Thiel Owners

That's the old site when Kathy sold to New Thiel. Those are the old phone numbers, and notice there are no dealers. Might be a spontaneous archival regurgitation.

Arvin - thanks for sharing. An old-school engineering audio tech informed me, after working on my Classe DR9s, that it shared essentially the same circuit as the ARC solid state amps. Who knew.
Regarding your room. Nice. This detail work I have been doing on Thiel Classics has underscored the vertical lobing problem. The problem is that phase angles and resultant amplitude irregularities get worse the farther off vertical axis one's ears are. The closer you get to the speakers, the more critical the geometry becomes. Nothing new. The target ear height is 90cm or 35-36" with the speakers flat on the floor. It seems that your ears might be high, sitting in that chair at close range. I have the same problem. I clamp a carpenter's square to the side of the cabinet with its top edge 90cm from the floor, and then tilt the cabinet until I can sight to my ear-height target in my listening chair. Sound and measurements get appreciably better.

Just a thought. Enjoy. Nice rig. Tom

Unsound - thank you very much for your links to PS reviews. I will certainly wait until I read reviews on their upcoming PerfectWave SACD player.

Furthermore, I have now read John Atkinson's technical review in AudioScience of the Stellar GainCell DAC/Pre that I own. Disappointing, to say the least. Thanks again.

That's 1-2 dB at 20k.

jusam - a note about the CS1s. The CS1.2 was designed as Jim got his feet wet with Finite Element Analysis. Its drivers included our first aluminum tweeter and our first use of copper shunting rings and sculpted gap pieces in the woofers. As such its performance stood well above its CS1 predecessor. However, the CS1.5 followed the intervening and envelope-stretching CS5, 2.2, and 3.6. Each product design in Thiel’s history represents new lessons learned, technologies developed and resulting higher performance. It’s no accident that the CS1.5 hung out on Stereophile’s Class A (limited bass) list for so many years. I suggest going for the 1.5 if you can.

 

Prof - I think of you as I have worked on the 02. Somehow the 02 just sounds 'right' to you. I get it. I have a pair of unmodified 02s, and my living situation has a pair in which I have tightened up the hand-wound coils and replaced the off-the-shelf stranded hookup wire with Thiel solid / teflon, upgraded components to ERSE quality, as well as modified the grille frames for shallower angles. But fundamentally they are still 02s with second order slopes in dual-positive polarity with the tweeter signal arriving a cycle before the bass signal - like most speakers in the world. I believe that discontinuity allows the ear-brain to give the perceived signal a free pass, not subjecting the signal the rigorous reality check it gives a (first order) integrated, coherent signal. It sounds just fine, plus it's easy to listen to and doesn't draw attention to itself.

When developing the 02 research workhorse, I iterated various platforms and settled on first order slopes with the woofer on a stand-off and constrained listener ear-height . . . because that configuration allowed so much more obviousness between the variables I was comparing (wire, caps, resistors, layouts, wave-launch fluid dynamics, etc.) I used CS.5 drivers and crossovers with small modifications for the different cabinet. That product bears little sonic resemblance to the original 02 - its purpose is a modifiable, shipable, accessible research platform.

So if someone like you would want to upgrade your 02s, I would recommend upgrading the XO passive parts, moving the XO out of its present placement (in direct line of fire of the woofer electromagnetic field, and tweaking the grille frames while leaving the second order format in place. Within a few months (after I get the long-awaited ClarityCaps), I'll be firming up those mods to one of my 02 pairs. I'll post that saga here.

There is some low-hanging fruit on the CS2.7. There are big (up to 400uF) electrolytic caps including the midrange series feed, which break Jim's lifelong rule of paralleling any cap over 100uF. There is room in the cabinet bottom (excellent) XO location to add those caps. There are also polyester film caps where polypropylenes would upgrade performance. I would advise a CC or Purity in the tweeter feed. Big bang for buck improvement. Mills resistors could be sprinkled into the series feed stations. These comments reference an internet in-cabinet image which represents a down-grade of original as-designed 2.7s that I saw in the Thiel factory and show-samples. Individual evaluation would be necessary to learn what's in there. 

 

 

 

 

 

Arvin - as we know it's a kettle of soup and everything interacts. Please keep us apprised of what you learn with the tilt experiment. 

