Oops, the place was correct, so year must have been 1982 and the model must have been the CS3. Who knows where the memories go? The 3.5 was a major advancement; the amp arrangement would apply, and the results so much better.
Showing 50 responses by tomthiel
Long ago and far away, I once heard a pair of 3.5s that took my breath away. The owner had set them up in a very nice room, constructed of plaster on structural brick with 2: 6' pocket doors and openable windows on one side. So, the room was effectively non-resonant and adjustable. The speakers flanked the fireplace, creating a varied reflective surface. 12' ceiling height. Magnificent. That pair had dual inputs; I don't remember whether that was standard or a modification. The amps were Phase Linear 400s, top notch in 1980. Each amp drove one speaker, with one channel driving the bass and the other the mid-highs. Same amps, same cables on all 4 circuits. Equalizer affecting only the woofers. What a trip. |
Indeed carbon rocks. And I salute Richard Vandersteen all around, and his implementation of carbon on a balsa core in particular. Jim used aluminum on a styrene core - a poor man's implementation of the same concept. And going back to the 2.2 woofer in 1990, Jim mated a shallow curved front cone with a deeper straight rear cone, trapping a sealed air-space between them to approach the same idea. The air is the damping agent and the two cones' resonant behavior is different from each other. The result is quite remarkable. I would like to hear Richard's latest model 2 iteration. I bet it's not too different from a Thiel 2.2. I could be wrong, but it seems that as time went by, the two brands converged somewhat. It seems that Vandersteen sold as many model 2s as Thiel sold all models combined. He is one for the history books. |
audiojan - Thanks for the update. I have become aware of the audibility of the midrange hash introduced by a port / passive radiator having effects on the whole presentation. I recently participated in a product development blind A/B test where
everyone heard that hash in dramatic fashion. (Tannoy - ported) There is a hypothetical possibility to take your improvements even further. See Atkinson's CS2.4 review. Note the -10-20db junk from 100 to 1kHz. Similarly the reflex tuning introduces high-pass phase shift on the woofer roll out. My wish list includes immobilizing the radiator for sealed box second order bass rolloff (like the 3.5) and augmenting with second order SS x Integrator bass. The potential improvements intrigue me greatly. Of course such modifications would apply to other models as well. In that light, I hope to find a Thiel Integrator: Any physical condition, $1K max. |
Todd - I am a strong proponent of the 2 ohm deal, since Thiels drop near 2 ohms over broad frequency ranges. I make a big deal out of the requirement because many current sources exhibit considerable anomalies as they run out of oomph. That distress shows up in many sonic results. And those results are blamed on the speaker as sounding x, y, z. Amp circuits are quite individual, so the 2 ohm double may not always apply. And, as you say, something as big as that Classé is not likely to run out of power in any normal situation. Other amps in the family produce 3x the 8 ohm rating into 2 ohms. That topology is both stable and plenty strong. My intent has been to advise against amps that are not stable driving 2 ohms. For instance the PS Audio BHK-250 stereo amp is rated as "stable into 2 ohm load", but in fact can only drive that load for short durations. It is not suitable to drive your 3.7s and PS will tell you that if you ask the right questions. Which is my point. Get an amp that will drive a 2 ohm load continuously. |
I would love to see such a list of 'best Thiel amps'. But I am not current on the market offerings beyond the usual suspects listed in this forum. I know that "best sound ever" at the 3.7 introduction was the new biggest and best Bryston. Yes, I meant Classe in general. When I was paying attention, they had one circuit topology executed at different power levels and passive component qualities. They were (and probably still are) a high current design. Dave Nauber, president of Classe, is a long-time Thiel associate and could speak knowledgeably about how their amps drive Thiel. As to what to look for, the 2-ohm current requirement behavior is the major Thiel problem. After you limit the field to those amps that can, the rest becomes personal taste and opinion. As a personal story, I fell in love with Tim de Paravicini's Esoteric Audio Research amps in the mid 80s on the CS3.5. We set it up at CES to considerable delight of the pre-show manufacturers walk-around. However, some badass bass showed that it couldn't control the back emf of the equalized woofer. We abandoned it and most other tube designs. The point is that I would look at EAR's tube or solid state amps because they have such gorgeous delicacy, and ask the hard questions about driving near 2-ohm loads - show EAR the load curve. I would also look at PS BHK-300 for similar reasons. In fact, I'll be auditioning a pair of those later in the fall. My must have factor is a current source designed for that load. The rest is preference. |
Todd - you address a core but obscure point. What is the job of the hi-fi component? It is far from agreed that each component should faithfully reproduce its input signal. Most components editorialize in various ways and require the user to mix and stir the playback system to taste. The other end of that chain is that most recording is considerably editorialized and often with a bias toward adequate performance for MP3 or car radio. So the soup is nearly impossible to decipher. As you know, Thiel stood squarely and obstinately in the 'reproduce the input' camp. In that camp, the vagaries of the recording venue and performance are squarely in the recordist camp. My present work, which is making slow progress, is to further purify the precision of Thiel speakers reproducing their input signal. Cheers, Tom |
