For me the question is "who doesn't believe there can be a synergy between components and why not"
one of the most useless weasel words in the entire audiophile vocabulary, worse (believe it or not) than PRAT.
At worst it is simply a deep and meaningful sounding (well, to the user anyway) 'I like it', at best an admission of some underlying engineering compatability between components that the user does not understand.
It does nothing other than show the person is well versed in magazine hi end audiophile speak.
It implies magic, some mystical property that somehow simply manages to materialise only thru dumb, blind trial and error. That is my problem with it, it continues the myths in audio.
And what use is it to anyone?? It is magic, a product of an unpredictable and unknowable 'force' in nature, therefore cannot be extrapolated or applied to any different circumstance other than the specific one being woo-ed and ahh-ed about. So why tell us???
The review in the mag, revealing this synergy between components (we don't understand nor can we predict it remember) is therefore rendered completely useless to anyone else (it is not good compatible engineering that is producing the result remember, it is this unpredictable surprise package of synergy that emerged) and if it is therefore useless to anyonme else, why write it?? A review by definition is supposed to guide and help us in making choices in gear, once we enter the realm of magic.....
Synergy. The unpredictable way in which components complement each other...which we cannot predict beforehand....all done blind and willy nilly. Now, this is what I have never seen explored before by the proponents of this concept.
We may get a statement like 'Ooh, but when I introduced interconnect A into my new chain, yada yada yada' (being first thing in the morning here I'd prob start to feel nauseous if I pretended to use auidophile speak, so just used yada yada for safety).
HOW DOES HE NOT KNOW THAT HE WOULD HAVE A GREATER LEVEL OF SYNERGY IF HE WERE STILL USING THE SPEAKER CABLE FROM TWO SWAPS AGO??
See? It is completely unpredictable, a lot of audiophiles swap components often (looking for synergy) but AS it is unpredictable and unknowable it is basically nothing more than random swapping (if the belief is that it is something OTHER than engineering) so if you change ONE component you MUST try swapping every other component in the chain to see if you can get greater synergy.
'How do I know that the preamp I had two iterations previosuly would not be better with this IC? Engineering will provide no clues here, I have no choice but to try it, pity I sold it....'
start working out all the possible permutations required in a chain consisting of source, pre, amps and speakers with all the connections between them and it is clear that the person who has found synergy has simply stopped at a point where he can say 'hmm, I like that' because it is as sure as hell he has NOT found maximum synergy yet.
IF, that is, he uses the word synergy as used by the audio mystics, something descending from above without warning and gratefully received by the supplicant to the audio gods.
And that is just about normal audio hardware! We have not even begun to enter the woo-woo world of machina dynamica and others.
Synergy. Completely useless word and concept. And as guilty as any other idiotic audiophile word which tends toward the lamentable state of hi end audio with it's mingpo discs and dots on speaker cones and little magic buttons on the ceiling to help with schuman resonances and filthy quantums in our speaker leads.