I really like the Morrow cables compared with my admittedly limited stable of competitors.

J - I offered his asking price and a pickup by my brother (local to him and Bill); and I never heard back. He seemed persuaded that he really wanted to keep the 3.5s. So, I've re-contacted him through the ad for his firm determination. Thanks for asking.  TT

solobone - I'm interested in your comparative evaluation against whatever else you use, as well as the Maestro rank in SW's line-up.

Hello all - back from away for a few days. Jon - was it you looking for grille fabric? Rob at Coherent Source Service has original grillecloth. Note that it got more sheer over time, so you might need a matched pair.

Re amps: What a trip - I have some potentially relevant experience with the AHB-2, Classe DR9 and Adcom GFA555 II. My setup includes 4 four pole knife switches plus locking bananas on their output jacks, driven by two pairs of amps, so that I can rig direct comparisons with simple switch throws and banana swaps. My test crossovers are outboard with no-solder access to separate driver outputs. Two CS2.2s are wired with two direct runs to each driver, swappable at the crossover outputs for comparing cable runs and the effects of cabling on the 3 different driving amps.
The GFA555 is a known to be decent mid-level amp. The DR9 performs above its price class. David Reich used Thiel CS3.5s as a design load. According to Atlantic Systems, the eastern US MacIntosh warranty service station, the DR9 output circuit is ’the same as’ the MacIntosh solid state circuit. Good amp. The AHB-2 is a THX licensed implementation of a class H amp regulated by a small Class A regulating circuit - new type of topology. I have appreciated discussion here of the AHB-2 among its peers. I agree with the observations that its bass leaves something to be desired. John Siau says that it is correct and "everything else" is bloated or loose or too big. That may be true. It is also true that B&W’s big bass would complement the AHB’s leaner than most bass balance. The AHB-2 is a winner, but might have deficiencies in the deep bass.

My test allows a CS2.2 woofer-only fed through a knife switch driven by the closely level-matched bridged DR9 or bridged AHB-2. The 2.2 crosspoint is 800 with first order rolloff, so there is musical content all the way up. Using a variety of sources, and with the absence of mid and highs, I consistently hear the following:

The AHB produces upper reaches which are cleaner, more detailed and more articulate. The lower reaches are drier, with the deepest transients sounding somewhat limp. The fundamental seems diminished. That diminishment might be in time-duration, but it sounds like transient imprecision and reduced level. Sounds like a hole in the bottom of the harmonic sequence.

One iteration of my test was with Dana Cunningham’s ’Live at Stone Mountain’ concert on a Yamaha concert grand, with Jeff Oster on horns and Max Dyer on Cello. I attended the stunning concert and assisted Dana’s evaluation of mixes and masters for production, so I feel comfortable with knowing the producers’ intentions. In this case as in general, I judge the DR9 to nail it much better than the AHB. The DR9 (bridged) delivers solid onset transients and well integrated fundamental bloom. I admit that the AHB reveals more nuance and space around the trumpet and cello. Similarly, the growl of the lower cello tones are authoritative with the DR9, and easily un-noticeable with the AHB.

Even if I accept Benchmark’s claim of ’rightness’, which is plausible given their company’s excellence, there remains the problem of the sonic jungle. Even for this live performance with minimal processing, the original musical event has gone through multiple stages of tweaking, and all of that tweaking used "normal" amplifiers with sonic signatures closer to (or actually being) the DR9 rather than the leaner, drier AHB.

Just for grins, my setup allows the following very appealing setup. The tweeter and midrange each has its own channel of the AHB. No contest winner over the GFA555 and noticeably more articulate and detailed than the DR9. The woofer can be instantaneously switched between a bridged DR vs bridged AHB. After all the note-taking and head scratching, I selected ’Flying over Water’, with Piano, Flugelhorn, Cello and Congas, for its beauty and complexity. Played full length with each bass amp, the DR9 always took me there and made me smile. The AHB left me in my chair analyzing the mix. Note the same result even with the SmartSub engaged; the sub-bass didn’t supply enough bottom for satisfaction.
I guess that’s my report for today.

