Thiel Owners

ish - I can only provide informal remembrances. I would say there was virtually no connection to the B&W / political change. Thiel didn't pay much attention to that stuff. The dealers variously aligned with various manufacturers, but Thiel / Kathy didn't get involved with those dealer decisions unless asked for product-performance / sales success advice.

You're on the right track with product-performance drift. Dave Reich's DR-series amps were extraordinary in performance / price at their time. After he left, the amps kept the basic circuitry, but drifted into euphonic design territory, which didn't serve our needs as a manufacturer. We sought out very linear, neutral, high-performance gear. Bryston continually worked in that direction as well as being rugged and reliable. Jim used Bryston in the lab as his reality check against the big, expensive workhorses.

I personally never felt the Bryston gear provided the nuance and detail that our products could deliver. We used it at shows to demonstrate high performance / affordably priced capability. Reviews and rumor suggest that their present cubed series steps up their performance quite a bit. Good people, good gear.

holco - your crossover seems to be a transitional form. (I am learning via reconstructing evidence.) Your coil values are those on the point to point Lex-built boards; and they are well-wound. Your caps are polypropylene which also points to Lex-built. It seems that Thiel-Lex must have transitioned to printed circuit boards, before eventually sending manufacture to China or otherwise diminishing parts quality. What are your serial numbers?

So, you have original / good-quality parts. Your coils are likely to be best of form; don't swap them unless you go to ERSE foils in the same gauge (DC resistance equivalent). Beetlemania's previous advice sounds good to me. He / we will know more soon. I am sending his parts kit today for a fairly full-bore upgrade test-build.

stspur - I second what Beetle says, and I'll add my personal perspective. I haven't lived with 3.6s, but I picked up a pair, thanks to this forum, which I measured and listened to and as mentioned was thoroughly impressed. Regarding upgrade in general, be very careful. Hundreds of man-hours went into selecting and voicing those particular components for the job. You could spend a lot and do worse. But, on the other hand, there are some better components available. First, let's survey what's in there.
The coils would be hard to beat with the exception of foil. But foil might require value tweaking of the circuit, since the resistance to inductance ratio is different for foil. The wire is CDA-101 aerospace grade OFHC with first-class winding.

The resistors were developed in-house and are very good within their budget constraints. But Mills MRAs are better. Safe swap. Consider doubling in the signal path.

Caps are upgradable, especially the lytics. Those VersaTronics lytics are stellar, industrial, long life caps. BUT, film is better. The "S" is indeed Solen. In the day it didn't get any better. Depending on  your vintage, they are either made in France or Canada from French film, which was considered tied for best of form with a German film. Later, North American consumption was wound in Canada with same equipment and specs. Great caps. Those yellow caps are a foundation of Thielness. We found and bought a best of form German cap starting with the 2.2 in 1990. They are styrene film on Tin foil @ 1uF (usually within 1%). When the German company went out of business, we bought the remaining foil and film and contracted a California aerospace cap maker for what produced 60,000 caps. When that stash was gone, ERSE made a clone from a world-class Japanese film and foil. Eventually (we found from Beetle's late 2.4SEs) the cap was cloned in China with not necessarily lower quality.

An interesting experiment (which I haven't yet gotten to) would be to replace the 4 parallel yellow 1uF tweeter feed caps with a 4uF CSA or CMR. Clarity's ("C") copper alloy end caps are a game changer. That swap should have no circuitry implications. We would all love to hear the outcome.

As stated, electrolytics may drift over time and their sonic signature is less than best. In Thiels they are always bypassed by the yellow styrene / foil 1uF. But you could upgrade to CSA in the series feed circuits - the parallel shunts are meaningful, but less important and harder to justify for space and expenditure. The midrange feed has 2 parallel 100uF lytics. If you can fit CSA's, try it. The tweeter feed has an 8.2uF which I have targeted for a 630volt Clarity CMR.

There are various upgrade stragegies, I have 3, but most require additional real estate, which is why I am migrating to outboard crossovers. They also require the ability to tweak values, especially in the parallel shunts which are tuned to driver resonances. It would be easy to make things worse. My personal perspective is to be cautious, heed the advice from this thread, and make any changes incrementally. Swapping resistors would be a safe start. If you are a cable guy, you might consider dual inputs. And if so, and if you're my kind of crazy, you might take the woofer XO out of the cabinet and 3-4' away from the electromagnetic soup, as my 2.2 experiments have suggested.

Of course I and others here would appreciate your feedback. I gave this public response to reach more people than a PM would. But, we must beware of overwhelming those with less technical interests.

Does anybody remember the original Thiel motto? "For the Love of Music".

Rosami - the 3.6 is on my to-do hot-rod list. In fact, I have bought a pair and have created the upgrade schematic and layout. The timing issue summarizes as follows: I began work on this project Spring 2018 when 'New Thiel' closed down its business operations. Much research, preparations and preliminaries have been accomplished since that time. However, I am neither retired nor fully up-to-date in the audio world and considerable reading and interacting have been required.

I am presently building my PowerPoint and CS2.2 upgrades and Beetlemania's 2.4 kit of parts is on its way to him. We will digest what we learn and then I will approach the 3.6 next. I intend to develop and offer through Coherent Source Service an array of products for each product. The least invasive will be fully assembled crossovers which you will install in your cabinets, with local technical help if required.

Your situation illustrates our target customer: someone who loves his classic Thiels and hopes for a significant upgrade path which utilizes his extant, appreciated speakers. It is my considered hope that the upgraded 3.6 will please you very well.

Pray tell, what is the amp?

rosami - I cannot commit to a time-line because of managing multiple priorities. I anticipate having something for the 3.6 during 2019, but I can't really predict the future. 

Bill - I evaluated and graded the models in context of my XO upgrade project. For starters, all the products are worthy; each was Thiel's best work at any point in time. However, some were more successful or more fully realized than others. In general, the more recent products are better due to continual learning. I have chosen models that were technical and market winners. Generally, they are the most recent of each series-type. The technologies constantly evolved, plus more recent products usually have larger quantities and better spare parts availability. All that said, your biggest liability with low-count / older products is driver availability for repair. Check with Rob at CSS regarding driver availability before buying anything.

