Thiel Owners

I might have gotten distracted at some points during video. Does he address foils or ribbons? It would seem that such a shape would address many of the concerns mentioned. Is Belsen capable of such a shape on an economical level? Was such a shape disqualified for reasons other than absolute performance? Towards the end, he was quite candid about how the pricing was determined by competition for space and time with other unrelated products. Would a leaner more focused company be able to offer better value? 
 @tomthiel  I think Wireworld’s (w/ former Straightwire designer) more recent products might qualify as braided flat wire designs? Would such a design introduce inconsistent contact and strand jumping? Alpha-Core’s twisted more solid core “purled” approach without the staggered, overlapping of braiding would seem to offer much of the advantages with less of the disadvantages?

Unsound - I don't know much about particular products. What little I do know says that for braided wire to work as designed, it must stay extremely quiet internally, and that's no small task. Straightwire's Bflat (I believe) preceded Wireworld's entry and was abandoned due to those difficulties (near impossibilities) of keeping flexible strands functionally rigid. Kimber filled the gaps with silicone which had to be applied to each strand and then rolled to form a filled web with no thick or thin spots. Sounds tedious.
I know that Jim ended up with Goertz flat wire (late 2000s) as his best, affordable and reliable solution. Please tell me more about Alpha-Core's approach.

Tom - I prefer to consider the room as a separate entity due mostly to how our aural neurology manages the inputs. Signals less than 5 to 10 milliseconds are conflated into a single onset transient. The longer that initial signal emanates, the more slurred the transient sounds. Longer delays are clearly understood as reflections and the geometry and contents of the room are associated with those reflections and carry relatively low weight in synthesizing the sonic event.

Rooms contribute much more than most people give credit. Room acoustics and treatment brings far more value than most folks think. But, the speaker-maker must draw his line somewhere. In the early days, we spent lots of effort deciding between directional, omni, bi or di pole radiation, etc. We landed on a broad polar pattern that mimics (fairly well) how a real singer or acoustic instrument radiates into the room. Thiel's relatively omni-directionality makes nearby room objects more important than many other polar patterns. But we believe it produces the most natural presentation. YMMV. So, for Thiel, the first side-wall or ceiling/floor reflection is more important than with a pro speaker that limits dispersion to 120°. Beyond that, I have found that diffusion techniques solve lots of problems without the down-sides of absorption.

I don't know how much laminar flow would help the room because of the low energy of each of the wavefronts that meet room objects. At the speaker, especially at the driver / source, the wavefront energy approaches the sheer strength of air - so propagation management matters a lot there, but less-so the farther it gets from the source. At least that's my layman's understanding of the territory.

I think of the room and all its contents as passive radiators.
I also consider a speaker cabinet as a passive radiator. Remember you and I talked of how to remove a source of a fuzzzz tone near the top of a speaker enclosure..I think you said you could detect with the use of a stethoscope..

The room and all its contents have different shear velocities and shapes that collide with other shapes creating new angles and speeds. As Galen said about wire you want to control or maintain those velocities in the most linear fashion. Active laminar flow can help overcome obstructive devices in the active line of radiation. Wherever you sit.

Starsound has a room called an Energy Room. Easy descriptive term is the whole room is mechanically grounded the ceiling and walls roll energy from their surfaces like water from a water fall. With such a system, treatment is not needed nor are dynamics lost. We feel we are using only 1 time signature instead of a few or more. Furniture and soffits and such alter some of this but the majority come from the room structure whats left can be dealt with by an increase in laminar flow.
Tom

Happy 4th of July - ALL