Synergistic Research HFT's
I then installed the first 5 SR HFTs and couldn’t hear any or little difference. I proceeded by adding the next 5 and again nothing. Maybe my 59 year old ears are going No not going, but hearing nothing that these could possibly do. Just more SR HRT expensive voodoo snake oil to suck the gullible in, and look who's at the helm. |
^^^ When I first installed the ten-pack of HFT in my room, I had my friend Robert over for a listen. I didn't tell him what I had done and asked him what he thought. Robert hears like a bat, and upon initial listening, he about fell over. The improvement was significant to the point that Robert was guessing all sorts of things from tube rolling to an upgraded preamp. Everything was improved, including, as you said ... the bass. Frank |
Well, I started my HFT journey with two speaker kits ( combination of standard HFTs, 2.0s and HFT X ). I did like what I heard. Sound was more pronounced, articulate, vivid. So I decided to pull the trigger and ordered more : HFT 10 pack and HFT Wide Angle. I put them all at once as I felt pretty antsy. The result was stunning . I expected more air, better HF extension, clearer mids. But what I got was full transformation of the sound. I had invested hundreds of labor hours in treating my listening room so it already had great acoustics. That's why I expected only minor improvements. Boy, was I wrong ! The most unexpected part was the bass. The sheer energy and drive, how clean and articulate it got. Powerful, fast, aggressive ( where it needs to be ). The room definitely got bigger, especially in depth. It was like the front wall was just removed. Then there was this liquidity of the piano and some indescribable....magic, I guess. For lack of a better word. Something elusive, hard to place...but so precious. I am definitely hooked. Want to add more HFT 2.0s and standard ones. Then maybe try an Atmosphere. We'll see how it goes. |
jkuc ... I’m curious. Exactly what was your intent in making your above post? Is this type of review more to your liking: SR Red fuse = Good. SR Black fuse = Better. SR Blue fuse = Best. SR HFT’s = Really good. SR Level III Power cords = Better than the ones they replaced. ARC REF-75se = Better than the REF-75 it replaced. Herbie's tube dampeners = Better than nothing. Please enlighten us ... what were your results when you placed the SR fuses and the SR HFT’s into your system and room? Oh, wait ... Frank |
Although I appreciate @oregonpapa 's passion, I'd tone down the positive effects somewhat.Unfortunately, the gentlemen is overexciting about Synergistic products everywhere on internet.The magnitude of improvements of tweaks is.. rather subtle. Transformation, jaw dropping is abuse, is exaggeration. I read his description of red fuses... superior etc, then blacks were so much superior, now blue even more superior. I don't know where he ended up with his superiors. He must be affiliated...
|
The Synergistic Research HFT system is fabulous and solved my significant room acoustic problems. Previously I had tried the old school approach of absorbtion and diffraction with much less sonic success and visually the room was then unappealing. I give the SR approach the highest satisfaction rating one can give. Synergistic Research now has a family of HFT's as Sgordon1 alluded to. The original HFT, HFT 2.0 (more warmth and texture to sound), HFT-X( more air and space), and two wide angle versions. A combination of these products allows one to really dial in a room sonically. These small resonators are easily placed and can be repositioned quickly. If you sell your house or change apartments you take your acoustic treatments with you. For 99.9% of us audiophiles, we will never have a custom built perfect dimentioned dedicated listening room.For real rooms with real acoustic challenges, the Synergistic Research HFT system does a great job of improving listening pleasure. Peter Hansen at the Cable Company is an expert on installing the HFT's as is Scott Walker and his staff at Scott Walker Audio. Brownsfan's approach of sending videos of his room for HFT installation advice is a great approach .Another great use of the smart phone. You can watch Peter Hansen placing HFT's in a room by going to YouTube and searching for Synergistic Research videos. The HFT's do come with a good suggested approach diagram on where to place them in a room. And best of all if you do not like them you send them back and get your money refunded. 30 days to try them. And if you return them or change their placement - no nail holes in the wall. A great product that has improved my listening pleasure. David Pritchard |
You might consider the new Wide Angle HFTs. These can be the foundation of improving the sound... use them first? The HFTs you have can be used to "fine tune" the room, and you may not want to use all of them. Over time, I have removed many HFTs from my room. It was as if they were competing and diminishing the FOCUS of the sound. For example, I went from four on the ceiling to a single piece, over the "sweet spot" chair. Yes, I believe you will hear a big difference with the Wide Angle versions. (Remember the 30 day return policy.) |
