My re-involvement with Thiel Audio began in earnest as I learned of New Thiel’s impending bankruptcy. I encouraged Rob Gillum to buy the service department, and worked with him over the years to fill in my knowledge blanks and share what I am learning. My work has been to assess whether I could bring substantive improvements to Jim’s life-work as the basis for a follow-on enterprise. Over the past 5 years, we have explored and tested and co-developed with generous contributors and beta testers a wide variety of new solutions. Bottom line is that Jim was extraordinarily expert at what value engineers call ’balancing his designs’. There is no cost that doesn’t carry its weight. As duramax said: we are now in a different milieu. We Thiel owners already have our speakers and any upgrades can be bought without the cost burden of the retail store. We can up their game within reasonable cost parameters.
We have developed multiple upgrades, all settling around propagation organization, whether electrical, electromagnetic, fluid dynamic - whether inside components, wire or in the space between them; in the analog layouts and/or field management around components; these new solutions would not have existed, and/or been affordable in Classic Thiel’s time, within its framework of packing maximum performance into minimum price. We are reaching for a new cost/performance plateau.
One of the particular system limitations is the large capacitor banks that duramax mentions. Thiel controls its drivers over 7 octaves, necessitating notch filters at each driver’s fundamental resonance (or more) and first (or more) breakup modes. Common wisdom treats those circuits as functionary, without much sonic impact. Our trials say they contribute more sonic impact than given credit for. Our trials have been conducted on multiple models, but settled on the SCS4 due to its simplicity and shipability. They serve our team well. However, duramax has brought a focused interest at the top of the range, along with the listening room he built for sonic verification. Therefore, for these trials on capacitors to augment and/or replace the large electrolytic caps, we are running parallel trials on the SCS4 at my end and CS7.2 at his end.
To oxfordamps query: these prospective upgrades do not affect the frequency response. The speaker’s power balance remains the same, demonstrated by overlaying the curves. I should mention that in a Thiel design, any frequency range is affected by contributions from all drivers. You can’t merely change something in a particular circuit and expect a predicted result. That’s a major reason why most folks say true minimum phase / time aligned performance is (some form of) practically impossible. We can’t expect to improve on that core strength of Jim’s work. But, aural neurology doesn’t perceive only average power. It interprets elements such as increased clarity, definition. dynamic range and coherent alignment (quantum coherence). When those aspects get better, the area under consideration sounds more ’full, right, compelling, better’, even without factually being ’louder’. That’s what we’re working with: strengthening a weakness to bring that area into focus.
I’m not at liberty to explicate the particulars of how we’re doing what we’re doing, but I can tell you that 100% of the various levels of collaborators ’get it’. It’s not subtle, it is qualitative. Within weeks we should have results from various permutations on this particular (large cap) problem to give some meaningful observations.