unsound - Indeed the matter is not simple; it requires some study to understand. One good article from Benchmark is available on the web. https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/speaker-efficiency-and-amplifier-power There are other good articles and texts to study. The relationship between voltage and power sensitivities produces a large array of interrelated results in the speaker and power amp. The common way to specify the sensitivity of a speaker is to state both aspects: voltage and current ie, 88dB @2.83volts @ 4 ohms. As was said previously, that voltage sensitivity would be (-3dB) or 85dB IF it were at 8 ohms, but it is not. And those two speakers ( 4 and 8 ohms) will act differently from each other in many regards and require amplifiers with different characteristics than each other. Jim Thiel didn't make low-impedance speakers to torture amplifiers or listeners; there are practical limitations of physics. He chose underhung motors which require a 2-layer coil to remain short enough to get the significant low-distortion advantages of the topology. That coil requires a wider magnetic gap. Even with huge magnets, the maximum efficiency of that driver is lower (half) than a normal overhung motor. Given the point of diminishing returns of that topology, the maximum impedance of that driver is established. More wire turns (higher impedance) yields lower linear excursion and higher mass for lower efficiency. And so forth. So the driver parameters settle where they settle. Then, Jim chose to balance, compensate and correct many anomalies of driver response over a very wide operating range necessitated by the 1st order slopes. Each correction element lowers impedance further. And in the end, the impedance is maddeningly low. Jim's rationale was that amplifiers can be found to drive low impedance loads whereas the speaker constraints (described above) are immutable. Focused gaps and rare-earth magnet geometries were all applied to raise base efficiency as much as possible. Thiel drivers are far more sophisticated than the vast majority of drivers in the marketplace, and their distortion performance is an order of magnitude better. I guess the low impedance is a price we pay. I direct you to the Benchmark or other articles to explicate the relationship between voltage and power. Once the relationship is understood, the rating scheme becomes more clear. |
unsound - Oh. Let's try again. I have no experience with Roon, although I am using 24x192 digital downloads through my Metric Halo D-A to lovely effect. The model 3 up to the 3.5 was designed for equalization, which does some things well, but runs out of air-moving capacity sooner than the passive radiators. Regarding room placement, we must be careful. Room correction modifies the output into the entire room to optimize at the sole listening spot, which messes with the power response and ambient energy of the room. I can often sound somehow wrong. Regarding placement near the back wall, yes it boosts the bass and requires less woofer output. But the downside is that wall placement couples strongly to some room modes creating associated sonic problems. Also, a potentially destructive reflection pattern occurs. The ear-brain tries to resolve-combine any sound sooner than about 5 milliseconds from the original sound, resulting in time smear. After 5mS±, the reflection is heard as a reflection and cognitively integrates as such, causing little to no distress. In round numbers, about 3' from the wall gives ample time for the back-bounce to trail the direct sound for good listening. All in all, I am not a fan of placing speakers close to a wall. As an aside, the PowerPoint gets the wall reinforcement advantage with no bounce via its 45 degree launch plane from the ceiling (etc.) It works. If I were trying to use 3.5s in a large room or loud levels or bass-heavy material, I would try for a subwoofer, crossed over without the equalizer, with appropriate matching 2nd order slopes and physical placement-alignment. That would really give it new life. BTW, the 3.5 was the last product to have 1% double bypass caps around the 1mF tin foil / styrene film caps and 6-9s super coils. If the 3.5 sand cast resistors were replaced with Mills MRA-12s, the result would be very sweet indeed. |
sandy - I am very interested in hearing your thoughts when you do add the SS-2 subs. The JC-5 is, I believe, the work of John Curl: one of the greats. cat - In addition to the mid, the eq also drives the woofer beyond linear excursion and, believe it or not, the bottom of the tweeter is boosted by the eq . . . just a little, but it precedes Thiel's ultra long excursion drivers. Everything matters. |
dan - no need for intimidation . . . I'm the "other Thiel". My brother Jim was the design engineer who was fluent in all matters technical. I was the manufacturing guy who built the product and production systems. Although I am conversant in the technicalities, I am not an audio engineer and am here to learn from you guys and develop a possible path for upgrade of classic products. That upgrade project is behind schedule. It is likely that the first real product to emerge will be beetlemania's CS2.4s. I am cutting my teeth on PowerPoints and CS2 2s and have recently bought a pair of 3.6s. The 1.6, 6.1 and 7.2 are also on my radar. These each represent the terminal expression of their model form before the x.7 series, which could also benefit from upgraded caps, coils and resistors, but they are comparatively new and functionally current, and therefore last on the list. Regarding your question about which big Thiel, I think either the 6.1 or 7.2 are strong. Both have upgrade potential via better caps, foil coils and Mills resistors. Both are extremely amplifier demanding with impedance around 3 ohms over most of the range. FYI, those were both officially replaced by the 3.7, but the back-story may shed some light. Jim was dying and Thiel needed to streamline its offerings, since all the pre x.7 were manufactured in-house. The obsoleted products still had performance viability, but the company chose to shift the x.7 XO and driver manufacturing to China for production viability. If anyone has sixes or sevens, we would have to reverse engineer the crossovers which I can do from photos and/or a loaner crossover. By the time we get to those models, we'll have clear ideas of what to replace with what. |
