Synergestic Research: SCAM


Well, I just sat down to a demo of several Synergistic Research products including the Black Box room bass resonators, their new line conditioner, their active Tranquility Base, little treble resonators and the Atmosphere room acoustics tuner.


Total scam. Never once did they just play a track while moving things around. It was always a few seconds of a track followed by a 30 seconds of so of moving stuff, etc, then another maybe 30 seconds of sound. They'd start a track and then stop it right as some instruments came in, do the change, and then continue playing where it left off. The guy doing the demo was asked twice if he could do a live a/b and he'd give an excuse about how it takes a little time for system to charge or some bs like that and the transition process would mask the differences. Absolute con BS they are DEAD to me.


Also? I could hear JACK SQUAT changes in the demo. A few people around me would comment on the changes but I could hear nothing -- at least as best I could manage with the small clips and pauses in between changes. I really tried, but I could hear nothing.


Here, I took a video of a part of the demo. I'll post it when I have a chance.

madavid0
The original poster is obviously a pin head troll I also attended axpona and attended the sr demo twice some of the improvements were greater than others while I didn't question others in the room everyone seemed to enjoy what they heard. Again to the op your thoughts and opinions do not mean a thing. So go back to your parents basement and turn off your laptop. 
Is it your religion to be bamboozled?

I've heard differences between power cables and interconnects so obvious I didn't even need to A/B them back to back. Possibly the SR cables in the demo were fabulous and contributed to the wonderful sound of the room. I'm just commenting on the "tweak" demos. Some of the devices seemed more likely to work than others (the little metal resonators on the speakers), but try as I might I could hear nothing.

There is NO legitimate reason why they couldn't just turn the Atmosphere "room acoustics controller" on and off, or switch between settings on the fly. The excuse offered, as heard on the video, is that because it takes a "long time" for the change to be effected it will happen without you being able to tell the difference!!!! I didn't say that, THEY did.

When you test gear at home -- trying between different interconnects for example -- do you listen to 30 seconds of music, swap cables, talk about what you're doing during the swap, then continue listening to the track where you left off for another 30 seconds? Do you pick times just as new instruments come in to make the swap? And so on.

What's happening in that demo is that they are obviously abusing the audio memory effect to flim-flam listeners.
Madavid0, pretty sure I see your problem. There's no such thing as the audio memory effect. Whew! That was a close call.

As has been mentioned in other threads here on Audiogon, the word "scam" gets thrown around too freely.
I did not see or hear a scam, however, I agree that the demonstration could have been better orchestrated.