J - thanks for the lead. My purchases are on hold until I find a new workplace; unless, of course, something drops into my lap. I don’t really know the SE status - here’s what I think I know: The 2.4SE was introduced in 2008, which is about a year before Jim’s death after battling cancer about 5 years. So, it is a personal swan-song at some level. When I picked up with Rob around 2018 when New Thiel was going out of business, I believe about 100 pairs had been sold. One thing I would like to find out is whether those SE crossovers were executed in Lexington style or not. The few SE-type upgrades that I have seen are modifications of FST crossovers with ClarityCap SA substitutions in the coax feed. Normal old-Thiel MO would include early SEs having been executed in classic Thiel style.

Since the SAs are now a few generations old and we can substantially upgrade the XO performance over the original SE edition, that leaves mainly the red birdseye maple cabinets and other cosmetic niceties. My fantasy collection would include one such pair of 2.4SEs with Renaissance outboard crossovers.

tmsdrg - I am one of the culprits of touting the necessity to double power with halving impedance. My point was more academic than of real consequencel. If an amp doesn't double its power into half impedance, then it is by definition current limited. BUT, as has been pointed out here previously, that point of art is of no real importance as long as there is enough current to deliver to the load. So, doubling is not a technical necessity to drive Thiels, but that sense of anemic bass, slow transients, etc. is symptomatic of running out of current capacity. The 3.7 is about twice the efficiency as many previous Thiels, so the problem becomes less of an issue than before.

thoft - sit tight for some first-hand experience here.For my part, I tested the Madisound "drop in" and it is so different that I would never consider it. Anybody want to comment?
The tweeter you want is the rebuild of that particular version of the Dynaudio D28.

Regarding woofers, that was highly specialized. I think Rob Gillum at Coherent Source Service can rebuild yours. I haven't heard of anything else that works.
Remember that these drivers each cover a huge range and the various contouring circuits are specifically tuned to the resonances and anomalies of a particular driver. Generic replacements just don't work. But take courage, we will eventually have a stellar solution for you.

Comments please.

No, I don't know. There are many things that would be nice to know, but I wasn't there, Rob doesn't know, Tim Tipton, our purchasing manager who retired around 2005 might know (or have known), but there's no practical way to track that down. Bill T. didn't have much to say except that putting more money into the player with a non-repairable SACD section wasn't advisable. Events recede and memory fades. 

Jafant - remember, I'm not an engineer; my experience is more as an observer - user. Slew rate still gets lots of attention in professional audio, especially microphones and their preamps, but it doesn't show up much in print. I have Tom Jung's original Studio Technologies Mic Pre which was reworked by Jim Williams (pro geek guru) to upgrade caps, etc. He increased the slew rate by 5x as part of his magic. The preamp improved its transparency substantially, but lots of things were done at the same time, so I can't attribute any specifics. I wonder out-loud whether slew rate gets less attention now because it is generally faster now than in the old days. Also, I can only speculate as to Power vs Pre amp importance, but I suspect SR is important everywhere equally. Some amps like Spectral place storage caps right next to the output transistors to increase slew rate substantially by purely geographical means.

My observations over the years includes SR being a major factor in transient performance and therefore detail retrieval.

thieliste - I don't think so. The only components of real concern are the electrolytic caps. Thiel used high-performance, high-temperature, long-life Ecaps with a normal use horizon of 40 years. 'Normal' is a slippery target, but Rob has said the only failed caps he's seen are in conjunction with mis-use of some king. 

You have bypassed 3x100uF 'lytics in the midrange resonance shunt. You also have a bypassed 75uF 'lytic in the tweeter shunt circuit. Replacing that one with a good PP would probably produce some sonic upgrade.

There were 2 revisions for the 3.7, rev1: 12jan08, rev2: 9dec08. So yours would be final form.

jon_5912 - I wholeheartedly agree. Jim not only was a master of his design craft, he applied tons of time to evaluating each component to identify where costs could be shaved without sacrificing performance. His performance / cost ratio was amazingly high - there's nothing superfluous and nothing dragging down the net result.

To put some practicals around that, in his last years, Thiel looked long and hard for someone to take on his role in the company. Serious, multi-pronged search, to no avail. One big disconnect was finding anyone who 'got' the time-phase coherence thing to the point of cooperating, Another was finding someone willing to slog through the value engineering. It would be easy to double the cost with very little performance advancement.

http://www.audioupgrades.com/upgrades/upgrades.htm Jim works in the professional world. He does this particular Adcom GFA555 because he uses it in his rig.

