Happy 4th of July! All
Thiel Owners
Guys-
I just scored a sweet pair of CS 2.4SE loudspeakers. Anyone else currently or previously owned this model?
Owners of the CS 2.4 or CS 2.7 are free to chime in as well. Thiel are excellent w/ both tubed or solid-state gear!
Keep me posted & Happy Listening!
I just scored a sweet pair of CS 2.4SE loudspeakers. Anyone else currently or previously owned this model?
Owners of the CS 2.4 or CS 2.7 are free to chime in as well. Thiel are excellent w/ both tubed or solid-state gear!
Keep me posted & Happy Listening!
13,557 responses Add your response
I have a pair of cs2.3's. Had them for the last 20 years. I upgraded the coax mid/tweeter to the two magnet unit, this was pivotal in me keeping them, as I had a heck of a time taming the brightness. A tube preamp helped considerably also. As per most Thiel products, very high resolution and lack of coloration. Makes poor recordings sound poor, but good recording sound fantastic! I have a high current amp (Bryston 4bsst). Not sure of the differences between 2.4's and 2.3's. Make sure you are sitting at least 9-10', as the drivers need the distance to blend appropriately. After 20 years, got the bug to get a new pair of speakers, ended up buying a pair of Tekton Moabs, still waiting for delivery, Eric is very busy! Hopefully it is an upgrade over my Thiels, as the return shipping cost will be considerable. |
Hi Guys, great thread. I’m now the owner of CS1.2, 2.2 and just picked up a set of 3.5 (5815,5816 sn#)which I’ve been after for a while. My question is finishes that were offered on these. When I went to look at these, my first thought was someone over the years stained these and that they were the original light color model. Rob @coherent said they looked like the Teak finish. Hope you can see from the links and zoom in. Thanks in advance. https://drive.google.com/file/d/13XIPQzG687UGth47H5rctJ_AAks6jwG4/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AiVcrFr-DUa0DeCUslS3oriBgp07p8A-/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h9SEyM2ck1vOepi8LPUySlw8lZkEaPln/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e-p1hdOUow6tIfnzdgajE97PFS7R7BSk/view?usp=sharing |
It's funny to see people discussing concrete baffles. I'm back to my Madisound kit for the first time in a year and trying to make concrete baffles for them. I've tried several kinds and thus far they haven't worked. I have no experience with concrete so I'm trying to get a feel for it. My currently drying attempt is with concrete countertop mix. This stuff really should work. It costs $25 for a 50lb bag and I mixed a bunch of glass fiber in to help with cracking. |
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Prof - Paul Hales is very talented and precisely educated. He got his degree in mechanical and electrical engineering for the purpose of designing loudspeakers. Rossw - To me, the 3 / 3.5 seems the quintessential Jim Thiel design, before he had to cave to ported bass for practical reasons. We were breaking new ground in those early days, and I am pleased the early products stand up today. The 3.5 is near the top of my list. |
After Thiel, I did some consulting including Hales. Remember the mid 90s upper end Hales’ with cast baffles? That’s the stuff. Maybe not coincidently, Thiel and Hales were among my favorite speaker brands of the 90s and continue to be so. I owned Hales Transcendence 5 speakers and still own and love my Hales Transcendence T1 monitors and center channel, which do home theater duty these days. |
As a long-time CS3.5 owner I'm glad to see that so many others share my love of this speaker! Fortunately the original drivers are holding up so far, but I do live in fear of losing a mid range driver. My listening area is quite small so even with the EQ they live a pretty easy life. I can't wait to see what you come up with to keep these speakers going long into the future. |
Guys - thanks for the grace for my rant. The marble baffle was a work of art as it stood. The concrete of the 6 and 7 has its own story. My last project in the mid 90s was developing a lower cost baffle for the 6 and 7, which was a Hydrostone product combining gypsum with portland cements , is highly machinable, accepts damping agents and paints quite well, and has zero shrinkage. It also requires forced hot air kiln drying, could not be outsourced and all-in, cost more than the CS5 baffle in its final painted form. That never made it to production. Back story: introduction of mystery character. Walter Kling was one of the 5 partners who started Thiel Audio as our communal venture. Walter was genius at tooling, jigs, fixtures, and so forth. He complemented my skill set very well, and we wouldn’t have created a company without him. He left after a few years for personal reasons and had a career in architecture. For my exit plan after 20 years, I hired 3 people to carry on the rigors of growing production. Walter was central