Todd - the doubling down spec proves the amp is not current limited. This amp is technically current limited (doesn't double down), but the current specs are so high as to be plenty strong for the job. I think I read that it is rated into "short term 1.5 ohm loads", and the output stage delivers enormous current. As (perhaps prof?) someone said earlier: at some point enough current is enough. A full lab analysis would be nice, but John Curl and Parasound have stellar reputations. sandy - can you get any more information regarding the 2 ohm behavior of this amp? |
The max current spec is instantaneous allowed by the storage capacitors, transformers and various resistance elements. Such a high maximum will maintain integrity of the early onset transient of the signal. Where phase angle comes to play is that such a clean onset transient would be rounded-suppressed-scrambled by a phase incorrect transducer. With phase integrity the system has the potential to replicate such an onset transient. A robust speaker can handle along the lines of 100 watts music power and more like 10 watts continuous. So, this high power delivery is strictly in the realm of transients. To that realm, the improvements brought by audio resistors, ultra capacitors and high purity coils and wire are also in the realm of transient fidelity. A speaker with schlock stuff will measure the same as with great stuff with a steady-state input signal. |
Pardon me Jay, I neglected to mention that phase characteristics in the speaker also influence amp performance. Phase lead and lag illustrate reactive characteristics of the load, which are far more difficult for an amp to drive than a purely resistive load. Thiel speakers do a good job of presenting a non-reactive resistive load which allows the amp its best shot of capably driving that load. So, even though Thiel impedance is very low, requiring lots of current, at least the load is fairly benign. |
Jay - the Classe amps tell a long story. The tech is in some kind of trouble and still has some of my gear. Classe had recapped one DR9 a year ago. The new guy replaced and bypassed some signal path caps to match our plan for the second DR9. We also recapped and bypassed the DR6 preamp, so the "new" sound results from the combination. It sounds very good - the "dark" sound of the DR9 seems to have lifted - more incisive and articulate which is what I need for both recording and XO hotrod evaluations. The second DR9 is still in the shop for its total recapping / bypassing. April 11th: " a few days to get parts and a week to do the job." Very long week. Not yet, maybe soon. |
Death and Rebirth lives at the center of life - at the heart of understanding. Finding grace in that process ranks as a central challenge and measure of our consciousness. I see music as a key unlocking access to that path. I beg your permission to suggest a piano album I worked on, Dana Cunningham's first album Dancing at the Gate. Enjoy the journey. I met young Dana after she had recorded her earliest work in a small room on a 5' Kawai with a single pair of simple mics to ordinary late 90's digital tape - mastered well enough to sell at retreats. I remastered those songs on then (Y2K) audiophile level equipment with my Classe and CS2 2s as monitors. The result transformed the album from being something to hear into an involving musical journey. I think it provides that key more directly than her later Color of Light album produced by Will Ackerman of Windham Hill Records fame, using 18 mics and $multimillion gear. Live music direct to the heart. |
dancast - regarding the PS Audio M770s, the PS spec states that amp to be stable into 2 ohms for musical peaks. That fact would disrecommend its use for main stereo use. The lion's share of dis-satisfaction with Thiel products is the low impedance current draw from an inadequate amp. I recommend evaluating any amp (for Thiel speakers) by its ability to sustain a 2 ohm load. |
beetle - point taken, many amps are not rated to 2 ohms, so we don't know their capability. It would be very instructive if you could learn the 2 ohm behavior of your Ayre amp so that we can learn from your experience. I have heard only praise of Ayre, but have never heard one myself. My theory predicts that it should do well into 2 ohms for it to meet your sonic requirements so well. Please report if you can supply such performance information to us. |
silvanik - fantastic indeed and we are most interested in your results. Sonic Craft has New Old Stock Mills MRAs. FYI: all the copper in your 3.6s is 4-9s or better. Your solder is silver x tin, so it needs high temperature. The yellow bypasses are best of form styrene x tin foil. A further thought for your consideration: While replacing the Electrolytic 3x100uF mid shunts plus the 1x100uF woofer shunt, you might play some swap. Your Audyns are probably better than the 2x 100uF PolyPropylene mid feeds. You might spend 2 of your Audyns there and move the original PPs to the woofer shunt and one of the mid shunts, placing your Audyns for maximum benefit in the mid feed. A further upgrade target is the 8.2uF PP in the tweeter feed. In addition to the 66uF shunt you are replacing, that 8.2 is the weak link in the tweeter circuit. Similarly the 9.1uF PP in the midrange shunt is a candidate. I mention these caps because their small values make them low-hanging fruit. My 3.6 project is on the back burner, but I have been scheming for awhile. Please share your progress and what you learn. |