Silvanik - thanks for the report. There is definitely real stuff going on regarding floor coupling. Our initial insight (before spikes were a thing), regarded the recoil effect, how the cabinet swayed caused mostly by the woofer recoil. That motion is large in reference to tweeter wavelengths and causes time smear which is audible in a time-coherent system. But the actual coupling only became noticeable when we moved from the farmhouse to the real factory with concrete floors. The presentation got much drier and lean in the mid-bass. The farmhouse floor was resonating very nicely - I much preferred the musical presentation on the wood joist floor.

Whatever you're doing, keep it up and let us know any further developments.

Yes, Jim was an armchair electronics designer and enjoyed talking circuits with Nelson Pass, Dan D'Agostino, the Bryston Boys and others. He constantly pushed them for better transient performance, current delivery, etc. from their amps. Originally Thiel Audio fantasized making the whole chain: speakers (powered), preamps and turntables. We started before digital. It became quickly clear that we had more than our hands full with the passive speaker link in the chain.

sdecker- when Jim developed the equalizer, that transient burst factor became obviously clear. He determined that an amp needed to deliver triple its continuous output for about 250ms to properly cope with a broad variety of music. He used that assumption when boosting the bass with EQ to take advantage of power that would, on average, be available in the bass. That assumption proved to be problematic in that many amplifiers, especially spec-driven designs, fell apart when asked to deliver transients while delivering augmented loads to the equalized bass. Some amps do a wonderful job in the series 1 and 3 equalized bass. But others don't, and sound bad, and burn out tweeters.

Our early amps included Phase Linear 400 and Threshold S500, which turned out to be non-representative, leading to an error of judgement.
I think the way Jim looked at it was that the tripling at 1kHz allowed for midrange transients beyond rated continuous power and that those peaks rarely coincide with bass transients, therefore the working headroom.

Error, or hindsight, or fudged specs, the EQ gave Thiel some notoriety in the amp department. I don't think Jim ever got the amp demand part right (from a market viewpoint). If his design loads maintained 4 ohms minimum, the speakers would be so much easier to drive and the voltage sensitivity and current demands would be in sweeter equilibrium. That's my layman's opinion from the user peanut gallery.

My packed unit weighs 70#, which kicks in additional overweight charges. And the risk is high. And hand delivery sounds like fun since I'll be in the neighborhood.

TATweak - I hope you find it!Thoft- Thiel serial numbers start at #1 per model (imagine that).The first 200 woofers were impacted. You can't fix the existing moving system, but Rob could replace the moving system and you would have a rebuilt driver for spare.
T

Fitter - I got the chance to compare CS7s with 7.2s when I visited Rob G at CSS last Thanksgiving. What a treat! I judge the 7.2 to be more concise / articulate, but he and I both liked the 7s better, as more easily listenable on more material. The main and possibly only difference is the mid drivers. The 7 has flat-front cast styrene pistons and the 7.2 has cones (of unknown to me technology). The flat launch plane eliminates whatever cavity effect the conical pistons might produce. They are both extraordinary speakers that I wouldn't mind owning with the proper room to do them justice.

Unsound - thanks for your response. Keep it coming. First, please let me explain my choice of words. By ’more accurate’ I mean adhering to a flat frequency and phase response curve. By ’more mature’ I mean embodying next-level technologies such as more sophisticated driver motors and diaphragms. I assume that I have considerably less actual experience with these models than you do, and that my opinion is therefore of limited scope and depth. In my present work, each model sample that I get, I measure and photograph and document and audition. For the 3.6 that means I have spent about one day with them. Period. Their introduction came near the end of my time at Thiel Audio and, frankly, I never found a subsequent opportunity to hear them. I concur with your disappointment - my opinion based not on performance (of which I am quite naive), but on philosophy. I don’t think ’rushed to market’ quite captures their introduction because Jim was always technically thorough in his development process. (often to the consternation of marketing director Kathy Gornik.) I think ’compromised’ might better capture it for me. My (ineffective) resistance of reflex bass revolved around trueness to our central principle of phase coherence. Jim and I shared the opinion that the bass establishes the musical foundation on which all else builds and that reflex bass is a compromise (permissible for budget.) But the model 3 was all about performance. Kathy felt that such details must be subservient to the demands of the marketplace (as you posit.)