to that transition, and he shone till he left at Jim’s death. Unsung hero, and Jim’s right-hand man. Walter brought his architectural mind-set, and Jim had always asserted that "Concrete would be the ultimate cabinet material". I disagreed due to its high Q, low impact strength, continual shrinking over time and its quirkiness as a paint substrate. You probably saw this coming: they chose concrete for the next baffles. And it shrank and cracked and required replacement with the "polymer mineral compound", which is shorthand for aggregated polyester, similar to the CS5 baffle but strictly paint-grade with no marble / pretensions of high-gloss, see-into glamor. I understand that it worked fine. But then what to do with that Hydrostone research and development? After Thiel, I did some consulting including Hales. Remember the mid 90s upper end Hales’ with cast baffles? That’s the stuff. |
Maybe I’m just lucky, but I find the integration of two subs with my 3.5s to be seamless and without issue. I spent a little time getting the positioning absolutely correct, by ear, which in my music room turns out to be exactly 1 foot behind the speakers with the sub drivers at 90 degrees to the Thiel drivers and both sub drivers pointing into the soundstage. My inspiration for this configuration was side firing subs such as can be found in the Golden Ear range. I found that having the drivers pointing at the listening position made them too obvious. For whatever reason, having them at right angles to the 3.5s creates an incredibly smooth transition. I never sit there thinking I have subs on. It all sounds totally integrated. Obviously there is some tweaking with sub settings but what’s interesting is that I found exactly the same positioning and levels also work perfectly with my Quad 57s. The subs are connected to the amp by an extra speaker cable per channel. I prefer to still let the Thiel woofers do their high quality stuff and then set the subs so that they subtly kick in at the right point. The subs are the now discontinued but still available Polk 505s which were practically being given away at the end of their run, but work amazingly well having been designed with music reproduction in mind, according to the blurb. These have 12" drivers so they produce plenty of very clean oomph. I bought them as a stopgap, assuming that I’d have to upgrade to fancy RELs or similar to get great results. Three years on and I don’t have the slightest urge to change this set up. I note Tom’s comments about the preference for a new all-in-one bass eq solution on the work he is doing. However, I can report that the bass performance I’m getting is substantially better than through the Thiel EQ box. It seems to be a really effective compromise. With ageing speakers, I think it’s also valid to say that running subs takes a lot of strain out of the mid range drivers, especially. Obviously for the moment it’s important to keep those running until an adequate replacement is either created or sourced. Fully accept that everyone is going to have their own experiences in their own listening environments, but in my own case I just couldn’t be happier. I want to be able to run these 3.5s for the rest of my days if that’s at all possible. They are that rarest of speaker that never drops the ball on any type of material. As happy with punk as they are a string quartet. A genius design. |
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Getting good, deep bass in a room is always complicated. A smaller (higher -3 dB) speaker can often sound much better in many rooms. 20-40 Hz are possible from even 6.5" drivers, but of course, not at concert levels. Room treatments should always be considered among your first choices in getting good bass. Lowering the mid-treble energy in the room plus controlling room modes can transform speakers into sounding much larger. Best, E |
Tom, i really appreciate your candor and transparency. A good reason to take another look at the 5i series. Your ideas about the Renaissance 3.5 are very much in line with my explorations, using triamps and dsp to test the range of possibilities. The demands on an amplifier with biamping or triamping a driver directly is so much easier and the availability of affordable good amps in the 100 w range is abundant. I concur that with minor eq shaping, a xo becomes unnecessary and the frequency range, distortion and phase response are so much improved. I would like to hear your thoughts about the directivity and what can be improved about that? |