andy - thank you for your contributions. Indeed you are on it with "first order filter. It communicates the heart and emotion of the music better." This communication is not some magic of technical accomplishment, and in fact it is one side of the coin of accuracy. This subtlety of communication is primarily a psycho-acoustic effect. That is not saying it is somehow fakery. On the contrary, we hear by synthesizing auditory experiences via very minimal sonic inputs which elicit associations, memories, conjectures and so forth. Then the auditory brain forwards those synthesized packets for storage and assembly into longer, more complex composites such as a musical or verbal phrase, etc. Our research at Thiel led us to commit to first-order slopes because they are the only solution to preserve the phase-time information that the ear-brain uses to believe the input is real. We really believe what we are hearing when the phase information is intact, rather than cognitively conjecturing what we hear when the phase information is scrambled, as it is with higher order filters. Much more can be said about this process, but put it on the shelf for now. Side 2 of the coin is the technical execution. No doubt, hands down, higher order slopes are FAR more executable for exact frequency domain accuracy. In fact, first order slopes are generally considered non-executable because the drivers must have such a wide range of linear response. Higher order slopes attenuate the out-of-bandpass signal at double, triple or quadruple rates compared to first order. The ubiquitous 4th order slopes attenuate at 24dB / octave rather than our 6dB. So all the grief that the driver goes through at its frequency extremes just goes away with higher order filters, making much cleaner, more controllable frequency domain smoothness. So, the double-whammy is that the frequency extreme grief of the first order slope is also more objectionable because the ear-brain is trying to process it as real music and not a music-like artifact as it does with higher order slopes. Both sides of the difficult coin gang up against first order slopes. Thiel decided the result of reality was worth the huge grief of execution. As you eluded earlier, phase coherence without time coherence is not meaningful. The audio brain can only buy in if all the elements of the signal are correct. I believe, and Thiel's position is the distinct minority, that the phase-time aspect of the signal is more critical than the frequency domain aspect. In other words, it is not upsetting if a reproduced trumpet sounds slightly like a different trumpet (frequency-spectral differences), but it is upsetting if a trumpet's harmonics reach the ear at different times and in different phase relationships than real, non-reproduced music (time-phase differences). An interesting phenomenon is that once a listener (or recording pro) has identified the importance of time-phase, there is no real going back. The artificiality of non-coherent wave-forms is unsettling, even if the frontal lobes convince us that that sound must be a trumpet. As I said before, this discussion encompasses a serious body of study; I hope this response covers the high spots. Regarding more than 3 drivers in a phase-coherent system, I'll comment on that later. Think CS5, 6 and 7. |
Regarding amp testing: the manufacturer knows good and well how their amp works into a 2 ohm load. In the days of brick and mortar dealers, the dealer would know or could easily find out. John Atkinson's Stereophile and other technical lab tests are very
instructive. Look at the curves for performance deterioration at 4 ohms
vs 8 ohms. If that deterioration is great, the amp is generally not
specified to 2 ohms. Read between the lines, that amp would possibly fall apart
at 2 ohms. Often you can read for meaning for phrases such as "stable into instantaneous (or peak) 2-ohm load. Which means it cannot sustain continuous 2 ohm output and therefore not suitable for Thiel. In today's world you might put out a call on amp forums for a full lab test of an amp of interest. Or if you can get to an old-fashioned bench repair shop, they could power test an amp under load and read the waveforms on their oscilloscope for you to see, even if not to print and distribute. Jim's first job was as such a technician, repairing everything from amps to radios to TVs and sophisticated specialty circuitry. (Our first business plan was to produce amps, not speakers, but didn't see a promising niche. That was before the days of amp proliferation. Jim had equipment and knowledge and we vetted amps in-house to choose those that performed properly, not just ones we liked, which is a trap because your speaker may turn out far from neutral and therefore less universal. Regarding McCormack: Steve's values, knowledge and perspective are right-on and I would expect his equipment to perform well for all the right reasons. However, I have no direct experience beyond hearing at shows, which was always good. Regarding the neurology of psychoacoustics and so forth. Yes, there is lots of serious information, but it is pretty obscure. My PhD studies included epistomology (how we know), ontology (the nature of being) and the neurology of creativity. I was also a practicing musician and acutely interested in musical communication. So I studied and absorbed this stuff. No I didn't finish the PhD; I jumped the academic ship to establish my own design studio where I made musical instruments, studio furniture and other artifacts. Conceptions Studio incubated and then became Thiel Audio. If you come across model O1s or O2s, the back panel will say Thiel - manufactured by Conceptions Electronics. Of course all these inquiries into how we hear, learn and know served as the foundation of Thiel Audio. But there is nowhere I can send you except to suggest Google. Happy reading. |