The 5, 6 and 7 series remain hypothetical in the upgrade project. The 5 has some interest, but huge upgrade issues and small numbers. No interest expressed in the 6 or 7.2. The XO project is in its infancy, so we don't know what will develop.

The x.7 series are most recent and parts are available; not many were sold. Best of form and possibly collectable.

In the 3- series, the model 3.6 was an all-time high seller with mature technologies. The 3.5 has a strong following, but the drivers are no longer available, so beware. Also, although the equalized bass is sealed-box / low-order and natural sounding, its single driver configuration restricts its output. So a modest room and listening levels are required.

In the 2- series, the 2.4 is the darling. The 2.3 can be found cheap for reasons including transitional technology. The 2.4 coax driver eclipsed the performance and reliability of the 2.3 coax. The 2.4 is our first upgrade hot-rod XO due to its larger numbers and greater finesse.
I am also addressing the 2.2 as a personal favorite of mine, and I have the final prototype pair.

In the 1- series, I have chosen the model 1.6 as the most mature of the series: best drivers, highest count, etc. Earlier 1.xs will work well and can often be found for pretty short money.

I am also addressing the PowerPoint 1.2 as a stunningly effective product with room to upgrade. Its niche was home theater, but I use it as studio monitors. Again, due to my personal appreciation and interest.
Similarly, I have the 02 final prototype pair and will upgrade it.

As a company, Thiel applied the same design goals to every product. The personality of each model is unchanged through its generations. We were definitely product / performance driven rather than market-responsive. Such an approach is unusual; it gives you, the user access to any and all models having essentially the same objectives, albeit with varying levels of success. Welcome to the journey. 

Anthony - You would be well served to survey this long thread for background. The short answer is that I spent a chunk of my life co-developing Thiel Audio, and I want the tens of thousands of supporters to have a better option than jumping ship after the company's demise. I am developing XO hot-rod kits for select models which will upgrade their performance beyond original while replacing the age-sensitive electrolytic caps with permanent foil types. It's a labor of love and this group is performing various teaching, learning and beta-test functions.

I solicit your observations and input regarding your PP1.2 LCRs.

Welcome aboard.

Anthony - your experience with the PP1.2 mirrors mine. The image is so surprisingly dense and 3 dimensional. Part of it is the virtually invisible solid aluminum cabinet with its small launch. And a big part of it must be the unobstructed ceiling propagation wave support with no floor bounce or furniture. What a trip!

Regarding upgraded performance. Please read the back-story. We're re-engineering with today's technologies with greater budgetary freedom than a new product would permit. We expect greater ease and precision along with increased dynamic freedom. Still vapor-ware, but making progress.  

BTW: Benchmark's designer John Siau reviewed the XO schematics and specs and fed back the following:
CS7.2 stereo or bridged, CS5, 3.7, 3.6, 2.4 stereo mode only. That said, I use bridged nearly exclusively without problems. Seems that class H amps hit a hard wall at high current into low impedances. As I've said, I sometimes see flicker, but have never shut one down. 

My amps for comparison include an Adcom 555II, a pair of Classe DR9s bridged and not and a pair of Benchmark AHB2s bridged and not. I do not find the Adcom very musical and use it mostly to drive speakers under test. I like the Classe, but the AHB is my go-to amp. It drives the CS2.2s to beyond my loudness tolerance. Its ultra sensitive overload lights tell me when I'm pushing it, which is almost never. I'd call it just the facts, and all of them, more so than the rebuilt and optimized Classe pair. The ABs are class H with a patented THX topology where the class H regulated power supply drives small class A output stages with feed-forward distortion correction. It got class A from Absolute Sound, and seemingly no cred in the hi fi community. I love 'em.

jon - yes indeed. The design criteria of the model 2 permits less deep bass and overall lower output than the 3. For that you get more finesse and delicacy via a smaller midrange, woofer and cabinet. Plus the 2 always trailed a next-generation 3 (or higher) development and admitted trickle-down technologies, keeping its price lower. Sweet spot. 

Beetle - by 'sweet spot' I also include the price. The 3 generally out-sold the 2. But in those cases of smallish room / lowish levels and deepest bass not needed, the 2 shines for a lot lower price.

Rules - go for it. Remember that amp 'distress' is nearly invisible in tests. And, of course, listening is more difficult to objectify. I suggest you will learn more at a higher listening level. Look for things like 'glare', 'anemic', 'hard' and similar adjectives. Mono testing works well, switching between A & B in near real time.

Keep us posted.

Tms - I would love to see that list materialize. A good handful of offerings have been made. It takes someone to pull it together off this forum. Perhaps you?

My own personal experience suggests:
Bryston 4B3 (cubed) most recent and most refined of their series
Classé DR-9 in any configuration, stereo or mono
Threshold S-500 (Thiel lab amp, updatable) {showing my age}

And my present research suggests:
Benchmark AHB-2 specifically vetted by Benchmark, not heard yet
PS Audio BHK-300
300 specifically vetted by PS, 250 questionable at high gain.

My needs are clean, neutral, capable and affordable rather than 'good-sounding to me'. But then I actually enjoy hearing what was recorded as honestly as possible. I cross-check neutrality with Sennheiser HD800S closed cans and co-play with Beyerdynamic ref 240 ohm.
And 50+ years in hi-fi manufacturing, recording and mastering-consulting have supplied some helpful experience. That's my short-list for my own purposes with my own constraints.

The Stereophile review of your product of interest shows an impedance vs phase curve with explanation. Low impedance, especially where phase angle changes quickly represents difficulty. The rule of double power at 4 from 8 ohms and at least triple of 8 at 2 ohms is less important with larger amps where you demand less of its capability. And rules are made to be broken; the differences between rooms and users is immense. And the difference between how amps respond to the first watt and under full load is immense. So, there's a lot to be said for commonly shared wisdom. Traditionally a great dealer added value to this matching equation. The amps regularly mentioned on this forum have a lot going for them because knowledgeable users have chosen them from myriad competitors.