OK, so one more skeptic converted. The acoustics in my living room was so bad we couldn't understand each other half the time. TV/video was a never ending exercise in hitting the back button several times and lip reading. Not infrequently, we just gave up on segments of dialogue. Forget about any critical music listening. SR had a June special, order a Black Box and get 2 10 packs of HFTs for free. Since there is a 30 day return policy, I took a shot and placed an order with the Cable Company. Peter handled my order and offered some of the best customer service I have ever had. I sent him photos and a floor plan of my living room, and he guided me on placement. Oh my, the Black Box made a huge and immediate difference. The black box alone was enough to render dialogue intelligible. I waited for 3 weeks to place the HFTs. Even my wife, who is totally skeptical about such things, volunteered that the Black Box had very significantly improved the acoustics. Yesterday, I did a video conference with Peter and he helped me place 10 of the HFTs. Again, the room acoustics took a big step forward. I was absolutely sure these HFTs were nothing but snake oil, but the difference was really amazing. I've still got 10 of these left, and I am going to do some playing around with these in my two channel room to see what they will do. Both the Black box and the HFTs are so unobtrusive that WAF considerations are irrelevant. I wish I had run this experiment a long time ago. |
Just wanted to relay first impressions on the Blue duplex. It's had 120 hours burn in on a cable cooker which should be plenty. I installed it this morning -- other than having the ground on the opposite corner to the red installation was a cinch. By the way I have found a lot of reds strip the cover mounting screw, hopefully no such problem with the blue. Anyway how does it sound? I swapped my power amps (and FEQs, Atmosphere and SR Active Ground) from the Black to the Blue and they do sound very different. The Black is the king of delicacy and detail while in the Blue there's almost an extra half octave of bass, a greater sense of pace and immediacy and the potential for more openness and extension. However there is a big caveat to all of this - unlike any power outlet I've ever tested the Blue is very sensitive to setup and ancillaries. If there's any noise in your system the Blue seems to pick it up and magnify it. Cable dressing needs to be immaculate -- for example I had a couple of interconnects running too close to power cords - never been an issue with the Blacks but with the Blue getting these better dressed made an immediate and profound impact on the soundstage. I still need to run down a level of amp hiss and even some odd ultrasonics that are apparent with the Blue that I never heard with the Black. Overall I suspect the Blue is such a wide open window it is exposing problems I didn't know I had. The bass while deep is still a bit uncontrolled but I suspect this will settle down over time. Net net I think the Blue is a good complement to the Black -- ideal for power amps and situations where you want to prioritize slam and openness over finesse -- I'll probably stick with the Black for my sources as exposing noise issues here would be even more of a bear to track down but for my amps I suspect I'll be sticking with the Blue. |
Still cooking the Blue outlet but for those that are interested in the difference between the Galileo LE and newer UEF it's an interesting comparison Firstly they're clearly cut from the same cloth tonally and changing one for the other does not alter the fundamental tonal balance. I'd also recommend that you definitely use the grounding connection as without it the noise floor is noticeably higher. I have the full active ground block and made up a connection using the stock SR wire -- upgrading to the HD links or a custom pair from Verastarr will no doubt be a nice tick up. Once grounded and with the gold bullets (I've yet to try the silver) the UEF has noticeably less pronounced bass than the LE but more detail and a major step change in clarity and information retrieval in the upper mids and highs. This is especially apparent in the clarity around breathing and vibrato on vocal and in the more high pitched percussion. The drop in perceived bass is something I've found often happens on my analog rig when I improve things, at first it seems you're missing something but then you realize that a bass hump has been smoothed over and all the detail and extension is still there but now in better proportion to the rest of the frequency range. Overall the gestalt of the UEF is more natural and open, greater information retrieval but with no edge or harshness. In fact with the UEF some vocals that had been shrill became more natural and even toned. The main benefit of the UEF is a much lower noise floor -- it seems the old cliche of hearing into the recording holds true in spades with this one and you may find yourselves turning the volume up a notch or too (it tends to be the case that it is low level distortion that limits where you place the volume control -- more of this tends to make the same absolute level seem louder) So if you're system can handle natural bass and doesn't need the bit of bass bump the LE provides I'd say the switch to UEF is a no brainer |
I have around 70 hours on the blue duplex outlet now. Sound is somewhat muddled a bit of reverb and a bit of dullness. It's difficult to find the best words to describe, lacks focus? The depth of soundstage is clearly deeper as is the hight and width. In fact the depth is deeper at the outer fringes almost like a slight surround sound effect. Four or five hours on the black. The Oppo power supply is connected to the black. I'm sure those Galileo LE's will be amazing Folkfreak. |
Got my Blue outlet burning in on my Dharma Cable Cooker now -- have a pair of power cords (one with its plug cut off) so that one is plugged in, and the other is connected to the screws on the outlet. The Cable Cooker is set at the level for burning in power cords and speaker cables I’m going to give it 4 days/96 hours at least before I try putting it in the wall |
