Thiel Owners

But there is this other dimension. In my acoustic guitar design and archival recording I have identified an accumulation factor. Recording engineers and piano techs and other technical artists also experience this phenomenon. When on a particular path of exploration, guided by both cognition and intuition, there are many choices which are not provable or even discernible. But a conglomerate effect becomes identifiable / meaningful over time. There are so many subtle factors contributing to the overall result, that each of them could be ignored or over-ruled, but they can matter in their aggregate.

I think it may have to do with how our brain processes signal and the threshold that it will register a response.  For example, our brain could identify a certain amount of echo given the delay after the initial sound arrival.  Theoretically, there is echo everywhere, but our brain will only trigger a response only if above a certain delay.  If our brain is perfectly analog, then the brain should be able to tell use the exact amount of echo from small to large.  But I am glad because we would be driven to crazy if we are constantly bothered by all sort of echo around us.  So in a sense, our brain will only let us know if an echo is worth our attention.

I think this is our own built-in "hysteresis" not unlike the hysteresis in for example a thermostat.  Let's say you program your thermostat at 70deg with 1deg of hysteresis, then the thermostat would turn on when the temperature is below 69deg and will turn back on at 71deg.  Without hysteresis, the thermostat would oscillate constantly at 70deg.  In the same sense, our brain would oscillate constantly without a built-in threshold.

So given a small change may not make a difference but as the amount of changes built-up in the aggregate, our brain will trigger a response as if a switch has been turned on.  

A lot of people have reported a certain "burn-in" phenomenon in which the changes happened abruptly that lends to a certain mystery only adds to the whole "burn-in" controversy.

The Kids are alright...

My oldest brother’s son is getting married this coming October. 

I’ve attended many weddings over the last few years, too many, in fact all of them, using deejays for the reception celebration.  

Recently my nephew’s sister threw a housewarming party. As it turned out it served also to announce HER wedding plans.  Sheesh.  

During this get together I was talking with my nephew about his affair and he related that he and his fiancé had spent the week prior auditioning bands for their reception.  

“Bands?”, I asked. “Bands - actual bands?”

His fiancé overheard my question and quickly sided up to my nephew adding,” We settled on this great nine piece band from the Island.” (Long Island, that is)

I gave her a big fat hug, kissed her on the cheek while shaking my nephew’s hand. 

“Thank you for NOT having a $&@??!!** deejay!”

I had their attention for about five more minutes when his fiancé explained that a partial reason why they wanted a live band was due to the fact that the speakers I gave to my nephew a few years ago - a pair of CS3.5 - had them listening to different genres of music.  They started exploring different genres because what they usually listened to “sounded so good” through the Thiels...

A nine piece...

I’m pinching myself already.  

I said it before...THIEL MAKES EVERYTHING sound better.  

Happy new year, folks

Andy - you're on it. My study over the decades has taught me that listening is far more active and synthetic than we would assume. Auditory input is pretty sketchy in that sound pressure moving the auditory cilia must be fundamentally interpreted for meaning. That interpretation occurs in many parts of the brain and is associated with many different functions of memory, emotion and cognitive processing. We're making up most of what we hear.

Sound can be broken into two processing categories much like light acts as photon particles and waves. The wave aspect of sound relates to the frequency domain of pitch and timbre. The particle aspect is the time domain. The gating mechanisms you reference have more to do with time than frequency. Temporal propagation occurs in real, interpretable space. Any sound, such as a finger snap, arrives at the listening pair of ears with time information that allows us to know what it is as well as where it comes from, including its reflective and absorptive environment. As you allude, the processing power of the auditory brain would be overloaded without organizing mechanisms. One such mechanism is the time threshold, generally considered about 5 milliseconds. Components within that 5ms envelope are conflated into the original sound, while those arriving afterward are treated as reflections/echos. Of note is that those sub 5ms components are perceived as slurred or de-focused when the various frequencies of the arrival transient cannot be combined into a sensible single event. A real acoustic sound source (the finger snap) arrives with all (frequencies of) transients intact and its reflections off the nearby boundaries also intact. The analytical fore-brain figures out / decides the nature of the source (the snap) and the particulars of the walls of the room. And we are very good at it, being necessary for survival.

Trouble comes when aspects of the transient event have been compromised by the reproduction process. Though there are many opportunities to compromise this transient information, the most pervasive is that scrambling introduced by non time/phase coherent loudspeakers where various frequency bands arrive at the ear at different times than a real-life intact signal would. In that case, the auditory brain must analyze the sonic elements and synthesize an opinion of its nature (finger snap). It must also repeat that analysis for each reflection. Those additional layers of decoding are processor-intensive and serve to distance the whole listener from the heard experience. One fine twist is that the more sophisticated the listener, the more he tolerates / succeeds at the cognitive process of figuring out what is being heard. Therefore I trust the aural impressions of non-sophisticated listeners simply because they are in closer contact with the whole, natural auditory experience, whereas the sophisticated listener can "overlook" the deficiencies of a temporally inaccurate sound because his skill enables him to "hear" it despite its shortcomings. Teenage girls are my first choice for test listeners.

oblgnyGood to see you this New Year. I know that you are a Pass Labs guy and once had a B.A.T./Pass Labs combo.  Hope you are well and geared up for more Audio adventures.  Happy Listening!