Beetle - you and everyone else here has solved the Thiel Amp problem or you wouldn't love Thiel speakers. Indeed a high sound quality amp used within its comfort zone produces good music.

The problem introduced by amp-swapping is that there are many amps which don't produce good music when driving Thiel's low impedance load. Ask all those experts who say that Thiels are harsh, anemic, spikey, boomy, glarry, bright and so forth. You have a valid point. Specs aren't likely to tell what you need to know because amp specs show an extremely limited picture of the amp's interior workings.

As a broad generalization, Thiel speakers present low impedance, resistive load characteristics and many audiophile amps got better over the years in driving such loads. The brands presented here as successes are good bets.

Here's part of a note from a long-time Lexington Thiel insider:
Equipment he remembers from Nandino (Lex address):
" Levinson Transport/Dac Sonic Frontiers gold faceplate 2 chassis preamp, Levinson - Krell - Bryston Amps, when Dave Gordon was there you used some Audio Research.
Straightwire, Wireworld, Goertz, Kimber, Nordost cables  Another show did all Levinson with Kimber Select cables when they were introduced. Also you had the only pair of Kimber Black Pearl speaker cables (ones with the gel) I had ever seen or heard. I remember Jim liking the Nordost. Some dealers really liked the networked cables in Transparent or MIT (Progressive Audio). I tried Transparent but they always seemed to suck the life out of the music. I used Straightwire Maestro the longest. As far as amps I have used or heard that sounded good with Thiels: Ayre, Krell, Levinson, Threshold. I owned a B&K amp when I had CS2’s. Actually, one of the most musical sounds I ever had. When I moved to 3.6’s compared the B&K, Bryston & Levinson. The B&K was okay, the Bryston had a little better grip on bass but nothing dramatic over B&K. The Levinson brought the 3.6’s to life. I still think Krell was the best. Your comments about an amp that doubles down is definitely true if you want to hear what the speakers are capable of."

Cheers

jon - a little history might help. Thiel's original balance was -2dB shelf below 200 from anechoic flat to compensate for room gain. Purist, first-principle approach. However, 40 years ago there was little marketplace agreement of what constituted flat, and Thiel was often called 'bright' - we were lighter than the BBC / Advent, etc. broad 100Hz bass bump. Over time, our interpretation has become standard. The 2.2 had historically the richest bass due to better room coupling of the passive radiator than either the previous ports or single-driver sealed enclosures.

I am experimenting with adding a little midrange to the hot-rodded 2.2 balance to align it closer to other Thiel designs. It conveniently has a midrange series resistor for straightforward tweaking. 

You guys make my day. I turn 70 today, a time for reflection and renewal. I am so pleased to have found you; I am otherwise virtually invisible - I don't do the modern cyber world much at all.

Onward - Tom

Good to see you, prof! Your Vivid experience dovetails with Andy's "image density" query. My perspective is complex and deep and would take a book to explore. But in its simplest form, the 'reality factor' and 'image density' issues revolve around how the ear hears.

We make it up. Hearing is a synthetic activity of very high order. That mental process requires significant cognitive processing (which is why closed eyes help!). All that cognitive processing serves to decouple the experiencing-listener from the real-direct aural experience. A major part of that cognitive processing is the brain reconstructing the aural meaning from signals which have had their phase-time information compromised. So, I don't think that Andy or anyone else can get 'it' without first-order alignments which preserve phase-time. Once it's scrambled, work is required to guess the meaning.

Being a synthetic process, hearing benefits from all the cues and clues it can get. So all the other elements such as edge diffraction, panel resonance, component and thermal distortion, etc. all matter. The more that is 'right', the better we can hear - synthesize a meaningful aural experience. 

I investigated the Vivid speakers. They are seriously competent. But I can't find anything about their filter alignments; I strongly suspect they are higher order, whereby they can more easily solve all the other design aspects and produce convincing music. Prof, I suspect you are particularly attuned to phase-time element. When the ear doesn't have to perform that aspect of sonic reconstruction, things seem more real. Because they are.

Thiel attempted to tame the dragon, to wrestle with all the elements that became even more aurally important when correct phase-time was preserved. Sane engineers and business consultants all say 'don't go there'. The current consensus is that 'there' either doesn't matter or it's not worth the effort. I appreciate the regard you all have for Thiel speakers because for you what we did was worthwhile. It matters to we few.

I found Stereophile reviews of Vivid products. John Atkinson - Giya. Indeed they use high-order filters with concomitant wavefront delays from each driver. Common wisdom considers this temporal distortion to be OK / non-hearable. I agree that the hearing brain can reconstruct the sonic deconstruction reliably and well. But, I also believe that on an emotional-involvement level such reconstruction activity removes the whole person from the well-recorded sonic event.

Prof - Speakers have very few issues which I'll summarize here.
The cabinet is basically permanent, as long as you avoid furniture polish with silicone, which breaks down the finish. Also avoid sunlight as practical.
The drivers can last a long time - many decades. Thiel surrounds are natural rubber, the best of form. But direct sunlight degrades it. Keep the grilles on. The moving cone / dome /coil is connected via braided leads. They eventually fatigue and break. I hope to get and Rob does have the various lead braids. The usual cause of unabused driver failure is broken leads, which can be replaced. Voice coil burnout is caused by distortion or accident, which necessitates rebuilding. Avoid burnout.

Crossover parts, used within power limits are virtually permanent EXCEPT electrolytic capacitors, which have a life generally considered 15 to 50 years. Your 02s are near end of life. Thiel always used best of form electrolytic caps, and we have never heard of a single failure to date, but the bomb is ticking. They are replaceable with care with original or equivalent or upgrade to ERSE PulseX propylene for permanent solution.

