System Synergy Theory

From my experiences, I would say your former theory to be true. They are aggregate, or additive, IMHO.

Cheers,
John

From a technical standpoint, the former is definitely true and is so for any piece of equipment in a series chain. This is also why there are so many proponents for "source first" system installations because they feel signal quality goes irrevocably down hill from there.

However I have also had two components with similar sonic signatures that when mated together were altogether different - so there is more to it than simple time-domain effects in some cases. But in the end, I only had that happen once so I think you can rely on your first assessment with confidence.

Arthur

Think about this for a minute, and this pertains to any component, whether it is a piece of equipment (cartridge, CD player, preamp, amp, speakers, power conditioner, etc.), software (album, CD, etc.), wires (interconnect, digital, speaker cable, power cords, etc.), or whatever (your room, etc.).

What does a component do? It takes the signal (or information) and passes it to the next component. You start with, let's say, an album or a CD. You eventually end up with sound entering your ears.

Each component hopefully doesn't alter the information as it passes it, but we know that it does. How does it alter it? Take the album like you suggested. It either drops part of the original signal that it received since it really can't add something that wasn't there. Another possiblity is that it adds distortion to the signal. Maybe the last possibility is that it alters the amplitude of some of the frequencies throughout the signal.

Whatever happens though can only happen to the signal that the component originally receives. Once part of the signal is lost, it's gone and can't be recovered or corrected. What you hear in the end is the signal as it has been altered by each and every component in the line, so it has to be cumulative.

Remember the experiment where you tell someone something, and they pass it on and on and on down the line and it's not the same when it gets back to you. If I hear the words "bright, fiery red" and I change it to just "bright red", the "fiery" is gone from the sentence forever.

"Knowing this would go a long way in helping interpret reviews and estimating how components will match up."

I would imagine that there is no way you can read a review and interpret how a component will sound in your system. What I take from a review (I don't read the mags anymore) is how accurate the reviewer says a component is. Then when I am out listening to that component, I see if what the reviewer said is what I am hearing. If I hear the same as the reviewer, I tend to believe that we hear the same, if not, then I don't use that reviewer as a source of information for me.

I recently auditioned the NuForce 9SE V2 power amps. With one preamp the NuForce sounded OF to good, with the next preamp, the NuForce sounded very good. Both preamps use the same 6SN7 tubes and both were considered to be warm and musical preamps.

Happy Listening.

Great question. I do believe the component characteristics are additive to an extent. Sometimes a single component will dominate the others. I will admit that I think I know how I prefer to put together a system but will admit that I probably got lucky in my current system. It is more likely that I stumbled upon the sound I like. To a large extent, system building is still trial and error though you can at least get in the ballpark by know your preferences and the sonic attributes of a component.