Let’s shift gears to your ghost of a 4-way CS4 - exactly right in my view. Here’s what happened. It’s hard to understate the role that market demand places on a small growth company. Capitalization plays a big role also. Thiel was always undercapitalized - we pulled everything out of our collective hats, barely paid ourselves, rarely carried any debt and sunk our thin margins into self-bootstrapped growth. Enter the gravy years of the mid 80s. Affluence abounded. Many companies introduced their mega-priced statement products. Thiel was comparatively plodding along its incremental learning/growth curve. It may not be obvious, but Thiel succeeded better in foreign markets than here at home; we competed better in export markets at 2-3 times US retail prices. We were a big hit in Japan which at the time defined and led the pan Asian market. Japan demanded a Statement Thiel product. Jim floated some concept sketches with our Japanese distributor. Jim wanted to make your CS4. It made sense from everybody’s vantage point (from mine in Spades), except our Japanese distributor, who wanted what became the CS5. This next part is almost embarrassing, but what’s a little embarrassment among friends. Let’s talk culture. Our success in Japan was unusual, practically unprecedented, due in great part to our distributor. Kathy was adept at choosing optimal allies. Japan is a power-based culture and the contenders were brokering power arrangements where we held the weaker hand. A new distributor emerged with a Japanese-American principal, who understood both cultures and could navigate many pitfalls. He helped us navigate the weirdness of the number ’4’ in the orient. It symbolizes cosmic unluckiness, curse, death - bad suss. A CS4 would fail regardless of its merit. Kathy deferred to his guidance, but Jim would not put a CS5 moniker on a CS4 chassis. So he engineered the CS5, which in practical terms was beyond our company’s 1988 capacity to develop and produce. Tons of internal stress. The CS5 needed a longer incubation and internal design and engineering resources than the market demands allowed. It consumed the oxygen in our ecosystem which set the stage for scaling back the vision for the 3.6.

Now, that’s a lot of words for an internet forum. But you guys are my audience for these vanishing quirks of history.
The Thiel story contains lots of such workings behind the curtain, as do most human enterprises. It may interest you that the abandonment of the CS4 that you cite stands as a major element of my departure from the company I had co-founded and dedicated two decades to developing. In the early 90s, Thiel, like everyone else, faced an existential decision of how to survive in a market where multi-channel / home-theater was taking over. Thiel took that route. Imagine an alternative reality with a CS4 and a CS3.6 with a bass more true to its model 3 beginnings. Just thinking.

Cheers.

Fitter - FWIW, that Krell is what Jim used to design the CS7s and I believe everything else for the next ten or so years.

I was told that its coax would have had smaller drivers than the 3.7, suitable for crossing to smaller diameter lower midranges such as in the model 7; and would have trickled down to his 2.7 instead of the 3.7 coax.

You are correct - I didn't cross-check my rusty memory. The CS3.5 bass in its enclosure is 'critically damped' Q.5 for no bass hump, which some critics consider 'dry' or over-damped.

Also my apologies for my final statement of 'excellent in every way'. I meant that the bass configuration was optimized for performance in the phase, time and frequency domains. In particular the EQ'd sealed bass keeps the fundamentals in time with the upper harmonics, whereas reflex bass places the (reflex-supported) fundamentals a full cycle behind the rest of the signal. Lots of controversy around whether such bass coherence can be heard or matters. I'm among those who say it does 'to me'.

Fitter - I remember a long run with a Sonic Frontiers gold unit. But I’m not very confident in that memory or if it persisted till the end. Does Sonic Frontiers ring any bells?

unsound - the Sonic Frontier (model unknown) preamp driving the Krell FPB 600 is what I heard when auditioning the final prototype of the 2.7 compared with the reference 3.7 in Thiel's listening room on my 2012 visit to Lexington. I have personally never heard better, although I must admit I've never heard any ultra high priced offerings. 

Jim required amplification that he liked and that tested impeccably well. Those were his choices.

All - I have family and friends in Lexington who report no damage there. Also, Rob's farm where he retreats to hunt and fish are farther east, away from the tornadoes. So we can assume he didn't get hit. However, I've still not heard from him in a long time.