Regarding higher driver-count coherent sources . . . it is indeed a very complex problem. The way Thiel approached phase coherence was for each driver to execute its design-ultimate slope such that when summed with the other interacting drivers, the net resultant curves mathematically summed correctly. This approach is first-principle-purist-physics driven rather than the euphonic design approach of messing with it till you like it. A surprisingly obscure tenet of the purist approach is that the net first-order slope for an individual driver slope is actually quite complex rather than simply 6dB / octave. Let's jump right to a germane example: The woofer crossing to the midrange. Each driver roll-out assumes a 6dB slope - but that slope must be the net resultant slope, so in fact, the driver's actual behavior in that cabinet, electromagnetic environment etc. must be corrected by shaping networks such that it behaves properly, and the two drivers add properly. I have not yet addressed the meat of andy's question of more than 3-way or multiple bass drivers. I'm getting there, but before we go there, we should digest further complexities beyond this simple woofer-midrange interaction. In a valid minimum phase array (as Thiel attempted), the woofer is not only interacting with the midrange, but the tweeter is in fact still contributing down (through the midrange's lower roll-out and) to the woofer's upper roll-out. So there is in effect a tweeter x woofer crossover at a lower signal level, since they both must be attenuated at this secondary cross-point. At that crosspoint each relevant driver must assume a 12dB /octave slope in order to add correctly in the whole system. Here we have opened Pandora's box. Every small change to any driver slope must be complementarily compensated in not one, but multiple other coexisting driver slopes. Such considerations include passive radiators and cabinet bracing and other factors which influence the roll-out behavior of any and all drivers, electrical or mechanical. So, now let's expand to andy's questions regarding more than 3 drivers. I have already mentioned that the passive radiator counts, so the CS2 and 3 series are 4-ways in crossover considerations, although the passive radiators and mechanical coax (2.4, etc.) don't actually accumulate the expense of electrical crossover components - but the crossover must nonetheless consider their contributions. Let's jump to the bass alignment of the CS5. The bass picks up from the lower midrange at 400. There are 3 bass drivers representing 2 alignments which all cross over to the lower 5" midrange, the upper 2" midrange and the 1" tweeter. Only the sub-bass driver pair with a 40Hz crosspoint is exempt from only the upper midrange and tweeter. The rest of the drivers interact and each interaction introduces an additional 6dB pole to its required roll-out. The required mental gymnastics is considerable. Generally, even with world-class brands and development labs, the approach is to ignore any interaction greater than -10dB or possibly as much as -20dB. We proved to ourselves that -40dB could be "sensed" as anomalous = Not Right. So we endeavored to keep it all straight in the design phase; then in production engineering, we had to determine how much mattered how much and how much we could afford to spend on any of dozens of decision points. That process generally took months to work through and hinged on value judgements of what our customers would be likely to spend on approaching "perfection". In hind sight, we missed the mark there. A product such as the CS5 could have been executed at various levels into $6 figures. In fact I conceived it as being a $15K product whereas Jim and Kathy drew a firm bold like at $10K, and we fit the final product into that frame. NB that Thiel's Cost of Goods Sold was far higher than anyone else in the business. We we wanted to be nirvana for everyman. But that price aversion kept us out of the developing ultimate-performance marketplace. Let's focus on multiple low-frequency drivers. The CS5 is unique and effective. Let's examine the 3 bass drivers. Assume a pair of sub-woofers operating from 10 to 40Hz and a single upper woofer operating from 40 to 400 Hz. Since our baffle is sloped (to best fit) for the purpose of time alignment, we assign a group time signature to the upper (mid-high frequency) 3-driver array (lab work). The proper placement of the upper woofer turned out to be right in the "wrong" place near the floor where the lower woofers needed to be. The Aha! moment came on an overnight flight to England when Jim and I were wrestling with how to achieve proper physical time alignment of the bass with the upper drivers. We put the upper woofer THERE BETWEEN the subwoofers with its own tunnel-tube to a sub-enclosure in the back of the cabinet so that the two sub-woofers could see the larger remaining enclosure. The subwoofers flanked the upper woofer (above and below), creating a larger integrated waveform supported by the floor. At the 40Hz crosspoint, those waveforms are large enough that their physical center could be coincident with the mid woofer for simplification of time alignment of the whole-woofer-array with the multiple upper array drivers above it. The square wave / impulse response verified the success of the idea. It works. Now, back to crossovers. We have fixed the time alignment of the bass array as a single entity in space, but the two slopes are different due to their differing crosspoints. In fact the upper-mid and