Thiel Owners

Jafant - remember, I'm not an engineer; my experience is more as an observer - user. Slew rate still gets lots of attention in professional audio, especially microphones and their preamps, but it doesn't show up much in print. I have Tom Jung's original Studio Technologies Mic Pre which was reworked by Jim Williams (pro geek guru) to upgrade caps, etc. He increased the slew rate by 5x as part of his magic. The preamp improved its transparency substantially, but lots of things were done at the same time, so I can't attribute any specifics. I wonder out-loud whether slew rate gets less attention now because it is generally faster now than in the old days. Also, I can only speculate as to Power vs Pre amp importance, but I suspect SR is important everywhere equally. Some amps like Spectral place storage caps right next to the output transistors to increase slew rate substantially by purely geographical means.

My observations over the years includes SR being a major factor in transient performance and therefore detail retrieval.

tomthiel
Thank You for your insight and observations.  I was thinking along the lines of conversations that took place between you and Jim, building Thiel Audio.
Good to read that SR is still part of design and implementation these days.
Happy Listening!

Yes, Jim was an armchair electronics designer and enjoyed talking circuits with Nelson Pass, Dan D'Agostino, the Bryston Boys and others. He constantly pushed them for better transient performance, current delivery, etc. from their amps. Originally Thiel Audio fantasized making the whole chain: speakers (powered), preamps and turntables. We started before digital. It became quickly clear that we had more than our hands full with the passive speaker link in the chain.

My understanding is a faster slew rate for a given component is better -- up to a point at which little-to-no difference is heard.  Musical transients are only so fast, and if the component is substantially faster than the fastest musical transients, generally straightforward to do these days, you're good.  That's not to say within the component you don't need much faster slew rates, like the I/V converter after the DAC chip.  Sort of like high-frequency response and harmonic distortion.  Above say 300kHz and below say 0.01%, do better numbers equal better sound?  My indirect experience says after achieving these specs, focus on other elements of the circuit or internal components to optimize the sound by ear and less-conventional numerics.

Also, for many of these specifications, there isn’t any internationally agreed-upon measurement technique or standardization for something like peak current. An amp may deliver 60A peak for a millisecond, but any musical transient is much longer than that. But for 250 ms, that same amp may only be able to provide say 20A, and perhaps 8A continuous.
The last time I believe this was standardized was the IHF dynamic headroom measurement, which was how much more power was available on a 20ms toneburst than on a continuous basis. But even this method was compromised as it was found that most fast musical transients are in the 80-200ms range, and I don’t believe a 200ms dynamic headroom test was ever standardized. Others may correct me.
Back when this was part of an amp’s specs, a doubling (spec'd as 3dB) of the continuous power output with a 20ms toneburst was considered respectable.