tomic601
Laughing...I had forgotten about the Bullet Tweeter.
Happy Listening!
Laughing...I had forgotten about the Bullet Tweeter.
Happy Listening!
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
The antithesis of the 'classic' Thiel sound, often stereotyped, never copied? I'm pulling these purely out of memory from dozens of audio shows and general familiarity, not A/B home listening! I could be wrong on any of these, corrections are welcome. Sonus Faber, rich, romantic, not particularly 'fast.' Harbeth, Spendor, or several British speakers (among others I'm sure) that still have the 'BBC dip' as part of their sonic design intent (a dip in the upper midrange to make them sound less-forward, more-'polite'). Magnepan or Apogees, the opposite of box speakers, with dipole radiation, narrow lateral dispersion, broad wide imaging (the antithesis of 'pinpoint'), limited bass dynamics and extension, certainly not bright. (I'm leaving out true electrostatics as so often reviewers compare Thiel's speed and coherence to them). Horn loaded speakers starting with Klipsch, including some of the Cerwin Vegas mentioned. Huge SPLs with no danger of frying a midrange coax. Not that any of these brands are innately 'inferior' or 'worse' than Thiels, but that their design briefs -- by choice or speaker type -- are quite different. |
@jafant & @jazzman7 You guys definitely bring back some memories! Back in high school, when car stereo was HUGE, I remember the local installer/enthusiast community absolutely loved Cerwin Vegas. They were more then once described as the “home version of a 2000 watt bass box”! LOL...the things we loved from our youth, right? Arvin C |
Question for the group: What would you consider...whether it be a brand, model or speaker type...that would be most opposite of what Thiels are? IOW, the antithesis of Thiel. Not trying to be inflammatory or anything like that, just something I have been wondering about as I read/watch more and more speaker reviews. Tom: I have not yet been able to try tilting my 3.5’s back as my business trip away from home is lasting a second week, but will report back once I am able to. Hope everyone’s doing well... Arvin C |
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. |
tomthiel -- and I presume his determination applied to the amplifier's ability to triple its short-term output into the lowest frequencies, the most problematic for any amp. I believe the IHF dynamic headroom test specified 1kHz, which obviously had little-to-no bearing on the amp's headroom into the bottom octaves. Manufacturers were then spec'ing continuous power output over the full 20-20k Hz bandwidth, but many of those amps were tapped out at 20Hz. Ask them for more power at those frequencies and it's no surprise they'd clip and burn tweeters, How many amps of that era actually had the balls to triple their continuous output for 1/4 second at 20Hz into a demanding Thiel load?? That sounds like quite a feat for even today's best amps! |
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. |
Also, for many of these specifications, there isn’t any internationally agreed-upon measurement technique or standardization for something like peak current. An amp may deliver 60A peak for a millisecond, but any musical transient is much longer than that. But for 250 ms, that same amp may only be able to provide say 20A, and perhaps 8A continuous. The last time I believe this was standardized was the IHF dynamic headroom measurement, which was how much more power was available on a 20ms toneburst than on a continuous basis. But even this method was compromised as it was found that most fast musical transients are in the 80-200ms range, and I don’t believe a 200ms dynamic headroom test was ever standardized. Others may correct me. Back when this was part of an amp’s specs, a doubling (spec'd as 3dB) of the continuous power output with a 20ms toneburst was considered respectable. |
My understanding is a faster slew rate for a given component is better -- up to a point at which little-to-no difference is heard. Musical transients are only so fast, and if the component is substantially faster than the fastest musical transients, generally straightforward to do these days, you're good. That's not to say within the component you don't need much faster slew rates, like the I/V converter after the DAC chip. Sort of like
high-frequency response and harmonic distortion. Above say 300kHz and below say 0.01%, do better numbers equal better sound? My indirect experience says after achieving these specs, focus on other elements of the circuit or internal components to optimize the sound by ear and less-conventional numerics. |
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. |
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. |
tomthiel As I started my higher end education back in the early 1990's via Stereophile and TAS subscriptions, I recall, Slew Rate being discussed quite often by the reviewers. In 2020, is this factor relevant as it pertains to power amplifiers? I will concur with the CS 3.7 being very efficient, as well as, models CS 2.4, 2.4SE and 2.7. Happy Listening! |
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. |
The 2.8 minimum impedance are manufacturer specs. There have been independent measurements (e.g.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/thiel-cs37-loudspeaker-measurements) indicating it is either 2.4 or 2.3. I've had different amps on my 3.7s including a Bryston 4BSST, 14BSST, Modwright KWA 150SE and the last two have been Class D (using a Ric Schultz EVS 1200 now). When my friend worked at a hifi shop many moons ago, I helped deliver a bunch of things and often Thiel was paired with Levinson (when I had my 7.2s I had a Proceed HPA). Like anything else it is dependent one's room and listening habits (music preferences and loudness level). My main room in the old place (I started with 2.3s, then 7.2s and then 3.7s) was huge (something like 7,000 cubic feet that opened into other spaces and when I had an old Bryston 4BST (not the SST), I actually drove it into momentary clipping. The 14BSST (15 amp version) could not handle the impedance (would go into thermal shutdown during music or movies which where somewhat intense) and I ended up building a custom amp stand with fans (which solved the issue). The 3BSST wasn't as bad a load but would get the 14BSST heat sinks hot enough to burn one's hand. The Modwright amp ran a hair cooler (and the heatsinks where inside the case). The room in the new place is big but not as big as the old place and the Modwright did a bit better but not as well as either of the Class Ds I've used (which bested it in every way and it still shocks me to touch the amp case and hardly feel anything warmth. |