Unsound - agreed on 40Hz, and even 20Hz at moderate levels in a moderate room with moderate music. I like the 20Hz 'sound' better than 40Hz, possibly because of the relative lack of low end phase shift, to which I am sensitive. The bass response effectively starts as low as there is program material. There are ways to successfully aid the bass against overload ie subwoofers, etc. I use an SS2 behind each main speaker, whatever model. In the Thiel passive XO mode they contribute only below around 40Hz (plus overlap), and there isn't much music down there. But nonetheless, that supplementary deep output provides local air pressure to aid the main woofer's room coupling. I'm surprised how much more authority the bass gains. Please say more about 2>4 upgrade path. My CS5 comment was market-based. And as you allude, most of that was self-inflicted, in my opinion. The product is good, especially the 'improved' version with Jim's driver designs. It's not common knowledge, but I consider the CS5 and the squandering of its potential segue into higher range markets to be classic self sabotage. The product as designed wanted a $15K (some said higher) price and another 3 months in development. Rather than settle into that league, Jim and Kathy were adamant about keeping it under $10K. It didn't 'fit' the market there. There was much too much speaker there to make sense, and its amp requirements etc. took it into the higher league anyhow. (Note that we had 100+ carte blanch firm pre-orders with no price stipulation.) You might detect my flabbergast these 30+ years later; this rant has never taken words before. One example of 'what happened' is that I had designed the baffle to include 3 stones (marble, granite & basalt) in 3 particle size ranges for an inert - extremely well-damped, good-looking baffle. The stone mix had enough variation and visual texture that the gel coat would be clear, to see into the stone matrix - all quite subtle since ground marble takes dye well. The casting molds required higher maintenance, and it would be 50% heavier, but what a baffle! I found the right supply partner in Atlanta and settled on $100 / each with quantity guarantees, etc. (Note that a company like WA might add $25K for such an element). I was elated. That is until I learned that Kathy came behind me, capped the price at $50, reduced the spec to ordinary bathtub cultured marble, and gloated over the cost reduction, all on their way to a $9300 / pair introductory price, which caused market confusion against the $15-$20K pre-marketing by distributors and dealers. End of rant. It's called family business. The J&K alliance was internally infamous. They abandoned the CS5 platform and stated that it was 'too expensive' to sell through. I suppose polite professionals are supposed to keep such things under their hats. But I think that you fans might benefit from some leaks whose potential harm has long-ago elapsed. |
@tomthiel, as usual an excellent response. I do think that 40 Hz is not too much to ask of a 10" woofer. Of course, as has been discussed before these suggestions could double one’s amplifier budget. And, with 1st order crossovers there would be quite a bit of overlap, suggesting that even more so than with other configurations, using identical amps would be preferable. It might be more palatable if there was an upgrade path from 2 channels to 4. Or more? It’s quite a testament to all at Thiel Audio that a 30+year old speaker is still so relevant today! Other than the huge amplifier requirements and depending on perhaps too complicated a crossover when a more thought out baffle arrangement might have sufficed, I don’t consider the CS5’s to be unsuccessful. When properly powered, in the right room, they are still amongst the best I’ve heard. Perhaps you mean from a marketing perspective? Could your suggestions applied to an updated 3.7 with a sealed box and woofer drivers from the smart subs might be a consideration? As I understand it, as is common with so many integral self powered subs with Class D amps, the amps are often problematic. Would the sub drivers have huge power requirements? Too much to be practical with Class AB amps? @jafant , I don’t believe eq parts would be a concern. |
A Renaissance 3.5 would require all new drivers. The extant woofers are bulletproof and decent, but lack the sophistication of later designs. They are a 1985 solution. The replacement midrange needs to be a full range driver, which is findable, we just haven't yet succeeded - same with the tweeter. The XO upgrades I have been developing this past year all apply to the 3.5 to up the performance league dramatically. The EQ could also be executed better. It is all discrete, and therefore upgradable, but it is likely that a talented circuit designer could do the job better today. Now, IF the EQ could be a requirement rather than an option, then other possibilities emerge. The midrange / tweeter could run on one channel with no boost to its low end. The equalized woofer would run on the other channel for good power balance. The crossovers could be incorporated into the EQ before the power amplification stage. It is possible that the woofer, or all the drivers could run crossoverless for direct, lossless feed, or with driver-specific and tweakable elements installed in an outboard XO near the cabinet. Such an active-crossover