Simulated Annealing – Part One Summary

To summarize the previous, somewhat rambling, post:

There exists an optimization technique called Simulated Annealing, based on certain techniques of metallurgy, which can be applied (often unqittingly) to optimizing a High-Fidelity Audio System.

This optimization technique has a large number of problems it has been applied to, but in general it is a practical technique and every application is customized for the problem at hand.

Using this technique should get one to a better system faster than just the brute force technique of trying everything.

The optimzation process in our case consists of three steps:

1. Recognizing that a system needs improvement and that it cannot be improved without some radical changes
2. Choosing what those changes should be
3. Evaluating the resultant system for sound quality improvements (or lack thereof :-))

Gettng to step one often entails an emotional rejection of the current system, causing confusion resulting in step two being flubbed, and ending up with a system that fails at step 3 (or whose improvment is not as significant as desired). Rinse and repeat.