Stereophile's measurement design is an example of what I believe to be a fundamental lack of understanding of the ear-brain and its response to whole-goods: that is sound with its tonal, spatial, transient and dynamic characteristics, to name a few, intact, unadulterated, coherent. Aural intelligence is a profound function of human existence and more closely related to the other senses and, in my opinion, the development of consciousness than is generally appreciated.
Over the years the critics were very supportive of Thiel's designs and products. I believe Thiel products garnered more international design and engineering awards than anyone else in the world. We couldn't have asked for more support. However, most critics didn't really get it. If they had, they would have designed measurements (applicable and informative for ALL audio products) which illustrated performance in all relevant domains. Instead, the tests support the prevailing wisdom which I believe to be partial and flawed.
In this forum and elsewhere I have heard people wondering why Jim didn't prune an heir to carry on his work. The answer is complex but it includes the vicious cycle I site. Engineering candidates dismiss the reality of factors that fail or fall outside the measured paradigm. To summarize a very deep matter, all candidates state with full conviction that phase coherence cannot be implemented along with frequency domain success. (that's a period.) And if they could be co-implemented, then it still wouldn't matter because the brain doesn't care about it; ask anybody from the Canadian Research Council or any other proper institution of research or learning. And since it (fully coherent reproduced sound) can't be accomplished and wouldn't matter anyhow, then why would I (the candidate) risk my career and standing in the professional community to swim upstream against prevailing wisdom. Short story: Thiel Audio DID search long and hard for many years without success. The Tennessee Buyers committed to carrying on the work; and no small part of their reversal was based on their research which supported the conclusion I stated: forget it, get with the times, hire Mark Mason and get on with the prevailing paradigm.
I suppose I'm ranting. I do really appreciate you guys for getting it. Very few people do. There are further involvements and interactions resulting from coherence that relate to the amplifier discussion above and many more aspects of sonic performance. In business it is impolite to blame the upstream signal chain for less than satisfying sonic results. But truth be told, a coherent speaker doing its (Thiel defined) job of absolutely representing in all domains the input signal fed to it has an impossible job. There are thousands of ways that a signal is corrupted from acoustic (or augmented) event, through the recording, storage and playback chain to reach the listener's ears. Almost all practitioners along the way default toward euphonic engineering, trading off against the non-important aspects, which muddles the mess nearly beyond redemption. I think that any, perhaps all, of you Thiel aficionados would love to have witnessed the thousands of hours spent ferreting out the contributing factors involved in creating an honest transducer. When the speaker is coherent then EVERYTHING matters. That's how we identified wire, magnet eddys, diaphragm propagation moires, diffraction and so forth and so on from the O3 development and onward year after year making progress toward an impossible goal of authenticity and integrity, knowing we (the speaker) would be blamed for exposing problems not of its making. Since the history is ancient, you may not be aware that Thiel put those elements (wire, etc.) on the table before they were acknowledged in the audiophile community. Many elements are still contested all these years later in the pro and academic communities.
Back to Stereophile's tests. The 50" (etc.) standard could be circumvented for very little investment. Outdoor measurements are anechoic. Tilting the speaker to a ground-plane microphone eliminates floor bounce, And so on. The problem isn't about accomplishing the test, it's about ignoring the importance of all of the outcomes. Aiding and abetting falsehood is an entirely invisible and unintended consequence.
I should get back to work. I hate end of year bookkeeping. Thank you for the opportunity to vent.
