Thiel Owners

@vair68robert

I was doing my yoga this morning and found my eyes about a foot away from the outriggers on my 2.4s. Do you have outriggers? If any part of the outriggers is not tight, the Ayre tone glide can result in a rattle over portions of the sweep!

We are barely scraping the surface here. The point is that the inner functioning of the ear mechanism itself is vastly complex, even before the neuronic energy is sent to the brain for processing.

Hi Tom,

I was under the impression that the only part of our body that can "sense" sound is the ear drum, but then what you’re saying is that since our ear drum is only part of a complex network that forms a mechanism to "sense" sound, therefore it’s possible our brain can get sound information from other than our ear drum.

So there are three options to this argument:
1. If what you said is true, then even if our ear drum can only vibrate at 20KHz max, other parts of the ear has the possibility of vibrate at higher then 20KHz. I mean our body works like a machine in that sense. You need something to vibrate at higher than 20KHz for our brain to process signal. Otherwise where would the brain get the information from?

2. But if the ONLY part of our body can vibrate is our ear drum, then I don’t see how we can sense sound at higher than 20KHz.

3. The third argument is this. Considering the equation Y = 1/x.
Y is approaching zero but never gets to absolute zero. Y will get smaller and smaller but never zero. In general that’s the nature of our analog world. Nothing is absolute zero. So our ear drum is like that. Is possible that the ear drum does not get cut off right at 20KHz, but its response after 20KHz gets smaller and smaller but just enough to be able for the brain to obtain information. And when we say "we don’t hear it", it’s our brain that "told" us that we don’t hear it, but that does not mean our brain did not process it. Think about it. If we are constantly being interrupted by supersonic sound, we would be driven to crazy. Trust me. I know. I used to have a girl friend lols.

A lot of people say that truely low bass can only be sensed, and not heard. Our whole body can be thought of as a giant ear drum but for only very low frequency. Our body can actually vibrate but only at very low frequency. So when we "hear" low bass, I guess it’s more like the sensors in our skin telling our brain about the low bass (how else would we know if somebody punched us?). In that respect, not only our ear drum can hear low bass, our entire body can hear it too.

but anybody try Acoustic BBQ speaker cables with their Thiels? I need to get some speaker cables with spade connectors (long story) and leaning towards trying these, unless someone can make a strong case for something different for less than $400. Same old requirements - less harshness in the treble, no loss of resolution or harmonics. Currently have AQ CV-8s which are the only audiophilesque speaker cables I've tried.

For high end speaker such as the Thiels, in order to bring out the best, I think you need some really decent cables.  I am using Acoustic Zen Hologram II and the sound is a lot more sure footed than some low end cables.  These can be found for about $500 here at Audiogon.  

Beetlemania

No I do not have outriggers that cost $500 ! ,
but I did purchase the outrigger spikes to penitrate the carpet .

Beetle , as in VW beetle ?

Rob

Hi Andy,I believe the ear drum maxes out at 20kHz.#1: the cochlear envelope gets inputs in addition to the ear drum.They mostly modify the conversion from sense (electromagnetic energy) to neuron output, but also direct cochlear vibration produces modification. Also, there are other types of auditory input in addition to vibration. Think time-impulse, not tonal-frequency.

#2: False assumption. Brain gets inputs from cochlear cilia (hairs) which can be stimulated various ways. Plus additional inputs (beyond cochlear cilia). It is known that video input affects the ear (dizziness from spinning alters sound perception) and bright lights (strobes affect hearing), and so on. The brain is a parallel processor.
#3: Probably mostly true, but the ear-drum-stirrup system obeys the mass-stiffness-damping physical laws and therefore falls off rapidly above its upper resonance. And I don't know how much importance to assign to the residuals. Psychological damage can be inflicted via super-sonic sound that is not knowingly heard. On the other hand, there are thresholds below which we don't knowingly hear, and there are masks where we become unaware of sound beyond some marker, such as a resonance frequency or FR hump. More questions than answers. 

#4 ( A lot of people). That's a good example. Sound below about 20Hz is sensed via the solar plexus (chest-diaphragm) as well as mastoid process (skull behind ears) and forehead. The head bones directly modify the cochlear response, but the solar plexus couples directly with the right-brain auditory cortex, with speculation about other skin-body involvement.
Historical note: The Germans developed a sub-sonic technology in the 3 to 5 Hz range to play before Hitler took stage. People puked, fainted and became agitated. As he took stage, they stopped the signal for a state of comparative euphoria. These low frequency tones can be lethal, infra-sonic but definitely directly related. Horses can "hear" a train more than 5 miles down the track. They sense that 4Hz wave through their hooves. I mention these things as examples among many to illustrate that hearing is complex beyond 20Hz to 20kHz eardrum vibration.