tweeter are out of the subwoofer equation, but all except the tweeter are in the upper woofer equation. We accomplished much of the roll out work via mass loading the sub woofers for a mechanical upper roll-out and lower fundamental resonance. It took months of iterations including driver and enclosure tweaks to fine tune each of the crossovers with their compound and corrected slopes to achieve both phase coherence, time alignment and smooth frequency response. This work was supported by pretty serious test equipment which Jim conceived, developed and built in-house. History shows the CS5 design to be technically tour de force, but commercially short-lived. The Achilles Heal is that amplification was not available and/or identified that would drive the cruel load of about 1 ohm at 40 Hz and deliver clean power to the upper frequencies. I believe that product might have succeeded if a bi-amplification scenario were implemented. Indeed if I hot-rod a pair my first move would be to separate the bass from the rest. The mid-high frequency load is pretty sweet. The low frequency demands could be addressed with the right amp and any deficiencies would be sequestered in the bass where our ear is far more forgiving. A further tweak would be to remove the mass loading from the sub-woofers and equalize the bass amp for electronic rather than physical shaping, earning significantly higher bass impedance for, I believe, potentially world-class bass. At this point in my life, this the stuff of pipe dreams. But if granted the time, such dreams may turn to real stuff. I am healthy at 70 and gradually making room in my life for addressing this business from long ago. |
prof - there's always more. Our early years needed more rapid growth than we could produce. Our Canadian solution came with Russ Heinl, a Canadian distributor with good connections, knowledge and support. Canada had introduced tariffs for US goods, creating a cost opportunity for Canadian manufacture. Plus we were already supplementing our O-series cabinet supply from Soundwood in Toronto. I set up production in Canada for Canada with Soundwood cabinets and Heinl-produced crossovers with the same Solen-Canada caps and identical drivers that we were using. It all added up to a viable solution and the Canadian-made product sold in Canada is virtually identical to the Lexington-made product sold elsewhere. However, as our products became more sophisticated the outsource solution became unfeasible. We capped our year on year growth to 30% and brought all manufacturing in-house for the CS series. |
prof - your philosophical base leaks through. Isn't it a joy to pursue things as far back to first principles as we can? Kierkegaard - Heidegger were my focus. Reveneering with any clamping method would bow the panels inward and not work well. But you could use pressure sensitive adhesive backed veneer. A more likely solution would be to strip the finish (Lex is nitrocellulose lacquer, I believe Heinl is also) with citrus stripper and then scrape, sand and refinish to order. The veneer started out at 0.025" thick minus production sanding of about half that thickness. So be careful. And keep up the good work. You might expound those emperical virtues you referenced. |
prof - the whole bit of identifying and challenging assumptions is at the core of progress. In a scientific / research based proposition like Thiel Audio, we did it every day to ascertain that we were true to our vision, rather than believing accepted orthadoxy. It was so painfully interesting to see the new owners do the opposite, to mine any perceived values for assumed advantage. Their first sales manager, Steve DeFuria, an industry friend and long-time Thiel dealer, tried to include me in the realignment / assessment discussions. But ownership was not interested in "the past", which is of course a mis-assumption of what I would bring to the table. They got it wrong at every turn. We'll see if we can collectively keep an ember alive and build some joy around the campfire. |
prof - I just visited a pair of Brazilian Rosewood O2s that I inherited from my dad's estate. When I get them here from Virginia, I'll draw the schematics and conjure an upgrade. The O2 was before we discovered 6-9s wire or film caps. Simple second order 2-way XO that fit in one hand. The cabinet might need some bracing, and the grille frame an inboard bevel wedge - it was a plain square frame . . . perhaps felt on the baffle. No end to the fun. The O2 was designed for the newly emerging audiophile dealer to sell against Polk and Advent. I think those retailed for $150 / pair in 1977, which would be $500 in today's dollars. |
michael - regarding the CS7, which was the flagship model with plenty of greatness; and sell cheaply on the used market. 1995 was the time of rapid development of fully in-house drivers. Between the CS6, 7, 3.6 and especially the CS2.3 coax, so much was learned to improve the drivers, that Jim redesigned the 7 with all new in-house drivers and, of course, redesigned crossovers to support the changes. Broad opinion says the upgrade 7.2 was spectacular. 7s are fully retrofittable to 7.2s - the cabinets are identical and the crossovers are modifiable. If you buy 7s inexpensively, you may have the option to fully upgrade, if Rob at Coherent Source Service still has 7.2 drivers. My wish-list includes hot-rodding the 7.2 - there is room for improvement. I have mentioned here before that just because the 3.7 obsoleted the 6 and 7.2, that was for logistics of simplified manufacture pending Jim's death, and not because the 3.7 is superior to the 6 and 7.2. Sorry to bear the sad news, but the 7 is a qualitatively better speaker than the 3.5, especially in a large room. In many ways the 7.2 is the pinnacle of Jim's life work and a 7.3 was in development when his health failed. If you can afford them, I suspect you will never regret getting them. Consider the amplifier caveats, the 7 is far harder to drive. We can circumvent a big part of the amp problem via dividing the inputs into bass and upper ranges for separate amplification, which would require 2 amps. Jim's objection to bi-amping / bi-wiring revolved around various mis-use issues, not fundamental principles. But we can keep that straight with amp and cable choices that consider those signal integration problems carefully. |