The 2.7 has a large cap bank feeding the midrange to roll its low end out higher than the same driver in the 3.7.  The 2.7 XOs were Lexington built, so highest quality caps were used. I would budget 40 years life from accumulated experience.

Side note is that much of my present upgrade development revolves around heat management, which will extend life greatly and reduce age-related value drift. Electrolytics become less effective with age which shifts XO crosspoints. If shifted downward, then additional power can heat the driver motor to failure. Your O2's port helps cooling.

Thiel's historical experience is that most Thiel customers who bought from first-rate dealers (use education) never had a single problem, short or long term. About 10% of the customers had near 99% of the problems. The great majority drove into distortion with under-powered amps. Our warranty covered, in fact, such abuse ONCE, with an explanation and warning. Next occurrence was not covered. Rob is educative and generous, but most failures are user created.

Thank you all.
On to business. JA - the answer to your 'how many 2.7s' question lies with New Thiel, which no longer exists. I speculate based on conversations with first New Thiel operations manager Bob Brown and its best CEO Tom Malatesta that the number is probably in the hundreds of pairs. Very few indeed. Someday I am likely to find out and will share. If each of you can note the serial numbers of any pair you can. I'll put it on my list. Thiel serial numbers always began with #1.

Who here bought that pair of 3.7s directly from Rob? That's probably the high water mark for 3.7s. Number please.

thielrules - you would be in a legitimate position to ask Rob for your serial numbers . . . to answer our 3.7 question. And while you're at it, perhaps the 2.7 count.

jon - 41 and 42 is early, type 1. If you have not had work done, there were 2 XO updates of the 3.7. If you don't know their status, I could talk you through what to look for, or Rob might know from memory.

History anyone?
Some might be interested in Thiel's batch size / manufacturing run strategy. First of all, speaker-making is fairly simple if you aren't making cabinets, especially cabinets as complex, technical and precise as Thiel's. So cabinetmaking manufacturing dictates batch size. In the beginning everything was manual with custom tools and fixtures. At the beginning our cabinet batch size was 40 with custom veneer species quantities from orders and hunchimations. Batch limit was for throughput and limited by shop size, which was my 28'x 30' garage with 5 people in it! What a zoo. Pretty soon finishing was moved to the farmhouse back porch and final assembly to what had been the girls' bedroom. Shipping was either out the bedroom window or off the front porch which we had modified for a drive-up truck dock. We were shipping containers to Europe out of that arrangement before 1980.

The addition of the Nandino Boulevard shop in 1981 allowed parallel production which was another zoo to manage. New shop batch size grew to 200. As we adopted CNC and other technologies around 1985, I set upon reducing batch size for a more intimate customer-demand process. By the time I left 10 years later, we had reduced our batch size to 1 pair. Of course, pairs were ganged when back-orders permitted, but our work unit was a matched pair. All processes including cabinet making, from custom veneer faces to crossovers and so forth were real-time demand propositions. For those who know manufacturing, this change is a huge one. These times were at the leading edge of Just In Time inventories and so forth, and we were a leader in the field. This process-flow concept rather than batch-run concept allows smaller batch or trickle inflow of raw materials and parts. It allowed our worker footprint to decrease from about 500 square feet to about 200 square feet with all that entails regarding storage access, supplier quality feedback and so forth.

From an end-user / customer perspective, products seem to just show up at the dealer. But from a manufacturer perspective, every process decision takes on live or die importance, especially when managing continual rapid growth. We doubled each year for the first 5 and then capped our rate at 30% / year for quality and sanity concerns. Quality always stayed high. Sanity, especially mine, suffered. Typical weeks were 80 to 100 hours with some months reaching 20 hours / day - 7 days per week. Growth isn't easy. 

Prof - for the record, the first New Thiel team included audio industry insiders Bob Brown and long-time Thiel associate Steve Defuria. They lobbied for continuing Jim's designs and the CS1.7 and MCS1.7 were developed on their watch. A few of the original high-quality dealers came on board including Chicago area Audio Consultants. But the wagon never got rolling again. I suspect those 200s 2.7s may be the last of them. 1.7s probably have far fewer. BTW: I am investigating the 1.7 for upgrade parts for the entire CS1 series. Good reason to believe the drivers are highly optimized. Has anybody heard the CS1.7?

Regarding cap failure. Value drift is slow and steady and most audible via direct comparison with new. Since series feed caps block low-frequencies, as they drift the low end of the upper driver gets excess low frequency signal. Caps in tuned circuits (like notch filters) can drift to cause mis-match between the cause and the cure for erratic frequency response anomalies. And so forth and so on and on. 

Failure, however, can come as severe driver distortion, but more commonly exhibits as 'breathing' noises and thunks and stutters.

Bottom line: replace your O2 electrolytic caps, even if with same as new. I don't have a schematic and my pair is not yet here. The O2 preceded our phase-induced esoteric education, so all caps may be electrolytic. And the wire and resistors are 'ordinary'. Whatever is in there is highly up-gradable. This year I'll be fetching my prototype pair and I'm pretty sure I won't be able to resist going down the upgrade path.

Todd - I would not think of tubes as a mis-match. Tubes do some things extraordinarily well. And even their weaknesses sound very nice. My first 'blown away' experience was Tim de Paravicini's big Esoteric Audio Research amp when we introduced the O3 at CES 1978. Awesome, before the word became diluted. 

jab - Audio Consultants is a very high quality dealer.

History time. Amberwood and Morado are related species which grow in Bolivia. They are routinely pirated by the Germans, taken overland via Brazil's Mato Grosso do Sul to the Atlantic port of Santos and resold to Scandanavian furniture makers as Santos Rosewood. (It is neither a Rosewood, nor does it grow within thousands of miles of Santos.) Such are the ways of woods of the world. I traveled South America in the late 80s, establishing primary, ethical sources for our woods. Machaerium (sp) was established as our standard-exotic with the CS2.2 introduction in 1990. The locals distinguish the two Machaerium species which I roughly translated as Amberwood and Morado. The lighter-colored Amberwood grows upland on the dry eastern Andes steppes and is a little harder and more contrasty than the darker, more homogeneous Morado which grows lower in the Amazon headwaters jungles.

