A quick definition from WikiPedia.com
“The name and inspiration come from annealing in metallurgy, a technique involving heating and controlled cooling of a material to increase the size of its crystals and reduce their defects. The heat causes the atoms to become unstuck from their initial positions (a local minimum of the internal energy) and wander randomly through states of higher energy; the slow cooling gives them more chances of finding configurations with lower internal energy than the initial one.”
The idea is that a little ’shake up’ is required to get your system out of a ‘rut’ and in so doing achieve a better sound.
Systems reach a point where they have been optimized as much as possible. Given a budget and these set of comonents: the system has got the right cables and the right speaker positioning and the amp seems to mate fairly well with the speakers andit has been pushed and coaxed. each piece has been coddled just about as much as really makes sense.
So, to get a better sound, one would have to ‘heat up’ i.e. do some serious changing to, the system.
To get the very best sound possible we would still have to try every possible component in combination with every other possible component. But if applied correctly - the simulated annealing optimization approach will get us to a ‘better’ system a lot faster.
OK, so all this is believable, and most of it is probably provable.
The problen arrises in the two human elements:
1. The human has to decide how to ’shake up the system’ i.e. which components to replace.
2. The human has to judge whether the resulting sound of the new system is ‘better’ or not.
[There is also a ‘0th’ element: the human has to decide that the system is optmizied about as much as possible yet Needs Improvement].
We’ll look at problem #1 first. This is probably the real key psychosis-inducing gut-wrenching ‘WTF did I do that for’ kind of problem.
For one, when the typcial audiophile is finally ready to ‘heat up’ their system, to do some ch-ch-ch-change-essss, they are well past the point of calm cool logic… they are Fed Up. One is emotional. One has finally been torn loose from a loyalty to such-and-such a component that one had every reason to believe was the bees-knees.
Why did one ‘believe’ it was the bees-knees [what does that MEAN?] in the first place? We’ll get to that in a moment.
But it is this emotional storm, which no doubt provides one the support to get rid of some cherished components - which is often is so strong that, in keeping with the metallurgy analogy - one often just melts the whole system down like 3-Mile Island and liquifies the darn thing - and starts all over. Pack ‘em up. Move ‘em out.
But what does one get next to replace these out-of-favor components?
In this emotional state one often loses confidence. Turning to reviews on the net and in the trade mags, actually listening to salespeople and what they recommend.
Yep. This is where the trouble really starts.
Why? Because the Human Element #2, Judging whether the sound is better or not - is often forgotten during this stage and only applied AFTER the new components are bought.
You know that POS you have loved and posted about and raved about and now detest? It MAY not be so bad. It depends on WHAT YOU LIKE your sound to sound like. Maybe it is not being well-supported by the other components.
You know that person / reviewer / dealer / netizen who is recommending you spend gazillion dollahs on component X? What does THEIR system sound like? If it sucks, why won’t your system suck if you buy what they are recommending?
Look at what else they have in their system. Does it suck? Why trust a person who has sucky things in their system? Maybe they have sucky taste in sound, too.
Look at their buying and selling habits. Are they thrashing, tossing things out left and right all the time? Then why trust what they say about component X when you just know they are going to be selling it in a few weeks, at which time they can tell you all about how it sucks this and sucks that. [Maybe it sucks and maybe it doesn’t - they can’t tell because their optimization algorithm is broken and they are not getting to really ‘hear’ the piece in question - often because the associated components that they bought last week were not designed to work with component X because they had no freaking idea they were going to buy component X last week - so they did not make a nice home for it so it just puked all over everything… 
].
[A lot of ’sucks’ in this post, sorry]
The answer to Human Element #1, what to throw out and what to keep?
Well, one approach is taken by our dealer-agnostic component-flavor breakdowns in the Audiophile’s Guide to the Galaxy. If one knows what kind of sound you want to move towards, then this will help choose the kind of amp, preamp, CD player, and speakers to get.
How does one determine the sound that they like without trying each and every component - a pricey and lengthy proposition? [Although it has its pleasures, it is however both very addicting and immensely frustrating].
How does one improve the Human Element #2 part of the system optimizing algorithm, judging the sound they hear by comparing it against the sound they would like?
One way is to go to shows.
Another is to listen to all kinds of systems in the geographic areas you visit and inhabit, including systems that are way too expensive, as well as those that are very inexpensive.
[More in our next post .. This is getting long.]
