Thiel Owners
Hey wire nuts - I've gone down a rabbit hole with Steven Hill about wire configurations, pros and cons and theoretical considerations that are way above my pay grade. I'm testing samples and configurations that he sends. Also, I have developed some observations about the normal vs parallel runs using my OCOS and Morrow wire. I'll chime in after Beetle shares his experience with us. And - someone here reported his 2.7s as having straight (non twisted) internal wire. I checked with Rob who said that all the 2.7s (all classic Thiels, period) had the normal Thiel wire. So those 2.7s were someone's hotrod. Back to the lab. |
@vair68robert Interesting idea about rewiring the binding plates. I’ll consider that if I decide I prefer your parallel configuration. Still running the standard. I want to have one more critical session with this configuration. Right, I have no intention of modding my Ayre. That volume control is mounted on the back plate for a reason :) |
@beetlemania If you decide to keep the pos/neg separate cable configuration then you might want to re-solder you speaker post so one is on the top and the other on the bottom , that way your cables can lay like you had them originally . You might want to consider increasing the gauge wire in your amp that goes to the speaker posts , my amp had 12 gauge and going up to the 9.5 was a definite improvement . |
Great timing jafant I installed Cardas ccgr speaker posts on my 2.7s last Friday and It's taken over 3 days to burn-in or break-in , bidding posts 3 days ! I now have Cardas 9.5awg chassis wire from the amp board to the speakers with ccgr posts on the amp and speakers and loving the smooth , deep and full sound . Synergy ! @beetlemania @unsound I started a thread questioning the improvement in sound with bi-wiring , you would have thought that I started a political conversation ! Like many things in the audiophile world, from hard to imposible to measure with anything but your own ears . |
@tomthiel Right, I switched back to the “normal” configuration one week ago Tuesday and listened over the weekend. It sounded similar: open, clear and relaxed. One conclusion is that my DAC must have needed >500 hours to fully break in. But I do think the parallel configuration sounds just a bit more more relaxed and open. I had the thought to compare side by side in mono like I did during the XO work but haven’t been motivated enough to do that. One issue with the parallel configuration is that the cables are more elevated off the floor and for more of their run. My right channel is near the back door and house guests occasionally kick the cables off their risers even in the normal configuration. But, hey, no house guests during a pandemic! I’ll probably try the parallel configuration one more time. It did seem magical even if I’m now uncertain it made more than a small difference. |
I do enjoy the time I get in the studio. But there isn’t enough. I am comparing the wire configurations, but won’t be able to run all the permutations. I am comparing single and double runs of SW Octave II against Morrow 4 against OCOS without Zobels. Eventually I’ll break those out to individual runs for each driver as suggested by Unsound. Beetle - can you report on parallel vs bundled runs? Your reports are a treat. |
JA - regarding PowerPlanes, there’s a short and a longer answer. The short is that the PowerPlanes were intended for home theater surround channels. The longer answer is hearsay from insiders, that wall or ceiling plane speakers never seem to generate 3-D imaging cues and their directional nature is strong. Especially in a ceiling application it is obvious that the sound source is from above, firing down. I don’t know which of the PowerDriver products came first or whether they were all introduced simultaneously, but I have heard that the PowerPoint with its 45° launch plane is considered the performance winner. The unique launch allows 3D characteristics. For the PowerPlanes, I suggest front wall mounting as the best chance for a good stereo image. That recommendation is based on knowledge that we find directional information unsettling when it comes from behind, overhead, or is ambiguous, such as front speakers firing inward from side walls. The PowerPoint floats the wave in the room with less source specificity. |
All As we enjoy a little downtime, I wanted to direct your Audiophile attention to HiFi Chats via HiFi Buys Atlanta. This Q&A series is just taking off with many more episodes in production. A very cool concept where the viewer sees some of the brilliant minds behind our favorite Audio brand(s). Happy Listening! |
Andy, I did a lot of work with rephase last summer, compared linear and min phase xo and equalized individual drivers and room effects. Used my 2 sets of cs3 to compare the results. The software is excellent. Give it a try. Can offer some help if you have questions as the manual is a long thread on diyaudio. |
niodari Good to see you again. Your ears do not deceive- Wilson Audio loudspeakers do exhibit a slight coloration. This is not a bad thing, IMO. Thiel or Wilson, either way, one cannot go wrong. It is a matter of pesonal preference. I will second those early Black Sabbath albums. Hope you are well this Spring. Happy Listening! |
Mr. Bill- looking down on the room in bird's eye view, my floor standing speakers are 4' out from the south wall. But my PPs are not along that south wall. The "testing corner" is the south east corner. The right speaker is 3' out from the SE corner, hanging on the south wall with its tail near the ceiling. The left speaker is 3' out from that SE corner, hanging on the east wall. The floor to ceiling corner baffle is in that SE corner with the left subwoofer under the left speaker, flush mounted through the east wall, extending into a roofed area. The right sub cannot be flush-mounted because the south wall is not thick enough. I face the corner to listen, which makes a very flat, even recording and playback response, due in large part to the non-rectangular room layout. The room is an L, with one leg going along the south exterior wall and the other going along the east exterior wall, providing long symmetrical walls for each speaker propagation. There is no wall behind me to reflect sound, but rather the crook of the L, and those remaining walls are all porous, providing enough air containment for spatial signature, but not enough to support room modes. |
As you might have guessed by now, my installation is weird. My PPs are in a corner at 3' each from the corner with their tails near the ceiling. ( I couldn't get 4' due to physical constraints.) Their 45° vertical and horizontal launch from the symmetrical corner fills the room with little to no modes. Tom, Im trying to visualize the placement. Are the PPs each in a corner on the front wall (wall you face to listen) mounted hanging downward? |