I co-developed a program with my supplier-partner Jim Martin whereby we sponsored (with the financial help of The Forestry Fund) a planting program with the Chiquitano People to co-plant Morado with Black Locust as a nitrogen-fixing nurse species. Shade coffee was interplanted within 3 years of launch and the project was net black ink within 5 years. It went on to become the backbone of the tribe's monitary stability, at at 75 years' climax will have produced over $3M/hectare of income. One benefit was that we (Thiel) got first dibs on the raw veneer, sliced in Bolivia, which we transported by water to the Port of Louisville, a commercial port on the Ohio River within 80 miles of Lexington.

We laid up our own veneer faces in speaker-pair sets and pressed onto MDF, etc. substrate rather than most folks' solution of buying pre-laminated panels as 4'x 8' panels and chopping their parts. Ever notice how Lex Thiels have every panel mirror-matched? The 4 pair-sides are identical sequence-matches and the back-top-fronts are veneered as a pair unit and cross-cut into 3 mirror-or bookmatched parts. I mention these details because the reviewers who comment only say something like 'the fronts of the two speakers matched'.

Back to the Chiquitano People. The University of Santa Cruz interfaced with the Chief who personally escorted us across the boundary swamps to work with the native project managers. Those swamps are infested with Piranha, Allegators and various big snakes. So when the guards hit you with Curare darts, there is no pesky body to hide. We chose the Chiquitano because of their protected generational custody of their land, factually safe from the intrusion of MacDonalds slash and burn farming. Poverty with Gringo beef practices is the root cause of tropical deforestation. When you buy Thiel Morado or Amberwood, you are buying a significant and unusual piece of integrated ethical policy. Much more to tell, but work beckons.

About those 2.3s and other products not on my hot-rod list. Please understand that I am not diminishing those products nor suggesting any deficiencies. A product developer (myself) must look at many aspects including item count, projected life, and so forth to try for greatest and fastest success. The 2.4 was chosen because of its darling status, higher item count and more vocal fan base. The 2.2 has more to do with my personal situation than its worthiness - but it did out-live and out-sell the 2.3 by a wide margin.

So, if this project is so fortunate as to continue, it is possible that we will apply what we learn and develop a 2.3 package, at a later date as we readdress possibilities.  To that end, any schematic or layout information for the 2.3 would be helpful; none exists that I can find. A carefully taken photo of the XO with nameplate data listed separately is about all I need for starting point documentation.

Todd, I am piecing together a tapestry of facts, but Rob should have more direct knowledge. Please ask and report back.

Viewed another way, you got an unbelievable bargain. In the realm of passive speakers, which is still the norm in home systems, their design-engineering equates to products selling in 5 figures. I know factually that multiple other manufacturers would claim $15,000 as cabinet value alone.

I understand the desire to buy stuff as cheap as possible. But, I also encourage you to consider the intrinsic value of the goods. Pick a dozen brands / products at $20K and compare your new 3.6s toe to toe. I bet you'll be thrilled.

jon - I know it's thin ice for a manufacturer to speak up. But I'm out of the game, so here goes. Over the years, our products were competitively evaluated by some big name as well as audiophile manufacturers. Their 'business formula' would assign a sell price of up to 10x our sell price, and then back out some 'extraneous costs', which is what they call giving the customer more than he knows. Point is that for the customer whose values are aligned with ours, Thiel prices are extremely slim.

Schubert, have a great time with your 3.6s. If they need help, Rob will help you. If you want to take them to the next performance level, we'll have an upgrade path for you. Welcome to the Thiel corner of the world. 

Bert - the CS1 series weighs very little. The CS1.6 is on the upgrade list.

Rob - I knew Tantalums from Bryston's 1980s designs, and checked them out. Not as good as our stock caps. Bryston abandoned them also.
Taking the woofer XO closer to the midrange driver would not be good.Some models would benefit from moving the XO to the cabinet floor, but the bottom is glued in. I've been running around this bush quite a bit. I will say that outboarding the crossover is having wonderful results. In addition to the gain in distance from drivers, add absence of vibration and freedom to mount components in free air, and lower ambient temperature for XO and for drivers, since the XO itself generates heat.

4 @ 100uF is what Jim always used. People here have recommended Mundorf's lytics. Or ask Jeff at Sonic Craft.

Correct - most designers shape the soundscape toward 'easier to handle'. Jim looked for honesty before all else. Most designers roll off the treble to match the bass roll-off. Jim kept the treble extension regardless of the bass extension. The 1.6 with folk music or a sub-woofer is voiced like the 3.6, etc. His approach was toward accurately reproducing the input signal.

oops - that's vicious.

The problem of measurement distance is well understood by those educated in the art. In other words, the measurers do not think that their 50" or 80" measurements present an accurate performance picture of a multi-driver phase coherent speaker. But their limitations are real. Reflections in real rooms overwhelm the actual signal, so they must bracket the time window of their quasi anechoic measurements to eliminate the reflection - noise. And they publish their results in the name of 'level playing field' - all products subjected to the same test, despite its known shortcomings.

Collateral damage includes:

•  Bad (compromised) information is in some ways more harmful than no information. Real anechoic chamber or outdoor measurements are expensive and Stereophile et al choose to side-step that expense without, in my opinion, proper contextualization / education for their readers.
• The normal reader does not have the education / information to extrapolate the real meaning from the compromised measurements.
• It is impolite for manufacturers to raise such issues in print, thereby becoming complicit in the misleading measurements.
• Many manufacturers design to measure well in the Stereophile-type quasi-anechoic measurements, rather than a justified standard.
• There are no firm rules for record producers. They are second-guessing how a loudspeaker (without standards) might reproduce their mix.
• A vagueness cycle (neither viscous nor virtuous) ensues.

