Hopefully it's okay for me to post this here.

Someone over at Head-fi (or rather, his friend) bought one of these and took it apart.

http://www.head-fi.org/t/741043/some-hot-science-from-synergistic-research/15#post_11036526

Here is the thread with the picture of what is inside.

Hilarity ensues...

Hopefully it's okay for me to post this here.

I wish you had posted it before the thread reached thirty pages! Even accounting for the headfi tradition of quoting huge posts, complete with pics, just to add a single-line answer, that means there must be at least five pages of actual posting there.

Mind you, the first post probably says all that is needed to say, but, I suppose some believers will be screaming ...I'll go and scroll through to find out.

I wish you had posted it before the thread reached thirty pages! Even accounting for the headfi tradition of quoting huge posts, complete with pics, just to add a single-line answer, that means there must be at least five pages of actual posting there.

Mind you, the first post probably says all that is needed to say, but, I suppose some believers will be screaming ...I'll go and scroll through to find out.

The post I linked was probably the only significant post in that entire thread. Just depends on what you decide to make of it. Everything after that is just classic Head-fi behavior.

It seems to do something (I say "seems" because I don't completely discount the possibility that that I heard was attributable more to Hawthorne effect/confirmation bias rather then anything the device is actually doing, but I've been at this long enough to trust my ears).  What I heard was a slight broadening (but not deepening or vertical expansion) of the soundstage.  I also heard a noticeable improvement in localization of instruments within the soundstage.

What I heard wasn't significant enough to convince me to keep it.

That's all, folks.

Signal chain for listening tests: MacBook Pro/Audirvana/WireWorld Starlight USB/Lynx Hilo/custom XLR-to-RCA cables/iFi Nano iCAN/Senn HD800.

Agreed.  Myself and OJneg heard it similarly without any detriment to the signature, only a slight imaging and space benefit like going from TRS to XLR.  I doubt the bias principle as both myself and OJ were expecting to hear your typical sonic degradation from added resistors altering Output Z or some sort of colored cap.  Best guess is it's acting as a sort of cap or filter for noise off the TRS jack.  Also seems to jive with the fact there isn't an XLR product using it.

For the record I think the positions by both SR and SE/BS are equally absurd.  The spectrograph would actually jive with the SR claim in a court of law or by any principles of logic.  All of that hot air about the HOT on both sides was irrelevant and strawman BS complicated by lazy piss poor thinking. It's like one side saying the Big Bang disproves God and the other saying God disproves the Big Bang.  Both utterly invalid, unsound and asinine. 

That said, I don't have a problem saying it might prove beneficial for someone with only TRS jack phones and amps if it were $50-$75.  It isn't priced as such and all my headphone jacks are XLR so I don't care. 

By all means buy it for $300 based on the marketing claims or don't buy it because someone posted a pic of the internals and cried about it like a child.  Both are legitimate personal choices.  Neither are actually informed decisions based on actual experience of performance. 

I would not expect a Pyrate to buy a car they never test drove because they liked the commercial.  I would also not expect someone to not buy it because someone else who didn't drive it told you a test drive was a stupid idea or waste of time because they showed you a spectrogram.  I would also disregard the opinion of anyone who thinks all cars drive the same because they all have 4 wheels, an engine and a steering wheel.

FFS, the damned thing has a return policy.