Synergistic Research

A company that treats the room as part of the system

Synergistic Research cover more ground than most cable companies. Alongside cables and power products they make fuses, grounding systems, and the HFT range of High Frequency Transducers, small devices that address room acoustics without using conventional absorption panels.

The unifying idea is that a system is affected by more than the signal path: by the electrical environment, by the mechanical one, and by the room. Whether you accept all of that is a matter for your own listening, and Synergistic products vary in how readily they demonstrate themselves. The cables and power products are the most conventional part of the range and the easiest place to start.

Theodore Denney founded the company in 1992 and still leads the design work. It started in a 1,200 square foot industrial unit and now runs from a 13,000 square foot factory in Southern California, where the products are still built by hand.

The technologies are developed in-house. Active Shielding is the oldest and the most distinctive: a small power supply biases the cable's shield rather than leaving it passive, and the same principle drives the actively biased electromagnetic cells inside the PowerCell conditioners. Cables and outlets also receive a two-stage Quantum Tunneling treatment during manufacture. UEF, short for Uniform Energy Field, is the framework Denney uses to tie the range together.

The fuses have become one of the better-known parts of the line, with a colour-coded ladder running up through the range.