And stuff like that. Note that the ear-brain, adept at synthesizing (remembering) how a real (insert instrument here) bass, etc. would sound in this playback room, (and should have sounded in that recording space - remember, we construct what we hear) can judge the more correct representation when given comparative choices. We at Thiel decided, at the beginning, that the only justifiable approach (to our understanding) was to design to anechoic-flat, just as a microphone is designed to anechoic-flat, except when it's not because Shure et al think that singers want to enhance their upper midrange formant. And the slippery slope gets slipperier and slipperier. I notice that there is more agreement now than 20-30 years ago about what is more correct. But, has there ever been an attempt by the Society of Audio Recording Engineers (and so forth) to standardize the design goal of the loudspeaker? Wouldn't that be a worthy undertaking? And the beat goes on - Amen.

Rob - Thiel's wire was developed in the late 70s through our contact with an aerospace avionics engineer (cousin Ted). For many reasons we settled on OFHC polished solid copper in teflon jackets with a tight 3/inch) twist. Wire carries competing parameters, but that configuration does more right and less wrong than most other options - and we landed there.

In developing the CS7 / 6 (after my time) Jim reportedly revisited wire and kept the original configuration, although the 5-9s aerospace ware was no longer available. Best of form is CDA101 @  There are differing opinions, and I am looking closely at options. There is justification for not going to thicker gauges in the lower frequencies due to varying skin effects. Also, many of his networks see a series  coil as the first element and it might present hundreds of feet of wire and were rarely larger than 18 gauge, sometimes smaller, which would make larger wire meaningless. My present study suggests that larger gauge coils in some of those elements would be desirable - because there is more going on in wire than plain resistance. 99.99%, etc. Ours is slow extraction, high polish, etc. Straightwire supplied that from the mid 80s to the end.

I am moving toward star quad for noise suppression. Tweeter is double twisted (star quad) 18 gauge as described here before. Midrange might be the same unless I insert a 16 gauge foil coil in the first midrange element, then it will be star quad 16s. Woofer might end up being star quad 14. But that's unsettled and dependent of crossover variables. But all remain solid, not stranded, and that opinion is well corroborated in the technical field.

Anyone who says that only the big three: resistance, capacitance and inductance matter just hasn't looked deeply enough.

As a historical aside, I've mentioned here before that I did some work with John Dunlavy when he was moving to Colorado from Down Under. John's specialty and multiple patents were in the field of antennae, especially deep space low signal communications antennae. He played his cards pretty close to the vest, but he paid extensive attention to wire and wire routing within his speakers with knowledge of propagation interference and conjugation. I wish I knew a fraction of what that guy knew; but I am asking more questions in that realm than Jim did. And I hope to (dare I say expect to) reap some benefits.

I want to update my statement about stereo vs bridged Benchmark AHB-2 use. I spoke with John Siau today who said they updated their software to allow current to 1 ohm at full power, with no sacrifice of noise or distortion performance. Any Thiel model can be used either stereo or bridged. I listened today and found very slight subjective differences. Stereo produces slightly more 'air' and sense of harmonic detail. Bridged produces slightly fuller bass lines, probably due to the halving of damping factor from 370 to 185. Bass still sounds clean and tight. JS does not relate to these subjective differences. I will change from bridged to stereo, using one channel of each amp per speaker for a slightly better 'I am there' presentation, since 100 watts provides more than enough volume in my space.

I'll also correct my statement of limited audiophile acceptance. My impression was wrong, they're selling like hotcakes. I love mine.

For the record, I am also a fan of John Atkinson and what he has contributed to our industry. The 'fault' in the presentation of information goes to executive policy, which took its turns under multiple ownerships. Present ownership (Y2K+) deemed it politically incorrect to allow that phase coherence was a legitimate concern. Imagine the advertiser pressure if Stereophile continued to present phase / time as a real engineering benchmark! The arc of the journey began with an editorially open mind with JA collaborating with then-publisher Larry Archibald to explore the role of phase-time in the playback equation, and proceeded toward less respect.

Prof - please feel free if questions remain after consulting my previous Thiel measurement notes. Our measurement capability integrated with critical listening was at the very heart of our product and company development.

Beetle - indeed the 2 meter (80") distance is fairly valid. Ordinary speakers don't care much about distance since their drivers are not producing an integrated wavefront, but rather relying on the ear-brain to sort out the phase information. In the case of Thiel coherence, driver integration focuses into an integrated wavefront at about 8' where the measurements would be smoother and room-fill would be more even. 50" graphs are misleading, but 80" graphs are more than OK, certainly showing Thiel in the top tier. But 3 meter (10') are qualitatively better. We optimized for 8'- 12'.

I guess it's just personally disappointing to see all the effort that went into ruler-flat response being presented as less than its actual in-room / as-heard performance. Note that the coax drivers remove much of the mic-proximity degrade, since the more critical upper XO is fixed within the coax propagation geometry. Only the lower XO varies with distance and ear height. And that lower XO is more forgiving due to longer wavelengths and less directional specificity.

Point of History: In the O3 development in the late 70s, We mocked up a tri-ax with a 12"woofer with a huge diameter voice coil to allow a 4"x 1" upper driver coax in it. It was fantasy at that time; it took decades to develop real drivers moving toward that vision. In the mythical world, given resources, time & market, Jim would have developed a triaxial coincident driver.  In today's world with Jim's wavy diaphragm, focused rare earth magnets and magnesium or carbon membranes, such a driver would be feasible. Youth has its potentials. _

JA - the whole thing was exciting. Beginnings are cleaner and purer and closer to the heart. We were exploring new territory from a first-principles perspective free from the prejudices that formal education or credentials would have imposed. Some form of progress was made every single day through decades of endeavor. 