Vintage50 - I have a set of CS3 spikes in hand and believe them to be the same size as the CS3.5. There are two sets, one pointed (for carpet) and the other rounded (for hard floor.)  Both are 1/4" diameter. Pointed are 2" long and rounded are 1.25" long. They slide into holes with plastic entry collars in the plinths, two at the rear and one at front center. My recollection is that we added some texture to the 3.5. Instead of being plain, they have a tiny O-ring in the center and some parallel grooves off center to keep them in the sockets, and to provide more purchase to remove them.

Sorry I don't have 3.5s on hand until they someday emerge from storage.

I find this question re "opposite of Thiel" to be a good one. It demonstrates how individual the pursuit is. Each designer / company brings their own values, perspectives, resources and vision to the task. And both the task and its historic and cultural contexts are sufficiently large and complex to allow huge variability of outcomes. Thiel was a tiny player, which may have helped it remain true to its calling, which was to produce and support Jim's vision of a thoroughly accurate transducer, equally honoring all musically relevant aspects - augmented by the contributions of the other founders.

I didn't notice Bose on the list. Even if nothing is truly an opposite, I think it fair to remember that Bose was greatly responsible for the emergence of high end, especially brick and mortar demonstration stores. Most of the operators I knew in the day cited Bose as their focus for entering the arena, with phrases like "there must be better than Bose" , "Bose doesn't cut it", "Hard to believe people think they want Bose" etc. The upstart young designers resented that the large majority of Bose's budget went to advertising and marketing rather than product development and other oddities of Bose's dominance.

A personal piece of history: Bose made Thiel cease and desist from using the number 2.2 for our second generation model 2, which we renamed the CS2 2, without the decimal point, garnering more publicity and support than any emerging company could ask for. I found it amusing in the 2000s after moving near Boston and knowing some guys who worked for Bose, that they used the Thiel CS3.5 as their laboratory reference standard for product development benchmarking. Now, isn't irony sweet?

The original Phase Linear amps from the 1970s were nick-named "Flames Linear". We had one. It did.

Expansive grout is a waterproof cement product with adhesives, designed to expand in a crack to seal it. It may be called foundation crack sealer, wet-stop or similar.
Those original CS7 baffles were portland cement concrete, which continues to shrink over time. (Its first cure cycle is 7 years, when its shrinkage is nearly over.) Grouts add gypsum and/or other expansive masonry ingredients to achieve various controlled expansions. I don't know what exact product Thiel (or the nearby repair shop) used. But a millwright or masonry contractor should point you in the right direction.    Disclaimer: After my time at Thiel

improvedsound - that's a nice piece of work you have done. You capture the Thiel Essence with the sloped, sculpted contours and the elegance of the base.

will post some of what I have learned on this journey through my own experiments and coaching some of you on this forum and behind the curtain. There's plenty of room for improvement, while containing costs is always a desirable constraint. I am pleased that you and some others have invested in upgrading your Thiel loudspeakers.

Tom

Got it. Thanks.

Jon - I haven't been able to determine how many VPs were sold. The closest I get is a "few thousand pairs" of all the Power Products combined (using that coaxial driver). But, that may also be incorrect.

Painted with a broad brush, it seems that as brick and mortar demonstrating dealers declined and on-line and other sales channels took over, Thiel's sales per product and solid user experience also declined. Thiel had relied on high-quality dealers to select and manage appropriate customers, who often remained satisfied and committed over the long term. It seems that pattern may have eroded over time.

Prof, and other 02 guys - here's a little report from fun in the trenches. I picked up a single SCS4 this week, and have some PowerPoints and 02s in the hotrod garage. I set up a 4-way comparison with those models plus a CS2.2 for reference. I both listened and measured. What I learned is that not only was the 02 a very good little speaker, but that it holds its own very well against the others. Since I have 4 02s, I'm upgrading a pair for giggles and grins and learning.

The SCS4 is the 4th generation of the coincident driver, but is actually the 5th generation of the 6.5" 2-way. The crossovers are the same topology - 2nd order / positive polarity with the (high-pass / low-pass) crosspoints separated to eliminate the classic 3dB hump rather than inverting polarity as B&W, Wilson, et al do. The frequency and phase response measurements are very good, as good as the SCS4. The motivation for the coincident driver was because anybody could place a bookshelf speaker in any position or orientation. But on the proper axis the 02 is as coherent as the SCS. BTW, that topology is also employed in the passive coincident drivers in the 2.4, etc.

