Thiel Owners

Andy - thanks for the article. I would mention that some of the statements are broad enough in nature that they don't apply to any specific loudspeaker in its use conditions. Of course, I mean Thiel. Toole's statement that off axis (vertical and horizontal) integration always suffers (paraphrase) is such a statement. Indeed it is true. But it is also true that a Thiel speaker 30° or 60° off axis is linear in both phase and amplitude. It is clearly true that the 1st order vertical axis lobing requires a single vertical listening position, ear height 3' up at 8' plus distance. But the up-tilting driver orientation and the resultant off-axis listening axis serve to create an average in-room phase and amplitude power response that is quite respectable, often bettering non-aligned counterparts.

As to the obvious dynamic range limitations due to large driver excursions - granted. First order slopes don't work well for stadium coverage or high-amplitude monitors. Driver overload is the Achilles Heel that we constantly fought and gradually improved. Drivers burn out or fatigue when asked to cover large frequency bands. But for livingroom hi fi, Thiel developed drivers that did well enough.

Despite the claim of near or no audibility of phase correctness in real playback rooms, Thiel demonstrated it over a long period of years to our complete satisfaction that phase coherence was audible enough to merit tackling all the hassles that came with it. And for some jujitsu, phase coherence made other anomalies much more obvious, requiring solutions to problems that would have remained invisible in normal phase-compromised systems.

phase coherence made other anomalies much more obvious, requiring solutions to problems that would have remained invisible in normal phase-compromised systems.

Yes, I would agree with this. I also think first order, time-phase coherent design has a "special sound" that cannot be found in other types of design as I have said so in some of my previous posts.

Also, FYI, the studies done in my previous post (said link) was not necessarily done using first order speaker.  I won't go into much detail, but basically they use a front end DSP software to linearize the phase to make the speaker 0 phase even if the speakers were LR2 or LR4.  I suppose the difference would be more obviously if the studies were done using purely first order speakers.

I agree about the 'special sound', as we have discussed here. My take focuses on the brain power that is freed up by not having to descramble the phase errors in other systems. I find the difference significant as do some others. "The Industry" (Toole et al) dismiss it in various ways as trivial.

I know for certain that many amp, cable and source practitioners and critics use Thiel as a tool to "see into" the source chain. I find that significant.

Thanks for mentioning that. Those studies assume that anything that is scrambled can be descrambled with no deleterious artifacts. Part of my profession has been pointing out those "inaudible problems" in mixes and masters. I and my clients can hear the difference between a correct, unaltered take, vs one that has been "linearized", etc.

You know, a big part of the demise of "New Thiel" was that they chose to believe Toole, et al rather than construct their own comparisons. I offered to participate in those comparisons, and they said "no thanks"; they said knew what they were doing.

I and my clients can hear the difference between a correct, unaltered take, vs one that has been "linearized"

Personally I also have my doubt as to the "software linearization" technique. It just seems too easy. Also we don’t know what type of hardware that was used in the studies. A lot of the DSP method was done on hardware that a bit on the humble side, and those hardware may represent a bottleneck in the studies and may have masked some of the differences.