analog solution would squarely fit Jim's approach and sensibilities, and indeed one of the original design pilots which was deemed unfeasible in the company's fledgling state. As an aside from history, I really like the 3.5 cabinet which shares technologies with the CS2 and 3 but obsoleted by the 2.2 and onward. Those early cabinets used MDF only for the baffle for its sculptability. The walls are 1-1/8" industrial particle board laminated both sides - for about 1.5x the stiffness of later 1" MDF cabinets. For production management reasons we landed on 1" MDF as our sole cabinet material. But the particle board is better. Obviously, I am personally more excited by this potential upgrade than by pairing the non-eq 3.5 with a sub. But it would take lots of doing by someone(s) with youthful talent and vigor to pull it off. BTW: the CS3 cabinet is functionally identical to the 3.5; the combined 3 and 3.5 models sold about 7000 pair, and the 03, 03a adds another 2000 pair build of 20mm FinPly (better than BalticBirch or ParticleBoard). Hmmm. |
unsound - points well taken. Thanks for your linked reminders. And a comment here. My thought was more from the perspective of the extreme difficulty of producing so much bass with the dynamic range and extension possible with today's digital techniques without running out of steam somewhere, especially at the lower reaches of the midrange driver. My hypothetical suggestion would include placing the stereo subwoofer pair to create proper time arrival with the main speakers. The main speakers would be relieved of their heavy chore of reaching all the way to 20 (or 40) Hertz. All that said, I really love the 3.5s I recently got via this thread, and do consider them, like others here, to be Jim's quintessential work in many ways. I also apply that to the (unsuccessful) CS5 short series. Of note is that those speakers are truly minimum phase transducers, all the way to the deepest bass - and the sound underscores it. More later. A guest just arrived. |
With all due (and sincere) respect for tomthiel, see my thoughts on removing the eq from the 3.5's here: https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/thiel-owners-2?page=12 |
Hi Everyone, Just dropping by to say hello for the first time in a while. Catching up with this thread is always part of my Friday routine and it’s lovely to see that there’s so much enthusiasm for this wonderful brand. I see one or two new folks with 3.5’s have joined the fun of late. To them I would say try your lovely speakers with dual subs and ditch the equalizer. That’s how I run mine and, with a bit of messing around to find the best sub locations, it takes the 3.5s to another level, in my view. Still very excited to follow Tom’s development work. Stay safe folks. |
Rob - a word for the record about insulation. There's quite a bit to it.Common wisdom is that wood is 'better' than glas, etc. , which I believe oversimplifies the situation considerably. The various materials act differently, so even at equal cost, specific application criteria apply. I ran extensive insulation comparisons at Thiel in the 80s. We landed at pure wool felt on the back wall of midrange enclosures - nothing else comes close to how well that acts in controlling reflections and so forth. In fact, we called the various engineered foams, batts, etc. "wishful engineering" due to their relatively poor performance. When it comes to filling cavities, polyester fiber-fill of various densities and fiberglas are the front runners. Wool has a bad habit of 'unloading' as frequency drops, which is contrary to what is often optimum. Polyester falls somewhere in the middle. Fiberglas has enough crooks and nodes to stand up to bass resonances without squirming. It outperforms the rest in my experience. That opinion is shared by some other designers of note. Big problems with 'glas include irritating dust and a sharp hand. But wait! all 'glas' is not created equal. Thiel's 'glas is not builder's fiberglas insulation, it is a clean, graded product for industrial use. I got our fiberglas certified to our insurer's satisfaction. If you want to compare different kinds of stuffing, I suggest measuring the outcome with REW, etc. to make sure you aren't compromising performance. Your correct dose will depend on outcome, not on comparative density, mass or volume. Most of the non-'glas products are likely to unload the bass to produce a lower Q with less flat response. Some folks might like that. Jim's goals were toward flat, uncolored bass extension with a 0.7 damping factor, which he considered the ideal. Some folks might prefer a fuller, looser bass from other materials. Let us know what you learn. |
