RGA
Super Member
This thread is several years old, but you have largely hit the nail on the head. System Synergy and it is my view that you're far better off listening to complete systems - finding ones that stand against everything else - then buy the entire system. I have heard all of my speakers on different gear and get strikingly different (good bad and atrocious) depending.
I am building an all Audio Note system so the DAC 3.1x Balanced makes more sense for a buyer like myself than just a standard one size fits all decision. The reason for this is the same designers design the DAC and the transport and the amplifiers and the speakers - and they use the same parts and overall design theory throughout. A non oversampling, non error correcting DAC for example is an analogous design as their SET amplifiers. SET amps have no global feedback (thus no active error correction). So in theory you have a CD player that reads the disc once only - does nothing to that signal - no noise shaping or processing and sends that one read to the R2R Ladder DAC and that's it. The SET amp does the same takes a signal makes it louder and doesn't correct anything and then feed it back through the circuits. Their speakers are similar as well in that they don't attempt to store sound in the box but to release the energy as fast as possible with the notion that it can be released fast enough to not smear the sound. Whereas a heavily damped cabinet that most of the rest of the industry utilizes stores unwanted energy in the box to linger - usually creating a more boxy and less lively presentation - and even the turntables and arms are of the release energy down the arm and out of the chassis with light platters over very heavy energy storing platters.
This isn't to say the total opposite to the above can't work - but it's generally easier to not be forcing square pegs down round holes. In an AN system the AN digital makes a bunch of sense - and they MAY work well in other systems - but they were not intended for those and I've heard them sound rather not good in non AN systems. There is a certain logic if the preamp and amp use Silver Litz wiring and black gate caps and AN's own hand made transformers resisters and caps that the CD player/transport/DAC are also using those exact same wires, caps, resisters and transformers. And if the speaker's voice coil is also wound with the same silver wire and caps are also the same. But let's face it most of us can't afford to do all this stuff.
Still I think it's a pretty good plan to keep things together that make some sense - if you like SET amps you buy speakers designed for them - big ole horns or single drivers - not Apogee Scintilla or most 5 driver floorstanders with 84dB sensitivity and 2 ohm loads.
The nice thing about the 502CA is that it has both SS and Tube selection at the press of a button that can be changed during play. So in a certain respect it is more adaptable to a lot of different stereo systems. In mine however it is tube all the way and unless it is to show people why tubes are awesome it's never going to put back into SS mode. HOWEVER, in a different set-up perhaps the SS mode will sound best - a lot of people prefer the SS mode of the MiniMax DAC in SS and disliked that unit's tube mode. So back to synergy.