silvanik - in Slovenian your name means forest dweller. Are you a tree hugger? I am. Anyhow, yes a book . . . This forum is the first try I have made to unleash some of these thoughts. I am rearranging my life for the possibility of writing such a book along with the related audio work. The story offers considerable fascination as something based in a particular time and place in history, with considerable detail that is obscure and far richer and potentially meaningful than the standard story you have read. These forum posts are sketches for that book. Thank you for your encouragement. |
jon - you hit it on the head. As an enterprise that grew out of an intentional community (commune) in the 1970s, we all felt in our core being that music showed the way to growth in uncharted territory. Everything was changing, youth (yes, we were young once) hoped to invent a new world grounded in peace, love and music as everyman's key. Thiel Audio was how we chose to spread the joy. Our first motto was "For the Love of Music". We thought that through ingenuity and hard work, we could create something more true to the heart and soul of music and make it affordable for the many. Our enterprise succeeded in some small ways . . . It gives me great pleasure that you appreciate that core truth of the undertaking. Plenty of sacrifice went into doing what little we were able to do. |
silvanik - in a twist of serendipity, I heard the 3.6's at that show in Milan, visiting Enrico Tricarico, Thiel's Italian distributor and prior football star. I think my visit was in 1992, when the 3.6 was first introduced. I spoke some Italian then, not much now, but I can read it a little from knowing Latin, which I do remember fairly well and has served me well in my travels in Latin language countries: Italy, Spain, France, Bolivia and Brazil, although Brazilian Portuguese is a pretty far stretch from the other languages. My understanding was good enough to save my life when lost in backwoods Brazil without my companion. That's another story, related to how I established Pau Ferro as our standard veneer in 1990 / CS2 2. There's no end to fun with wood. Cheers. |
jon - Our community was not so formal as to have a name or designated ideology. The early 70s were full of societal change and we were part of that. I had been a brother in the Marianist, Catholic teaching order through college engaged in Peace through social justice, ethical war resistance, urban poor empowerment, right technology in the developing world . . . and so forth. I then married and had a child, but wanted to continue a collective enterprise, and opened my doors to a group which included my brother Jim, and a few mutual friends. We bought land on the Cumberland Plateau to form a sustainable living enterprise and needed a shared employment project, which became Thiel Audio. Of course this sketch is the bare bones synopsis. From the beginning we shared all funds, responsibilities and development of common direction. Religion or traditional belief was not a part of our commune; the experiment was social, not spiritual. Its end was more of a mutation than anything else. By the mid 90s, it was clear that my focus of creating a "good place for good people to earn a good living doing good work for the good of all" was no longer appreciated as a driving force. Rather, the survival needs of the business were what consumed everyone's around the clock attention. It took me 5 years to objectify the manufacturing systems and personnel enough that I could leave without damaging the enterprise. Its growth and development continued. I am proud of that. |
Jan - I'm very interested in what you learn. You might consider a higher cut-off frequency. 50Hz is right at the impedance x phase reversal. See the Stereophile review. If you have stereo subwoofers for good signal directionality and can get to 70-80 Hz where the load becomes quite resistive, you would stress the amp less. I am speaking hypothetically, having never experimented myself. I hope some folks in this community can shed some light. |
michael - Rob sets up PXOs for any classic Thiel back to perhaps 3.6s (mid 90s) for a reasonable fee. guys - regarding passive preamps, there is another un-named factor. The principal load being driven by the source is the connecting cables to the next device. Some cables have high capacitive and/or inductive reactances. Some sources are not capable of driving those loads well, and their outputs become distressed, much like the power amp problem. I would only attempt a passive preamp with short, electrically neutral interconnects between the source and passive pre and pre to power amp, since the passive pre does not buffer or isolate the source from the pre to poweramp run. |
Andy, the link doesn't open for me either. Try pasting the link directly into your browser or googling the topic we were discussing and see what you find. The abstract was merely a type sample of the level of investigation being carried out in advanced circles and doesn't necessarily address the mechanisms of how wire might transform in response to use. |