The wool quilting batting is very light , so I learned that it is to light and I ended up filling the back half of the coaxial with the origninal fiber glass and the front with the wool I originally was using . I changed because after installing the new wiring the sound was bright , and compressing the insulation and wool eliminated the brightness . Using all wool the cost would become a factor , Maybe I'll try some bulk wool that is or can be more compressed , like the fiberglass . I haven't used the wool in the bass or passive radiator chamber yet , but queen size quilting batting is on it's way . I'm really enjoying the sound with the Cardas wiring , but I'm thinking about trying to reduce the gauge to the tweeters to see if that alone can or will affect the brightness . I can't say about the sonics of wool , it's less itchy and healthier to handle . |
Unsound - I like seeing you think outside the lines. Indeed that coax is a work of art that should find additional uses. To add some perspective, let me summarize Jim’s design process. •The drivers are developed against their optimum criteria.•Each driver is measured thoroughly in an infinite baffle, and in the cabinet.•The cabinet including baffle shape, chamber parameters are optimized to align the driver to its infinite baffle state (as much as possible).•Driver anomalies such as resonances, enclosure effects, etc. are evaluated regarding which ones can benefit from electronic (shaping) circuitry.•Iterative process of driver changes (surround compliance, mass, etc.) with XO circuitry to bring each driver closest to its 6dB/octave slopes.•Continual comparisons of components, layout, etc. for optimization within the cost constraints. It may be clear that changing a major element such as the driver, chamber size or baffle geometry for a different will have interactive effects on most of the design parameters. It was common for a speaker in development to get cabinet changes during development. It is likely that the new coax driver would have required different cabinet geometries, enclosure volumes, etc. to ’work’ as a colorless transducer at a level to satisfy Jim. Indeed with much smaller changes such as replacing the original CS2.2 midrange with the ScanSpeak 10F, there are significant XO changes required because all the resonances and T/S parameters are different from the original. In steep-slope designs a driver can be ’dropped in’ because most of the anomalous behavior is in the extended overlap zones which are attenuated by the steep slopes. We don’t have that luxury. Just my little peek behind the curtain regarding how everything is hooked to everything, nothing is simple, and no good idea goes unpunished. |
Hello rules - I suggest that the 3.7 chamber is probably larger than the 2.7 because the 3.7 XO frequency is lower than the 2.7 judging by the larger capacitor bank at the infeed of the 2.7. Redesigning a speaker is a massive undertaking. Budget a man-year more or less depending on your knowledge, skills and hardware. |
@thielrules, Thanks again. Excellent information. The price of the drivers doesn’t seem unreasonable. The required cabinet work might be more than I bargained for. Not to mention the crossover tweaking. @sljhigb, the original 3.5’s mid’s 50 Watt rating was an 8 Ohm minimum recommendation. It was capable of handling 500-600 Watts into it’s 4 Ohm load. |
Just picked up a pair of 3.5s 2 days ago. Paid $275, but the cabinets are pretty beat up… delaminated veneer, minor moisture damage, scratches & broken grill frames. Also, pushed in tweeter domes & a small dent in one mid-range frame. Nevertheless, the drivers reportedly all work and sound great. We shall see.
For me… this is the perfect purchase. Beautifully engineered audiophile speakers, highly successful design, years of development by experts with audio skills that far exceed mine. A great platform to work with. Woodworking is no problem; but, I’ve got several projects I’m still working so this one will have to wait a bit. Just starting research on these speakers and what may be my best approach. IF I were jumping in right now with the limited research done. I would look at: ESOTAR T330D tweeters (a favorite of mine) Scanspeak Illuminator 12MU/8731T-00, 4.5” Midrange Vifa M25WO-35 6 ohm 10" original Woofer Shelve the Bass Equalizer & add a 10” or 12” powered subwoofer to each speaker. I like to build powered sealed downfire SWs into the bottom of the speaker. The Illuminator mid-range is interesting as it solves some of the problems experienced with the original. SPLs a little higher, but it’s able to go lower (300Hz Xover no problem) and has 150W long term max power rating compared to around 50W with the original & 30W with the 10F. It would take a lot to burn up the voice coils on these. Appears to also be a little easier load on the amplifier and it reportedly sounds very good. But Oh-boy is it expensive & will require a bit more breathing room in the cabinet. Driver Name Fs Diameter Vas 2.83V/1m Re Freq/Res Power Price SS12MU/8731T 66Hz 86mm 5.8L 87.2dB 5.9 100-10KHz 150W $291 SS10F/8424G 90Hz 68mm 2.1L 86.6dB 5.8 150-12KHz 30W $190 SS12W/8524G 52Hz 86mm 8.2L 85.8dB 5.7 150-12KHz 70W $63 |
