SYNERGY - what’s your thoughts?

Yes, the hills are alive with ants and grass and trees and even humans making music…birdsong, etc.

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I suspect there are other reasons too. At the extreme end, the uber wealthy audiophile is prone to do a lot of box swapping in search of the next exotica. They don’t stick with much for long. Just as people with really really crazy expensive cars change them more often than people who just have luxury cars.

How the mega rich think about purchasing and the relationship to what is purchased is very different to you and I.

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Using inductive thinking (I do not believe that there is really very much pure deduction), If these products were all developed together, then there ‘should’ be ‘some sort of’ synergy…except for implementations of speaker cable.

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And it has to be said that it’s no longer about the music at this point.

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I wouldn’t go that far. But certainly not only about the music. Not for me to judge how someone else engages with their hobby other than to say it isn’t the way I engage with it.

They aren’t spending my money so they can do what they like. In fact, it is better for everyone if there are things that coax their money back out into the world.

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Of course there is synergy across any companies products, particularly when they have a range of products. A Naim FC/112/150 must a have a synergy just as a full statement system will. I wouldn’t expect a statement pre to have the same synergy with a 150, just as I wouldn’t match a FC/112 with statement amps.

It doesn’t mean that synergy can’t be found elsewhere though.

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At this point, I am finding it easy to imagine the Learjets of prospective Statement owners landing at Southampton airport and someone from Naim running them up to Salisbury for a dem. Followed by a very decent supper after placing the order for two sets (one for Monaco and one for New York) before flying home. :smiling_face_with_sunglasses::joy:

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Undoubtably, marketing is also a dimension that cannot be ignored.

The cable market is extremely crowded, competition is fierce, and manufacturers are often selling products whose benefits can be difficult to quantify objectively. In that environment, companies naturally look for ways to differentiate themselves and encourage customer loyalty.

From a marketing perspective the concept of a ‘full loom’ is particularly powerful because it plays on a concern that many enthusiasts have: the fear that they may be leaving performance on the table by mixing brands. Once the idea is established that synergy exists primarily within a manufacturer’s ecosystem, any perceived shortcoming in a system can be attributed to a lack of brand consistency rather than the actual performance of the individual cables.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the concept is necessarily false. Some manufacturers may genuinely pursue a consistent design philosophy across their ranges. However, their claims deserve scrutiny because they also happen to align perfectly with a commercial objective: encouraging customers to buy multiple products from the same company rather than evaluating each cable on its own merits.

What makes me sceptical is that the technical explanation often seems vague. If a manufacturer’s entry-level and flagship cables differ substantially in conductors, geometry, dielectric materials and filtering approaches, then the claim that they all share some deeper synergy-producing characteristic requires explanation. What exactly is that characteristic, and how does it outweigh the obvious engineering differences between products? Is it measurable?

Until that mechanism is clearly explained and demonstrated, it is reasonable to wonder whether ‘full loom synergy’ is partly an engineering concept and partly a marketing narrative designed to reduce buyer uncertainty and keep customers within a single brand’s catalogue.

After all, if we as consumers can be persuaded that mixing brands is inherently risky, the manufacturer gains a significant commercial advantage. The burden is therefore on the manufacturer to show why a complete loom from one brand is superior to a carefully chosen combination of cables from different brands, rather than simply asking customers to accept the claim on faith.

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A complete loom (odd term for physically unconnected cables!) having ‘synergy’ is nonsense in my view unless one cable modifies the sound in a way that needs the other to modify if more, or even reverse the effect of the first, to sound good, the two effects having been planned to be complementary.

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Superlumina, for example, was specifically developed using listening tests to work well with Naim’s best systems IIRC.

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…my thoughts would be that over time the degree of synergy lessens, particularly with the introduction of revolutiovary (as opposed to evolutionary) products. The Organic DAS/DACs is/are certainly revolutionary ,(to my hearing).

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Question on synergy:

If you have the same make of cable connecting each of your components, e.g. silver-coated high quality copper, and this is used in all power cables and interconnects: would this create some form of synergy? Would it make the components behave like one integrated system? Or is this non-sense because the internal cabling in each component is different any way.

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They do .. in my system.. u need to experience it yourself and you wii agree . Another question will be —
What is the dominating box in your system in terms of the sound you eventually hear? ? Eg, your amp?, streamer ?, CDP? dac? Cables? Etc etc.. understanding your equipments/ boxes/ speakers are equally as important as to create or getting synergy .. that’s what I am getting into..

I think it can have synergy, but not necessarily more so than different makes of cable that have been chosen to compliment each other well. But to say that, for example, a complete loom of Chord Sarum T cables has special properties over and above using some Sarum T cables and some other well chosen cables is basically just a marketing ploy and has no basis in reality. What a complete loom of one cable type does offer is an easy route to obtaining cables that are all well matched and which are all ‘pulling in the same direction’. So it’s a nice easy and safe option, but not necessarily the best.

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Speakers set the sound character more than anything else

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This is so true and often overlooked in my opinion

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Don’t forget the room. Synergy is hard to find. Some can be managed by experience but mostly it’s luck. If you stay within a brand my experience is the amount of luck increase.

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Yes indeed the room is a key part (and I mentioned in an earlier post). But I don’t think there is such anything as synergy in its cirrect meaning, just good combinations of compatible components. The sound may be tweakable through choice of cables, and the room is tweakable with positioning, layout and acoustic treatment. Compatibility of components is indeed simplified through choosing the same manufacturer where the one does the necessary components. However, plenty of other possibilities exist but then with the onus on the user to verify compatibility electrically and also compatibility with personal sound preference, though the latter is no different from using a single manufacturer.

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The choice of hifi stand has an effect on the overall sound, so I would look for synergy between the black boxes and stand. Wood or glass shelves make a difference as does vibration isolation, especially with a record player.

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I completely understand your scepticism in how “loom” is often marketed/published by many cable companies.
By my understanding in its strictest sense is that a “loom” offered should all adhere to the same technology or perhaps more specifically the same metallurgical materials and inherent quantities, manufacturing processes, extrusions and terminations. Also not having wildly differing electrical properties.

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