Well I have my Blue duplex now but I cannot afford to lose hundreds of hours waiting for it to break in (not that I ever felt that my Blacks changed that much over time btw). So what I'll do is rig up an old power cord so I can burn it in via my Cable Cooker (same settings used to burn in power cords) and leave it on that for 72-96 hours before installing it. So most likely it will be installed next week. Good thing is this should allow me to get used to a new set of speaker cables in the mean time and not get confused by the simultaneous break in of an outlet and a cable change |
I recently installed a Black Duplex. I was told, by those in the know and who have experience with the Black Duplex, to be prepared for 10 days of break in. In my system I found they started sounding really good around day 16 and did not fully settle until 21+ days. This was with continuous run time, playing music. |
I installed one BLUE and one BLACK duplex outlet. The outlets are in a twin receptacle box connected to a dedicated circuit about 25 feet from breaker box. I have a second twin box next to it with one standard outlet and one older Oyade RS1. Sound sucks in every way out of the box as expected. Nearly unlistenable. About one hour in things are improving nicely. Two hours, things are much much better.... what a silly hobby. VAC Sigma 160 and the Oppo spinner power supply plugged into the BLUE the Oppo is connected to the BLACK. The power cords grip well hold well with my heavy PC’s so that’s a plus. I’ll return here Friday evening. My guess is at least 50 hours to settle in somewhat? What do you all think? Very curious what Folkfreak has to say. |
2,298 posts06-23-2018 7:36am^^^ I see that SR has come out with a new "BLUE" wall outlet. I wonder how it compares to the Black outlet? Nooooooooo! really!!! http://mrwgifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Judge-Judy-Shake-My-Head-Gif.gif |
"I see that SR has come out with a new "BLUE" wall outlet. I wonder how it compares to the Black outlet?" Frank, I will post my thoughts on the BLUE duplex outlet next week. I ordered recently from Highend_cc here on audiogon. Alfred is the go to SR guy he’s treated me very well. I have a BLACK as well as a much loved older Oyaide R1. The black and Oyaide are both very easy to recommend a huge bargain for what they provide. Over the years my Oyaide has become loose so the Blue will replace it. |
I like the new Wide Angle HFTS. By adjusting the height of the side units (approximate ear level), and the distance (forward and back) to the front of the room, I was able to reach a new level of engagement with the music. On the front wall, I am using the HFT X Wide Angle unit. It is amazing how a slight alteration of their positions can impact the sound. Hint: even when you think you are "there," keep experimenting! I already have a myriad of SR gear, including DIY HFTs, and am very pleased with these new additions. |
"Anyone compared the new HFT wide angles?Enter your text ..." Yes, I ordered a set soon after Alfred got stock. They clearly improved the focus of my soundstage depth width and height. The other obvious change was a natural feel to the room as the music was less mechanical? Hard to put into words. I have (I think) regular 12 HFT's in the room as well. |
The wide angle HFT's are being sold by Highend Electronics - look at their items for sale advertised here on Audiogon. I am sure that the other Synergistic Research dealers are able to order them - like Scott Walker Audio, The Cable Company, and David Wiseman. SR suggests 3 to 6 Wide Angle HFT's be added to a room that has already had HFT's installed. There is a good video on YouTube discussing their placement and a printed diagram. I believe a 3 pack is $399.00. I did change my plans so I can go to the Newport Show June 1-3. If you are able to go feel free to call me during the show. Cell phone 575-644-1462. David Pritchard |
David ... I tried to find the "wide angles" on the Highend Electronics site and they weren't there yet. Do you have the info on price? Also, have you tried treating your HFT's with Tim's TC? I pasted mine and got another lowering of the noise floor. Don't ask me how it works, cuz I haven't a clue. :-) Also, I'm very disappointed in the cancellation of the audio show. Was looking forward to seeing you again and maybe break some bread together. Hopefully, next year ... Frank |
I heard them demonstrated at the Factory open house at Synergistic's listening room. The effect of the HFT wide angle is significant and I will be ordering them soon. They are used in addition to the regular HFT's. They will be demonstrated at the Newport Audio Show the first weekend in June. I think the Synergistic Research room is worth the effort to go to the show. David Pritchard |
So I have a serious question about all of these various acoustic treatments from SR and similar. Just how effective do you think they might be for the user of a Lyngdorf 2170 with its room perfect software hopefully already having taken care of the majority of the perceived acoustic issues these devices are supposed to help? |
madavid0. Yes there is a no questions asked 30 trial period. I’m sure they can pass a double blind test since my wife could tell the difference (huge) without me informing her of what I was doing. I doubt they are carcinogenic. Don’t worry about that. However, they are small and easily swallowed, so yes they are especially dangerous to toddlers as are many other small objects. (Don’t leave any washers or bolt nuts lying around either). |