Indeed we each experience heard input individually. However, I / we noted a broad correlation between what individuals reported and what our lab / theoretical models supported. Agreed, the controversial part is the hearability. Generally speaking the "scientific" camp asserts that a large portion of the authentic audio signal is undetectable by the "naked" ear. That assertion is upheld by blind A/B tests with statistical modeling. They are unarguably correct on their terms. Many also require an analytical structure to verify what they hear and absent that, are unwilling to commit to the legitimacy of an experienced phenomenon (what they heard). On the other hand, a small set of top end recordists and self-identified audiophiles can and do hear much of what the "scientists" deem unhearable, sometimes requiring significant elapsed time to understand and believe what they are hearing. They often don't care what the statistical models say is valid; they believe their ears and may or may not care to argue, justify or prove their opinion. The science guys think they are making it up. I think they are believing their senses. A seminal, foundational understanding that allowed Thiel Audio to be, grow and succeed on its own terms, was that we agreed to disassociate from not only the established "truths", but also what other designer / manufacturers were doing and.or claiming to do. By focusing on our own work and believing where it led us, we were able to establish our own truth, which was always correlatable with measurements, but not driven by them. Of course that process might have been better informed or more enlightened or perhaps greater resources (staff and funds) may have produced more elegant work . . . but we did manage to create a body of work with internal integrity which brought joy to scores of thousands of customers and the acclimation of many dozens of design and engineering awards. In my own work I call my process "contemplative understanding and design". That calls on intuition and insight in addition to analytical cognition and includes leaps of imagination in its process. |
Last Monday I hosted a piano technicians workshop at my Northwind Designworks studio. I had prepared 4 samples of alternatively constructed piano bridge segments (reassessing sonic transmission from string to soundboard - how does that actually work?). One of the attendees tapped each of them and identified the 3 major components of the tonal response. Fundamental, augmented 4th, minor 6th. Next day, I verified the increments in my lab. Hmmm. Could I do that? No. Did it matter to me and the other learners? Yes. He had developed his analytical powers as a precision tool. Over the years I recognized a critical element of understanding and learning. I learned to substitute the pronoun "I" for "you". Rather than saying "you can't hear that", I say "I can't hear that". That shift of the burden of proof makes a world of difference. Rather than challenging the other to believe my assessment, I am admitting my own limitation. The conversation can become quite rich with that change of position. Cheers TT |
JAFant - you asked about future models in the queue. I have concentrated my efforts on the 2.2. Next I will address the 3/ 3.5. My priorities include rescuing models in danger of obsolescence, and the 3/ 3.5 are geriatric. It will be a big challenge in that the tweeter and midrange are no longer available. But the woofers are strong players and built like tanks. Of great interest to me is the textbook sealed second order low rolloff - tight, quick, clean and musical. I hope to pair that with a matching subwoofer for seriously good low bass. |
Jay - I left Thiel Audio in 1995, so I don't have current brand information. But, my comments may provide some perspective. Jim's method was to work on the speaker, rather than finding a magic synergy of the whole system. In shopping cables, he devised some pulse testing with an oscilloscope to see reactance behavior. He also measured inductance, impedance and so forth. He wanted cables that acted "properly". The speaker measuring position in the lab was about 30' from the source bench. He ran long balanced interconnects to the power amp right under the speaker tower - probably about 5' cables. Early brand was StraightWire, since we knew they used 6-9s copper and made cables properly. Thiel continued using their twisted pair hookup wire until the end. Jim tested and rejected the various terminated cable systems, wanting to keep that user complication out of the equation. In the development of the 3.7 (and possibly before) he used Goertz flat wire. I don't know whether he used their capacitive termination. I might add that we listened to lots of cables and rejected most as some form of euphonic brew. I also know we rejected some good cables as seeming over-priced referenced to our view of high-value. I can also say that we knew quite a bit about dielectric behavior and alloy / process, so we applied that knowledge to rule out contenders. We also chose cables that did not misbehave (often mechanically) when delivering high current, since our speakers drew such loads. I'm sorry I can't be more helpful. My time was a long time ago. I do have a relevant story. In the late 70s, we did the wire gauge, low resistance approach. By 1983 we were using my home-brew 0-gauge copper welding cables, and thought they performed well compared to Monster Cable. Remember "wire" was not really much of entity then. At the 1983 CES we introduced the CS3. The "night before", we manufacturers would make the rounds and this year "the group" collected in Thiel's suite to compare notes. We always had high-end European recordists who used our speakers as reference monitors and enjoyed us playing their studio tapes. Long story shortened, Ray Kimber brought prototype speaker cables at $1000 / pair foot. We compared them to Monster and our home-brews. Everyone had an OMG moment. That changed our minds radically about what was possible. They had silicone treatment applied to each conductor as the braid was formed. They worked astoundingly well and incorporated Kimber into our lab at that time. All for now. |