Synergy Matching

When building a system and choosing equipment there are synergies related to many factors such as your price range, your room size, decor that is acceptable in your household, musical listening preferences, ease of operation (I.e., tubes vs. SS or whether to include a TT or go solely with digital), and more.  I believe you are speaking primarily about synergy related to equipment matching.  Synergy between your gear is important because if you go down the wrong road with the wrong gear then no amount of tweaking or gear-matching will get you over the finish line.  I believe that Is the point made by @millercarbon below.  My first “high-end” speakers were purchased based on great reviews but were totally wrong  for my listening preferences so I wasted too much time and money trying to make them work.What has worked for me is matching each piece of gear to my musical and listening preferences, which include rich tonality and impactful dynamics for primarily rock, blues and lesser amounts of soul and jazz.  The souped up SMc monos were the last step in providing sufficient power for the Aerial speakers come to life and provide the dynamics I am looking for across the entire frequency spectrum.  The digital front end is my attempt to create a coherent sound without digital sounding artifacts by using a NOS DAC, optical decoupling of the Ethernet input, and an I2S connection to the DAC instead of USB.  Even though I like the volume control directly from the DAC, I run the output through a high end buffer to maintain the level of body and impact I enjoy.  It all works well together for me.

Well then, sorry. Its just when I see "Synergy Matching" and "please share your component matching (speakers, amps, DACs) that you have finally attained that "Perfect Synergy/Sound" I figure its a guy looking for help with what I know to be a misleading concept and one that people have wasted untold time and money on.  

I mean I like to answer questions and help as best I can. But there's so many of these "what speaker goes with this amp" type questions I hardly ever even bother any more. 

Now the question really is "what combinations of components that people have put together that sound good" and so my answer changes to https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 

My mistake, I should have worded my title caption differently then.
Maybe I'll start a new thread to do so?

Thanks for the link thread Chuck. I really want to know how that Raven is going to light up those Tektons.

Mitch2 kind of has the idea. Maybe you could elaborate more on the particulars of your system. I'm sorry you went through the speaker hassle. I think sharing those experiences along with listing your equipment and how it all pulls together will be very helpful, not just to me but the community as a whole.  

Actually there are components w design synergy, for example time, phase and low negative global feedback, but that is beyond Chuck... his idea of synergy is flaw driven vs positive attributes being reinforcing.... kinda like not really caring about the midrange being wired out of phase and buying a low TIM amp

I've got a whole thread on the Moabs. Unfortunately like most threads here the people with nothing to add just love to add nothing and so you have to skip past the majority of posts to get to the ones worth reading. Even so there's a lot in there.

Along the way the subject came up how do you choose components without being able to audition? Isn't that necessary? Its helpful, sure, and in the beginning more or less required. But if you put in the time and effort listening to a lot of stuff, and reading and comparing what you've heard to what you've read, well then after a while its not nearly so necessary.  

Its been about a dozen years now since I heard anything before buying, and in that time I bought the Melody integrated, Conqueror tone arm, Koetsu Black Goldline cartridge, Herron VTPH2A phono stage, Synergistic CTS speaker cables, and Atmosphere IC, Blue and Orange fuses, PHT, ECT, HFT, Dayton sub amp and DBA, and finally Moab speakers. Oh and PPT TC, eCards, Mats, and more.

Every single one of these was selected the exact same way. First I figure out what it is that I want. In the past it was all those other things. Now its just the amp. So I know to pay attention for anything and everything about amps. In particular tube integrateds, since I know them to be the best value for money. 

Then I search around for everything I can find, but really only paying attention to what people who actually heard them first hand. Even then I really only pay attention to how they describe the sound. Nothing else matters to me. Only how it sounds. Like with the Moabs, there were a lot of comments about them needing or really coming alive with high power SS amps. With 98dB speakers? How can this be? Turns out its not. Its crap. Mine come plenty alive with 50 tube watts. Plenty. Once again it pays to ignore everything but how people say it sounds.  

So in every case, at least a dozen components over a dozen years, every single one of them when I got it home actually sounded just as expected from all the comments. Every single one. Even though not a one of those people making the comments was using the component with any of my components.

If ever there was proof synergy or system matching or whatever you want to call it is a waste of time, this is it. What's funny is not that people keep pushing it, but that the other huge waste of time- measurements- is another one they all push. The only measurements I bother with are speaker sensitivity and phono cartridge output. Even then they are only used as a filter. Speakers less than 90 dB are out. Ditto carts less than .4mV. There are too many easy to drive examples to be worth the trouble.

I can go into details as much as you want but really its the general principles such as these that matter. Because there's a million different ways to build a great system. I've seen them all over the map yet still sound really good. For every principle that seems iron clad there's some guy totally getting away with flaunting it. Probably because so much of this stuff just doesn't work at all the way people think. 

My system is pretty well described on my system page. I get stuff for testing that is not yet on the market, can't talk about that. And I take stuff apart and can't tell people about it because it gets into the valuable proprietary information someone is making their living with. Anything outside those two areas though I am happy to help.