Prof - our measuring scheme was rigorous and thorough. But, being a bootstrap skunkworks, we created everything ourselves. We began with a rented HP dual trace scope and calibrated mic. We built a sandbox in the field - literally, sand - to bury the cabinet face-up to learn the 2pi, non diffracted, infinite baffle response. Later came hoisting the speaker into the walnut tree for free-field response. The mic was hung on a conduit, first 6' out and then a 10' joint - Hey! that's it! Outdoors we could use sine wave sweeps, but indoors the boundary reflections muddied the mix - so Jim designed and built 'the bleeper' an interrupted ⅓ octave stepped pulse automated signal generator: 3 cycles, one to accelerate, one to measure and one decelerate - advance ⅓ octave. The kids grew up 'singing' bleep, bleep. bleep from 20Hz to 20kHz. The breeze settles down after sunset for an hour or so of high quality measurements to analyze later in the night lab session. This scene is Georgetown Road, the country house where it began. The development lab stayed there for a couple of years after production expanded into Nandino Boulevard. At Nandino Jim's first lab there was 20 x 20 x 20'. Cubes are not good, but that corner could be walled off. The adjacent back parking lot was 150' x very long, perhaps 500' to first reflection. Outdoor ground-plane measurements materialized with live reference recording and test playback in the same environment. Our building was 100' x 300' and we built a roof access stairway to that 'infinite plane' with virtually no reflections 360°. Cable snakes dropped to the lab below for data recording. The final lab was pretty nice. Office / lab was 20' x 20' x 8' ceiling with a same-size balcony above, all connected to a soundproof room 17' high under 3' insulation x 20' x 32.5' (golden ratio) long plus the 20' balcony above the office. I would call the room quasi anechoic. We covered the walls and floor reflective points with layered sonic insulation and made a measuring tower 6.5' high (golden ratio) for a low reflection - highly intelligible environment. In other words, we knew exactly what the room was adding to the free-field measurements. Drivers were tested in an infinite baffle (flat wall) to identify diffraction effects in the cabinets. We compared everything to its base state. Time domain (diffraction, delays, internal reflections, etc.) must be engineered as temporal distortions. (Many designers treat those effects in the frequency domain, which is fundamentally incorrect.) We compared the incrementally improved 'bleeper', truncated noise, sine sweeps, etc. to commercial measurement devices and chose to keep Jim's stuff due to cost performance analysis in a small, frugal rapid growth environment. (New Thiel bought a Klippel System, which no one has used and Rob is now incubating. 

Of critical importance is that Jim knew intimately the behavior of every aspect of the design and  understood how they related to each other and the global perfection he sought. In this lab in the late 80s during the development of the CS5, which used best of form European drivers from Focal and MB, we judged that we could make a better tweeter than we could buy. The development of the CS5 aluminum dome tweeter (eventually also used in the 2.2 and 3.6) was driven by Jim's adoption of Finite Element Analysis. We took a pretty deep bite in cost and learning curve and, on the second try, took on FEI for all further developments. The dramatic reductions (10X+) in distortion due to motor subtleties - the copper shunt rings, pole and top plate shapes, cone geometries, etc. - were all facilitated by FEI. I know of no other company, large or small, that optimized such minute details. 

All of these techniques are but half the picture. Every single exploration was co-developed by ear. Jim, Kathy and I each brought value to that equation and eventually we added a naive listener component for additional input. (I think I've talked about that.)
Technical "improvements" were always vetted by listening, and often failed if they didn't sound at least as good after as before. Equally, options which sounded "better" were rejected if they compromised any aspect of technical performance. That bit separated Thiel from others. We required that every advance had to meet listening and measured criteria and if both were not simultaneously satisfied, then we went back to work. Our development cycle, even with successive learning, took years in the beginning and by the mid 90s was down to 9 months (like a baby), and that was a magnificent accomplishment, and orchestration, considering the extreme rigor involved. 

Our listening room at the factory was in the lab, but nearly every night the product under development went home to the Georgetown Road farmhouse. We knew that room thoroughly well and it was a good room. I've mentioned the dimensions. Nice, not square, 10' ceiling, 45° bay windows, doors in the corners for bass vents, gypsum plaster on wood lath. Pretty sweet. We also used some other rooms including a plaster on brick with 12' ceiling in a downtown Victorian. Before 1990 we built the listening room at the factory. Soundproof. Quiet. Stiff walls and ceiling. Coves above lighting valence at the top edges. 12' high x 19.5' wide x 27' long - controlled decay dimensions, big enough that demure sound panels could control reflections. A truly lovely, neutral room which became the principle aural lab and demonstration room. We hosted many dealers, reviewers and other interested parties there. In 2012 I visited when the 2.7 final prototypes arrived. What a sweet reverie comparing them to 3.7s and 7.2s with the serious drive train in that room that I had built. I loved it. And I may not be participating here had that visit not happened. 

I think that tells you much of the tenor of the undertaking. It was both scientifically serious as well as holistically grounded. It remained focused on music and its requirements while satisfying the demands of scientific engineering. For a small self-funded enterprise, it was genuine and rigorous beyond what any visitor imagined. And there were visitors from universities and large companies you would recognize. They invariably asked 'how can you do this'? And the answer was "because we love it'.

Such is the longer personal telling of Thiel's approach. The details would fill a book. I hope this narrative provides enough for you to appreciate some of what went into creating those speakers through which you enjoy your music. "For the Love of Music" was our first motto.  

Prof - I began my re-acquaintance with Thiel Audio when Jim died in 2009 which increased when the company sold in 2013 and more so when New Thiel ceased operations earlier this year. I agree with your assessment of appreciation. However, in my fairly extensive reading I am struck by how little the actual scope and accomplishment of the work is known.

Jim was very self-effacing and introverted and did not effuse, as I have been doing in this thread. And the company didn't spend effort on promotion or advertising and didn't develop liaisons which might have focused the understanding and value of the work more than the somewhat superficial understanding generated by reviews.

Flashing forward a few decades, I believe that phase-time will be revered in speakers much like it is today through the audio production chain from capture, right up to the speaker where it is commonly accepted that the ear-brain can descramble the signal well enough. Life is short and we leave very little mark. But what a trip!

