Thiel Owners

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.

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.

I find that interesting is that now it’s probably harder to purchase Thiel speakers, what speakers do they use to evaluate their equipment now?

Also the link I post demonstrates bit of an irony. Studios have resorted to using software to linearize the phase of their studio monitors, which means they obviously have to agree that it matters, but the article came off as saying the difference was not much.