Thiel Owners

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.

JA - thanks for the link. I'll cover some ground, perhaps repeating some stuff from previous posts. Wire was an essential element in Thiel's adoption of first order coherence. We sweated blood for a year and a half in 1977 - 1979 to decide to adopt first order slopes over the second order alternative. Second order was so much more forgiving, partially because the steeper driver rolloffs made their work more benign, but also because we came to learn that coherence required the ear-brain to assess the musical information as REAL and therefore deserving far higher scrutiny than reproduced music. With that backdrop, we were stuck. The coherent speaker showed far more unexplainable problems than the less coherent second order speaker. Beyond the statement that everything mattered, I'll point out two elements that mattered most:1: wire and 2: driver basket material.

First #2: all our baskets, like most everyone else, were stamped steel. No matter how much epoxy and damping we applied, there was an audible sonic problem. Jim wondered out loud whether there might be eddy currents in the basket. We found some aluminum baskets and the problem vanished, even when the aluminum basket was demonstratably more resonant than the reinforced steel. Short version.
Next #1: Wire was not in the vocabulary yet. We were using first-rate Electrolytic Tough Pitch, like everyone else, both for hookup and coils.I previously recounted a visit from our aerospace physicist cousin Ted Lyon who listened to our demonstration of the problem we couldn't solve in the coherent system and how it vanished in the non-coherent system. Ted recounted a rather elaborate program whereby GE found wire crystal margins to be causing subtle distortions which acted a lot like what we were describing and hearing. He got us a sample of ITT's 6-9s ultra wire, fixed the problem and the rest is history. Lots of interesting history, but too much to recount here.

So our modus operandi going ahead was that everything mattered and our job was to determin how to proceed rather than trying to prove anything to any logician. Manufacturers are not research institutes, we willingly collaborated with anyone who wanted to understand anything, but drew a line before getting involved with anyone who tried to prove the negative. Deep in our corporate culture was that the ear-brain was far better at detecting naturalness than any scientific instrument or theory. 

sdl4
Good to see you again. Thank You for confirming that the link worked and was read.   I take great pride in being the biggest proponent for Cabling among the Panel.  The largest misconception is that one needs to spend big dollars on aftermarket cables / power cords. Not True!
System synergy is far more important in comparison. Trust you ears above any review or white paper.
Happy Listening!

tomthiel,

I love Jim's quote that "there are sonic effects that I don't know how to measure." This statement seems so simple and so obvious that it is amazing that so many audio measurement "experts" appear to believe that science has already achieved that perfect state of being able to measure all parameters that influence what humans hear. Real scientists, however, will continue to study the many factors that affect auditory perception and how best to measure those factors and how they relate to how people listen to music. Until science gets a lot closer to "measurement perfection," we will have to depend on our ears and brains to close the gap.