Good to see you, prof! Your Vivid experience dovetails with Andy's "image density" query. My perspective is complex and deep and would take a book to explore. But in its simplest form, the 'reality factor' and 'image density' issues revolve around how the ear hears.
We make it up. Hearing is a synthetic activity of very high order. That mental process requires significant cognitive processing (which is why closed eyes help!). All that cognitive processing serves to decouple the experiencing-listener from the real-direct aural experience. A major part of that cognitive processing is the brain reconstructing the aural meaning from signals which have had their phase-time information compromised. So, I don't think that Andy or anyone else can get 'it' without first-order alignments which preserve phase-time. Once it's scrambled, work is required to guess the meaning.
Being a synthetic process, hearing benefits from all the cues and clues it can get. So all the other elements such as edge diffraction, panel resonance, component and thermal distortion, etc. all matter. The more that is 'right', the better we can hear - synthesize a meaningful aural experience.
I investigated the Vivid speakers. They are seriously competent. But I can't find anything about their filter alignments; I strongly suspect they are higher order, whereby they can more easily solve all the other design aspects and produce convincing music. Prof, I suspect you are particularly attuned to phase-time element. When the ear doesn't have to perform that aspect of sonic reconstruction, things seem more real. Because they are.
Thiel attempted to tame the dragon, to wrestle with all the elements that became even more aurally important when correct phase-time was preserved. Sane engineers and business consultants all say 'don't go there'. The current consensus is that 'there' either doesn't matter or it's not worth the effort. I appreciate the regard you all have for Thiel speakers because for you what we did was worthwhile. It matters to we few.