Thiels never fail to reproduce naturally I would agree with that. On the other hand, higher order speakers tend to have some extra details or trebles on the voice that makes the voice "clearer" but not naturally. When you listen to a person talking in real life, you don’t hear the extra details that sometimes being reproduced by the speakers. On the same token, when the drum beats, the higher order speakers have some extra sparkles on the top end that makes it appear to have more slam, but probably not there on the real drum in real life. But some people may prefer the extra slam and sparkle of the higher order speaker so it's not like one is better than the other. |
The sound clarify in the second one is far from natural and has much distortions. I like heavy rock but would not measure speaker characteristics based on that kind of music (even some early Black Sabbath recordings are better for this purpose). There is no way to reproduce such recording naturally so it is hard to judge on speaker quality for that kind of recording, in contrary to the first one. Thiels never fail to reproduce naturally human voice, in particular. |
The differences are subtle, but important. Thiel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkf5uscX7Mg ATC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_QsAlqTN_E |
That's why I think either approach has its merits. To say one is "better" than the other is missing the point. As I also said in my previous posts (many posts ago), high-order speakers such as 24db/slope tend to have more "slam" vs. first order speaker, but on the other hand, first order speakers have a certain naturalness that not found in higher order speakers. |
@andy2 - I have both. I have two (or so) stereos and one is Thiel. The other has some active ATC 110s. I love both but I think there's no way to say one is better because there are inherent tradeoffs. The ATC system has dynamics that the Thiels can't come close to. The Thiels have a different kind of realism with unamplified, acoustic music that the ATCs can't touch. I like a variety of music and for any particular recording one system is almost always a clear winner. |
jon_5912, I'll let Tom comment with regard to your post. Personally, I think there's a market for both: time-phase coherent and non-time-phase coherent. There are plus and minus in either approach. Tom seems to think time-phase coherent is the only way to go. The new Thiel management seems to think otherwise. I was not there, but it seems like the lack of a reconciliation of the two polar opposite idea was what had done them in. If there was a middle of the road, maybe Thiel would still be around. |
@andy2 - I thought that's the direction new Thiel should have gone. Thiel had great drivers, great cabinets, but nobody who could do the crossover design. If they had gone with computer based crossovers they could've had multiple crossover settings where one was phase correct and the other higher order to allow for increased dynamic range. It may have been the best of both worlds and I think achievable. Give some big Thiels a fourth order crossover and I bet they'd have incredible dynamic range due to the fantastic drivers built for far wider bandwidth than they'd need to handle. I wonder if they discussed it before deciding to make the most unnecessary products ever conceived. |
Out of curiosity, has anyone here listen to speaker that has been corrected by the program Python rePhase? I think Tom did mention he had listened to before and after rephase? Does the sound change at all? The correction done by rePhase can be done in software so there is no hardware involved. People has listened to both before and after with everything else -- speakers, amps ... -- some say there is a difference some say not. For background, rePhase claims it can transform any speakers into time-phase coherent. |
fitter468 re PowerPlanes - I have never lived with PowerPlanes, but I have and use PowerPoint 1.2s, which are the same PowerDriver 6.5"x 1" coax. Pretty special. The woofer has dual front and rear cones with a styrene filler core, and the tweeter is the same as the 3.7, etc. I imagine that your PPlanes will have similar performance to the PPoints, which I call excellent by any measure. FWIW, I revised my installation to now have acoustic ceiling panel on the previous 1.5" felted foam roofing insulation, on 1/2" drywall on 2x6 studs, braced at their mid-point. It's a structurally rigid wall with progressively absorbent skin. I now have a SS2 in the wall under the left speaker and hope to get my SS1 repaired for a right-channel matching subwoofer. The PPoint is -3dB at 80Hz with sealed box 12dB/ octave and the Thiel SSub Passive XO matches that transition for as seamless a hand-off as I've heard. As you might have guessed by now, my installation is weird. My PPs are in a corner at 3' each from the corner with their tails near the ceiling. ( I couldn't get 4' due to physical constraints.) Their 45° vertical and horizontal launch from the symmetrical corner fills the room with little to no modes. A couple of potential problems were addressed. The vertical corner between them is filled with a 16" wide 45° floor to ceiling baffle. At the ceiling, there is a corner baffle at 45° to the ceiling for mounting drivers under test. The ceiling and floor behind the corner baffle have holes to vent back-pressure to the attic above and workshop below. That corner triangular void is insulated in the back 2 walls, plus acoustic cellulose on the back of the plywood baffle. I can measure no resonances in it. The bottom 2' has no plywood front face, but rather solely a piece of acoustic tile to dump the 3-plane floor-corner walls bass pressure into the insulated corner void and leak into the attic above and the workshop below. The room ceiling is finished in drywall. Both exterior walls are finished with acoustic tile on foam board and the interior finish on the 45° baffle is F11 wool felt on acoustic tile. This setup is my third (and final!) iteration of the idea of a quiet corner. I can test drivers or musical instruments or recorded voice / ensemble in this corner and play it back in the same environment. Very revealing of what's going on. I like it. The PowerPoints (and probably your PowerPlanes) produce a very solid, dense image with no discernible room or cabinet edge effects. Since they take no floor space, and present wonderful sound into the whole room and beyond, I would be happy with them as my sole playback source. Let us know how your PowerPlane installation shapes up. |
I've loved reading all the history and learning about Thiel speakers in this amazing thread from Tom. But it has come time for me to part with my CS7's. They are beautiful speakers but I have too many constraints to do them justice. Hope to find someone that can showcase them in their home. https://www.audiogon.com/listings/lisa223f-thiel-audio-cs-7-full-range Cheers, -Mike |
