Thiel Owners

Prof - I would love your feedback regarding their sound, when the time comes. I'll say that the more that I improve the technical performance and address the shortcomings caused by our naivete in 1976, the less they sound like Thiel 02s, and the more they sound like more recent Thiels. And it's not simply that better is better.

Tweak - your Starsound wire comment is fascinating. As I seek to reduce jacketing contribution, you are using it as an electromagnetic design element. Are you guys associated with MIT?

JAFant - jazz is great all around for its layers of nuance. And there's a lot of well-made jazz out there. I landed on my wide rather than deep approach to sources partly as a contrast to the usual way. Thiel, and most others I knew at the time, used favorite tracks, known to be well made, thereby minimizing the variable of aural input "noise". I call that deep as in drilling farther and further into the subtleties of that track. But, what if those pristine tracks didn't stimulate the "sizzle / tinsel ", etc. Whatever the cause, a problem could be dismissed as a "bad recording". But what if (as I now suspect) some of those "bad recordings" might just be exacerbating shortcomings in the speaker. This territory is where most of my detective work is happening.

prof

Which Silver cables/cords do you endorse?

Happy Listening!

I don't endorse any.  In most realistic use cases there would be no need to pay extra money for silver cables.   Silver is a teeny bit more conductive than copper, but even that can be made up by a higher awg copper wire.   And in most non-extreme cases (e.g. crazy long cable runs) it's not hard at all to choose a copper wire of sufficient awg and characteristics to work just fine.


Properly used, there is no inherent "characteristics" of "silver wire" that changes the frequency balance vs copper, such as to actually thin out the sound (e.g. by attenuating frequencies in the warmth range - e.g 60 to 250Hz or lower mid 250 to 500Hz range).  



It's a psychological thing.  We know silver is visually "bright" so audiophiles imagined "sounds bright," this became an audiophile meme, and so now there's the "silver sounds bright" or "thin" concept among audiophiles.

Silver coated cables may extend the life of some cables, but that's about it - it's not going to change the sound in proper use cases.

tom,

That's wild all the tweaks you are trying out!

It's hard to know whether, even if "improved" by technical or modern standards, whether I'd still prefer the 02s with all those changes.Would love to hear some of them, though!