Robert - In the early days we used a lot of pop as tweak references. Heart / Dreamboat Annie along with Joan Baez / Diamonds and Rust were a couple that we wore out the record - before digital. I’ll also be adding some Cardas to my mix via DIY. Thanks for your report.

Robert - you inspired me to double my speaker runs to check results. I use Morrow SP4 with equivalent AWG of 14 ga / positive or negative with 8' runs. Nice improvement not only in tighter, better articulated bass (as anticipated), but as you say, across the board clarity and outside the box dimensionality. What was the equivalent AWG of your previous Cardas Neutral Reference?

Arvin - thanks for your detailed report. I would like to add some thoughts because setup is so crucial for performance. It's no secret that Thiels, especially the pre-coax models are tricky devils to optimize. I'll describe Jim's design assumptions, since working toward those ideals, within your own constraints, will result in the closest approach to objective correctness. Anyone's preferences may vary. All considered, I like a more far-field perspective; some like to be on the performance stage, and the room size dictates so much.

The design distance is 10' from speaker to ear (mic) at about 20° off axis - speaker straight ahead yields that angle. That setup takes a pretty big room and/or some sort of absorption at the side wall reflection point. Ear height is assumed at 3' (normal couch / easy chair). The farther afield, the more leniency develops for all geometry. Distance to backing wall is user selectable. I like about 4', which gains greater bass articulation at the expense of less bass amplitude.

Over the  years, I have seen the most grief caused by too-high ear position. 3' is the target, which gets more critical as distance decreases. Closer than about 8' and the relationships really suffer. Note that ear height adjustment works better than speaker tilting, since tilting changes the way the floor bounce works. I suggest getting ear height as close as possible, then tinting so that the tweeter (3' up) fires at your ear, and toeing in to control wall bounce while keeping the speakers firing at 10° to 20° off axis - they will cross behind your head.

All speakers deal with the room puzzle, but Thiel adds the challenges of lobing to the equation.

Robert - there are many variables in wire including gauge, purity, surface smoothness, dialectrics, layout, etc. To some degree, enough size is enough and the other design parameters become more important. Cardas knows a lot. Regarding internal wire: my point was that XO to driver resistance change will have more effect on tonality than pre XO runs. In fact, the differences will be pretty negligible and the other considerations may tip the balance in favor of "better" wire.

Norah Jones rocks. Little slice of history. The late Bob Lundvall found and signed Norah to his Blue Note label. I was working with his son Kurt who has his own audiophile recording and mastering business. Bob asked Kurt to critique the master of Come Away with Me, for which one of his references was my Thiel CS2.2s. I imagine that Kurt's evaluation notes probably had some influence on the final master. I love the recording.

Tmsrdg - I don't have 3.7s, but there is some baffle flat. My 1.6s benefited from laminar launch baffle treatment.

Arvin - floor coupling is, in my experience, a worthwhile endeavor. During development of the 03 In the late 70s, we discovered a new problem attributable to phase/time coherence, of a bothersome upper midrange jitteriness. A cure was to couple the speakers to the wood floor via 3 pins. That solution became part of the product and rubbed off into the general 3rd party stabilizer feet solution. Piercing carpet via spikes also firmed up the bass. However, coupling directly to concrete sometimes produced an undesirable edginess. In my time at Thiel, we supplied invertible pins where the domed end could be used to concentrate the load, significantly smush the carpet, but not penetrate to the underlying floor. A similar effect could be gotten by placing the spikes into small diameter cups of some kind. In the day I had some cups machined from brass (for shows). The top had a pointed-bottom hole to match the pin, and the bottom was a hemisphere about 1/4" diameter.  You can buy online brass hemispheres and drill a dimple to capture the point of the pin.

bonedog - in speakers white is plus. The other may be tan, which is minus. I recommend you test with a battery: D cell or 6v lantern. Momentary contact only. Plus makes the driver move forward. You can see the woofer and feel the tweeter.

Rob - yes I have and yes I would like to. I believe Thiel Audio represents a brief place in time when small-scale upstart enterprises were possible and appreciated. I have been collecting material and hope someday to have the time to pursue it. I've been forthcoming here, but that just scratches the surface. It was a very wild ride.