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Your experiences with system synergy

Hi All -

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to demo a top of the line tube amp in my system. This is a summit piece that many audiophiles would consider and end game piece. I was ready to open my wallet and spend a big chunk of money to upgrade my system. 
 

Upon arrival at my home, I set this tube amp and sat back to experience the magic. To my surprise, the amp sounded good, but it did not best my far less expensive current tube amp. I played with speaker placement and demoed lots of different styles of music to find the magic. 
 

Eventually, I plugged my own amp in, the one I was expecting to replace, and there was an immediate sense of rightness. It was if I’d introduced a new dancing partner to my current system and they just could not match rhythms on the dance floor.  Now, to be clear, my current system has great components. I don’t think there is a weak link in the system. Thus, I thought the end game amp would be revelatory and transformational, but it wasn’t. 
 

It made me realize the profound importance of system synergy. 
 

I’m wondering if others have had this moment or epiphany when introducing a vaunted and desirable component into their system just be sort of utterly disappointed? 

128x128bluethinker

Showing 1 response by mulveling

mulveling's avatar
mulveling
1,774 posts
 

Not too surprising. Yes, that nebulous / nefarious concept of "synergy" is crucial. Everything matters for a good amp match, not just speakers: preamps, source, volume level, music selection, and YOU.

Psychology is a factor too. If you’re expecting miracles from a new amp (or whatever), that’s more often a setup for disappointment. On the flip side, I’ve been loaned "next level" amps by my dealer at times when I was already "perfectly happy" with my system. No obligation or risk on my end. I didn’t expect anything, other than a bit of fun experiencing the new amps followed by their return. Twice now that has left me blown away by the new amps, and scrambling to make their purchase. Haha.

Preamps have proven a more difficult upgrade for me. They don’t overtly change sound as much as power amps, but somehow synergy is even more key in this slot. A few years ago I purchased my VAC Master preamp, and it didn’t totally blow me away until it was later matched to the VAC Master 300 monoblock amps. Fortunately I kept it until then, because I had been flirting with selling it and just sticking to the Ref 6. It was really weird, in some ways the ARC Ref 6 seemed a better preamp match for my VAC 200iQ amps. 

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