren’t really telling us what makes them so. Proprietary, proprietary.
Tungsten conductors. My view: tungsten is a cubic isotropic metal. The crystal structure is uniform in all directions, that’s isotropy. They are telling us that that they’re utilizing tungsten’s holographic sound signature. Why might it be holographic? With a bit of research into tungsten, it’s easy to guess why, but those guesses could well be wrong.
They also utilize amorphous metal alloys. That’s essentially isotropy maximized - the current will travel uniformly in all directions in the amorphous lattice, so the net result would presumably be that the AC current distributes uniformly across the cross section with a bit of a cheat - we get this uniformity with ever thinner conductors generally, but amorphy might give the same benefit with thicker conductors too. Just ruminating! I don’t know anything.
And that’s just a few examples.
Those of you with Synergistic Research cables, do you believe the cost is justified? Do you believe their claims and how’d you try explaining the whys?
Synergistic Research is pretty innovative in their cable designs as they know proper grounding and shielding can reduce noise in the signal and came up with their active shielding and grounding technics, and my experience is it really does makes a pretty big difference in sound quality, especially in their top line Galileo series
.
And their Purple fuse, Wow, it’s been a few days and I’m really impressed how good this fuse is even not fully broken in!
And now I’ve ordered their Ethernet UEF switch box and I’ll be able to tell you soon if that is also another innovative worth noticing.
Yes, it does cost a pretty penny, but if you can manage it, I feel it’s worth every cent for this level of performance, especially their Galileo power cords.
It seems you joined this forum not so very long ago…
it also seems you have a tendency to berate things people
on this forum enjoy and have seen benefits from using said
products. These folks have been members of this forum for
much longer than yourself and don’t spend near as many posts berating other folks or products…
Many here may have more qualifications than yourself…
I just went back and forth between the Purple and Beeswax right now and no contest, the Purple sounds like the Master Tape and the Beeswax sounds like a second generation copy, yes the difference is that dramatic! The highs has such body and air, the soundstage is much deeper and instruments pop out more. This Purple fuse is a really good one, the air is unbelievable! The fuse I changed is the 6.3a in the P20. Another thing I found out was the caps on the Beeswax sticks to my magnetic screwdriver, witch means its made of steel and the caps on the Purple do not, which means it probably is plated copper. I do not know if that means anything, but I believe copper is more conductive than steel.
Their fuses I trust, definitely.
And cable shielding, grounding… Good principles but again, it’s easily demonstrable that such things are applied as well or better by a knowledgable DIYer (well, Duncan Taylor for example isn’t just a DIYer, he’s already marketing his cables with success and they compete)
Applying graphene and such can help and such materials aren’t easily obtained and applied by people, but… I wonder if it’s necessary.
And what about those tungsten cables? I can see merits to it, but… They should tells us something.
Amorphous metal conductors sound interesting but again… Very little rigorous info.
It’s not like they’d be giving away trade secrets by sharing some rigorous info on the involved physics. They do have their products patended, right.
Great update…thanks for sharing…while I never tried Beeswax
fuses…your experience echos mine very strongly…Purple over
Orange fuse and HiFI Tuning Supreme3s.
Over the top question…would you open up the Beeswax fuse
and see what in the world was stuck into it? Would be fascinating
to see what all is in it…Wax on…wax off…
Granted this would mean saying good bye to it versus selling
it…
I don’t think any manufacturer is under any obligation to share their knowledge, are they? AudioQuest’s marketing is all we really know about them, but I’m assured by somebody I trust that their research is vast and solid. How about Pepe Pizza in Connecticut? They’re not giving away the way they season the tomatoes. But the taste! I’m sure we don’t need an ingredients list and to run tests on them to check what’s happening chemically to know it’s good stuff. Same with hifi, I reckon. Just listen and see if you like it. If you do, you then get to decide if it’s a good value proposition or not. That’s it. We might all have different ideas of what constitutes good value, and we certainly have different tastes in how we like our systems to sound, and our tastes in music differ, too.
Now, one might think something is a rip-off when someone else sees fair value. There’s so much personal bias in that. Our whole life!
It’s the height of rudeness to present one’s own opinion so aggressively, regardless of how hard-won or accurate, as gospel, especially when “reading the room” would dictate the effort to just be kind.
I’m not offended, because being offended means nothing. It’s a non-issue. However, I am grateful for this forum’s general good grace and kindness, and will stand up for it. So please, present your opinions in a way that is kind and considered, because the community is more important than any individual.
Cheers
Mick
Completely agreed. But I have no respect for manufacturers, such as Synergistic Research, which rely on declarations of pseudoscience. This deliberately misleads consumers.
Not to pick on Arenith personally, but the question “do you believe the cost is justified” just incites meaningless arguments and doesn’t serve any real purpose. That question can be applied to just about any product or service available in the world. It’s my impression that as far as Synergistic Research goes (and quite a few other audio companies selling “tweaks”,) many of the tweaks have a clearly demonstrable affect on reproduced sound even if the “explanations” provided are specious and fanciful. Also, it seems there’s a clear division among audiophiles - those who insist anything that can’t be explained by existing scientific knowledge operates as placebo and those who are not as rigid in their thinking (or more gullible, pick your perspective.) I agree with Mitch’s previous post - as to whether they’re “worth it” is up to the individual and their disposable income. I sat through Ted Denny’s entire product line demonstration at Florida Audio Expo and in spite of the pseudo scientific explanations my wife and I could clearly hear varying degrees of any given product’s effectiveness. Some, like the new Carbon Tuning Discs made no discernible changes to our ears. At there other extreme, the Black Boxes were quite amazing in their ability to affect lower frequencies positively. Many of the products demoed just made the system sound different (brighter with more emphasis on resolution) and we didn’t perceive them as a universal positive. Their cables price structure seems no different from that of many other cable manufacturers so again, value is subjectively determined.
Yet, many times the results speak for themselves. Isn’t it possible that what gets labeled as pseudo science, are just things that are outside of our current level of understanding?
I think Mad Scientist Audio in New Zealand are a good example of how to market products that are efficacious but lack good or complete science to fully explain. They don’t resort to hyperbole or make pretensions but are upfront about the fact that they don’t fully understand the why and how. And like Synergistic Research, they say “the proof is in the listening” and offer a money back guarantee if not happy.
