Thiel Owners

JAFant - would you please supply a link to the Olsher article? I didn't find it searching the Absolute Sound site.

Let's see if this link works
http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/a-short-history-of-high-end-cables/

tomthiel

as above.  Happy Listening!

jafant,

Thanks for the link to the Absolute Sound article. A very interesting history lesson. My first experience with anything better than zip cord was Monster Cable. I "graduated" to Straightwire in the 1990's, flirted with Audioquest and several Blue Jeans Cable offerings over the years, and recently settled on a Cardas Parsec interconnect after trying out several other options in my home system. I have heard differences between wires when I had been hoping not to hear any so that I could be happy with less expensive options, but I have never ventured into the ultra-high-end world of wire - and I'm reluctant to invest the time and money required to do so.

This discussion reminded me of an interview with Jim Thiel (mostly completed online, I think) published on the Audioholics website in 2004. Gene DellaSalla seemed more inclined to argue with Jim about the sonic effects of wire (or lack of them) rather than to learn from Jim's knowledge and experience. The interaction left me with a very negative impression of Gene, both in terms of his lack of openness to any ideas that questioned his beliefs and his inability to be a gracious host to a guest on his website. The link to the interview is here: https://www.audioholics.com/audio-video-cables/thiel-audio-interview-on-cables
 

Sdl4 - this discussion fits a template deeply ingrained in the mainstream engineering community: if you can't prove it, it's not real. The article is embarrassing, but beyond that it doesn't explore much of what Jim knew because Gene wouldn't admit such empirical as valid.  I will add that years later, after Jim's death when Kathy had sold Thiel Audio, I saw first-hand that same template applied to Jim's lifetime work. "None of it matters because it can't be proven and is therefore definitionally untrue."
I'll point out that one of Gene's arguments about aerospace engineering knowing more than audio hacks is especially rich. We were first exposed to the subtleties of wire by cousin Ted via GE Aerospace avionics having identified just such subtle wire effects as causing problems in Jupiter Space Probe signal propagation resolution.

They don't recognize that their thought process and assignment of burden of proof categorically negates much of the progress made in subtle technical arts.