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11 Questions for Ted Denney
III, Lead Designer/Owner
of Synergistic Research
Neil Gader
What’s your earliest memory of the high end
Going with my father to FEDCO to purchase some Soundcrafstman gear
in the high-end corner. We brought an LP of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite
to play on a Garrard turntable. That Firebird—I think it was on Deutsche
Grammophon—is still one of my favorites.
What was the system you dreamed about as a teen
Some Dynaco tube gear, an AR turntable, and I don’t even want to admit
to the speakers.
Oh, come on.
Let’s just say there was a 901 in the designation.
What prompted you to get into the industry
I was a printer and I did some work for one of the major wire manufacturers.
I needed some long cables and couldn’t believe how expensive they were. I
built up some cables myself and one sounded pretty good, so I thought if
I made some cable for a couple different kinds of systems I could sell them
and maybe save up enough money to buy a Mapleknoll Apollo Turntable.
That was a big motivator for me. I thought I could do it as a part-time gig.
That turned into Synergistic Research.
What do you say to people who say it’s just wire
If somebody has diligently compared cables in an A-B comparison and they
don’t hear a difference, it’s questionable to me whether they need to spend
a lot of money on a stereo in the first place. Because if you can’t hear that
difference then how can you hear the difference between CD players or
speakers and amplifiers For some people the differences in systems aren’t
that important. A lot of musicians don’t have great systems. Their sense of
the live event is so strong, all they need is something to trip them over and
their brain takes care of the rest. But I’m dismayed at the state of a lot of
what passes for high end today. Maybe it’s just because I’ve heard so much
and know better, but a lot of what’s being sold today is being driven by
margin and terms at the retail level not by actual performance.
A lot of wire companies are criticized for that very
reason.
If you’re experienced with certain high-end wires, then you’re probably
feeling that wire all sounds the same and that it’s overpriced. In that context
those feelings would definitely be justified.
And haven’t margin-driven sales always been critical
in a market driven economy
I’m not sure, but I seem to remember better hi-fi in the early- and mid-90s
in terms of quality choices and sonics.
So you could take a dream system of a decade and
half ago and put it up against the best today
Sure, the Forsell Air Reference turntable/tonearm. And some Spectral gear
is still a benchmark for transparency.
What do you think you’ll be listening to in ten years
Hard drives—if you have the proper D-to-A conversion that’s one of the
best sounding transports there is. They don’t have the jitter problems and
distortions associated with transports.
Do you prefer analog or digital
I like them both—with my Forsell Air Reference, the transport for digital
sounds quite a bit like my Forsell turntable with Clearaudio cartridge. I can’t
speak highly enough about that old Forsell gear.
You’ve been around the block—seen any high-end
quackery over the years
There’s so much out there! Somebody reviewed a Radio Shack CD player
and it was supposed to be real good. Then somebody came out with an
extremely expensive anodized, CNC-machined cradle that you could plug it
into so it could sound even better. So you’re taking a $100 or $150 portable
CD player designed for headphones and sticking it into a $1000 or $2000
cradle. I thought that was pretty hilarious. Oh, and the Tice TPT clock. That
was a hoot. You had to really think about it if you heard anything or not.
What’s the biggest mistake buyers make assembling
a system
Going too much on a “Class A” rating or some other recommendation list
and not thinking about how the separate links in the chain are going to work
together to create a whole. What you end up with is a room full of very
loud “furniture.” Everything competes with everything else for attention,
but there’s little cohesion.
What’s the best advice from an old pro
Get to know your system. Don’t change things too quickly. And don’t
overspend initially. Learn your biases—what you like, what you don’t like.
You can’t do everything in a system. Also don’t worry so much about what
your system sounds like or you’ll never enjoy the music. You’ll always be
listening for what’s wrong and never be happy. TAS
168 December 2006 The Absolute Sound