Andy - Computers are a big part of the mix, and those tools are now easily accessible. To clarify: in Thiel's very beginning, computers were pretty limited. We used them from the beginning via Fred Collopy, another original collaborator who went on for his PhD in Decision Science - managing unimaginably large decisions with serious aid from computer modeling. We did Fourier Transforms (FFT) on impulse samples before 1980 and the number crunching took all night - literally we read the results the next morning. We used computers (Wang 600) before IBM or APPLE were in the personal computer business. So, we were ahead of winging it in the dark ages.

Your list addresses a few of the challenges. There are many more. Visionary unified engineering is rare and pure; I see Jim's work as that - one mind accumulating the questions and answers over tens of thousands of listening hours and iterations. That's a powerful thing.

One example of the contrary is the development of the CS2.7 by Warkwyn, among the best development engineering firms in the world with access to the Canadian National Resources Lab. It took them years of time and hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop the crossover for the 2.7 with the constant guidance and help of the team at Thiel. They have computers and resources to make your head spin. The tools are only part of the picture.

Rosami - I would be interested in their claims. Are they talking active and DSP?

Tom

When a coherence claim is made I suggest getting the panel of test plots. Generally there will be some aspect that is compromised such as B&Ws progressive 180° phase shifts handed off through the range (second order slopes.) The smooth transition is called "coherent", etc., so you have to sort it out. Fourth order L-W slopes can be time corrected, but all the drivers end up with latency relative to the input, which causes its own form of digital ringing.

There are many successful design topologies. Phase-time coherence is something that we at Thiel along with Richard Vandersteen (independently) and a few others for short times, decided to pursue. It's a very difficult pursuit, and much ink has been spilled "proving" that it doesn't matter. If the others admitted it mattered, they would have to apologize for their product. But to those who 'get it', it does matter. I couldn't go back, no matter how sweet or luscious some $6 figure speaker sounds.

Rosami - your dealer feedback is helpful. I am working on understanding the marketplace having been away for 20+ years.

I know you know, but I'll say:
There is no faking, but there is elucidation. There is lots of residue on a recording that the producer doesn't hear. Thiel illuminates, which is both blessing and bane.

The complex crossover is a burden. Indeed, all those parts introduce a veil and must be very high quality to produce the result. Thus our current work.

Thiel drivers have always been very expensive. I vividly remember when the big W hit the scene and their woofer was half the cost of one we had rejected for our smallest 6.5" two way. Their product retailed for 10X as much. We outgrew commercial drivers because the best Danish custom houses were unwilling to do the extra work and precision for our demands.

The test for time coherence is a square wave or impulse over the entire range. If the wave-form keeps its integrity, then the job is being done. The same information is in impedance or phase plots, but you have to know more to read those.

Active speakers have a lot going for them. DSP wears multiple hats. It is inexpensive and versatile. But great digital conversion is rare. Most DSP results in some form of digititis, and actually can't solve the fundamental filter issues without compromises.

All the way back to the beginning - our greatest work before launching the Model O1, was Jim's development of an internally amplified, actively controlled speaker. That prototype was crude, and who knows, may have been surreptitiously rescued from the New Thiel Dumpster Frenzie. Given larger company scope and budgets, active speakers is where Thiel wanted to go.

Jon - I know of no active / DSP, etc. speaker that is minimum phase / time aligned. The big problem is drivers that can handle the band-width. Jim Thiel spent a lifetime incrementally developing such drivers. And remember, the scientific community broadly agrees that coherence is irrelevant because the human ear-brain is good enough at reconstituting the compromised timing information. Steep slopes sequester the scramble to narrow bands which therefore have less information and can be more readily ignored. The present darling is 4th order Linkwitz-Riley filters because the undisciplined mind can pretend that 360° phase shift, (one full cycle of phase delay) is somehow equal to 0°, unless you think about it. Our approach is a purist one: faithfully capture all aspects of all the forms of information presented at the input terminals.

Anyhow, the matter of authentic signal reproduction is a matter of extreme esoterica. Most people aren't wired to notice or care.

Tmsrdg - fishy agreed. Rob would have better information than I got from New Thiel. I sent you a PM.

Thielrules - I was told by New Thiel CEO Tom Malatesta that fewer than 1000 CS3.7s were built. So there's something wrong with your numbers.

Fitter - your situation is one we hope to address with the hotrod kits, to provide a significant upgrade path for the music lover who wants better, but doesn't necessarily need bigger or more.

thielrules - yes, that makes sense.

richardyc - it may be of interest that the MCS crossover has some obvious and simply-made upgrade potential. The performance would be better than the CS2.4SE upgrade from a starting point below the regular 2.4.

Jim designed the subs with LXE controls to be used by "normal" subwoofer installers with their programs, etc. It is indeed very technical and must match the low-frequency roll off of the main speaker. That process is A: a headache rarely gotten right and B: protected turf of the knowledgeable installers.
Jim's patent was on the room boundary portion. Each Thiel passive sub XO was customized for a particular Thiel model to make the best available complementary crosspoint behavior between the main woofer and the subwoofer XO. The "Integrator" is even more sophisticated - I want one. The room boundary controls on the subwoofer tell it the distance from side and back wall to optimize and shope its output and low end roll-off, allowing room placement without concern for reflections, boundary effects and so forth.

I had tried and given up on subwoofers in general due to issues that you raise. Life is too short. However, the Thiel SmartSubs with passive XOs drop right in with no hassle. When I get my room tuning software up and running, I'll be able to fine-tune sub placement. Now they are same ear-path distance as mains, but XOs are never that kind, I'll probably have to tweak a little.

The 'sub problem' is what drove Jim to take the bass as deep as possible in each model - because subs are inherently difficult. Bass is a problem in most rooms, regardless of what makes it. Many manufacturers side-step the problem by attenuating the bass and complementarily the top end for easier room integration. One of the factors for migrating from sealed to ported (and passive radiator) bass is that the ported bottom dies faster and therefore stimulates room modes less.