@unsound Is there a technical reason that the "double down" ratio keeps popping up?For instance, the DMA_400 listed above does not do this in sequence from 8 ohms to 4 to 2, but as I run the numbers it seems more than adequate. Is that right, or does "doubling down" refer to an important harmonic ratio needed here? Also, the minimum impedence of the 3.7 is 2.8 ohms, so perhaps we need to consider that the DMA-400 does indeed double from the 8 ohm rating to the 2 ohm. Thanks again for any thoughts on this. |
@unsound,Yikes -- I pasted the specs for the DMA-300 into the DMA-400 slot. To amend:
Power Output DMA-400 (continuous) @ 8 ohms - 350 Watts RMS @ 4 ohms - 560 Watts RMS
@ 2 ohms - 705 Watts RMS Output Current 90 Amps peak Frequency Response ą0.1 dB, DC-150 KHz ą1 dB, DC-1 MHz ą3 dB, DC-1.8 MHz Thiel actually checked out worse on Stereophile specs, going down to only 26 kHZ, not 22 as stated in my manual (weird), DMA-300 is same as quoted. Alright! Sorry about the confusion. |
@tmsrdg, re: Spectral and Thiel, the specs you posted are a bit off for both brands. Both brands are a bit better than posted. From a technical standpoint though not quite absolutely ideal they should be an appropriate, adequate combination so long as one doesn’t play too loud and/or play in too large a room. When I lived in NYC my most often used dealer carried both lines. They frequently paired them with various Thiel models. Interestingly, they never seemed to be paired for long durations. I have not heard the combinations with more modern Thiel’s. I’m not quite sure but perhaps the CS 2.3’s were the last models I’ve heard them paired with. From a technical standpoint the more recent Thiel’s are a bit more challenging for the Spectral’s than the legacy Thiel’s, but still appropriate. Sonically, I can imagine models like the CS 3.7’s perhaps being a bit better fit than the legacy Thiel’s. But, that’s just speculative. FWIW, IMHO, While I have true respect for the Spectral gear, I never much cared for them. To my ears, while fast and clean and pure, they sounded somewhat white and bleached. Spectral was a long time Absolute Sound editor’s choice favorite; Stephen Hill used Thiel 3.5’s with a Spectral DMA-50 amp (Threshold pre and Straightwire Maestro cables) for mastering the "the absolute sound HEARTS of SPACE" recording. And they did work rather well in the famous Avalon, MIT "2C3D" systems that were deservedly quite famous. (FYI, I’m not a fan of MIT cabling with Thiel’s either. YMMV!) The somewhat unique technical characteristics make system matching somewhat more limiting than most, and I would recommend making inquires into parts and service availabilities before purchase. Not my first choice, but I can certainly imagine others enjoying the combinations. |
Hello jafant, Around the same time I had the Vault 2 installed (had to have my dealer run CAT5 cabling to my listening area), I inserted MIT Terminator 2 cables from my LS7 line stage to the Thiel Bass Equalizer and then to the amp. Former cables were Audioquest Golden Gate and King Cobra to the amp. While I do believe the MIT's are probably more resolving in some way, I do think the Vault's DAC is more likely the cause as it renders some of my ripped CD's with a presentation that's a bit more forward and lean than I remember. Will try Tom's suggestion on listening height this weekend as I also swapped out my old listening chair just before getting the MIT cables and Vault 2 installed. Happy listening! Arvin C |
Thanks for the kind comments, jafant and Tom...truly appreciated! Tom: Wow...your wealth of information in all things Thiel is truly a blessing! I have limitations with seating position due to my ground floor family room...basically, I’ve split it in thirds lengthwise, with a sectional facing my flat panel taking up the "front" 2/3's and my listening area taking up the last "back" third, but arranged width wise as you saw in the pictures. I am sitting a bit closer than I’d like for my taste. Where your comments on ear height ring so true is that I used to have a chair where I did sit lower, but my wife hated that it was so beat up, so we junked it but never truly replaced it. So, I’m using the spare office chair you saw in the pics. I have noticed that my 3.5’s have become more "touchy" with certain material where higher frequencies have become much more grainy and pronounced. This wasn’t always so, but I chalked it up to switching cables or the addition of the Bluesound Vault and its on-board DAC. I will try your suggestion regarding ear height...Thanks again for the suggestion and your invaluable information! Arvin C |
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 |
Hello all! This past weekend, I finally got a chance to hook up the second ARC D240 MKII amp to my system. In bridged-mono mode, the amps effectively double their power to 480 watts/each at 8 ohms...very powerful indeed! This was immediately noticeable in the way my 3.5’s performed...low level detail and clarity was outstanding as was the overall "slam" on bass-heavy passages. Also peculiar was the effect this had on the Thiel Bass Equalizer: before, I didn’t really notice a difference between the 40Hz - 20Hz settings. Now, there was a definite change in the character of the presentation. As far as the rest of the performance, the soundstage seemed to grow deeper, with instrumentation more layered and pronounced than before. I never got the sense that the Thiels "disappeared", but they are definitely less "in your face" than before. However, the details and nuances in well recorded materials are even more noticeable, even more defined than before. The overall sense I get is that the extra control and headroom that this bridged-mono configuration has on my speakers has been well worth the wait. I had been searching for the better part of 18 months for another amp to match with my own and in this case, patience was well rewarded. Before, I had always wondered "How can I make my Thiels sing better?" Now, I am completely satisfied in knowing they are getting all the power and current they need. For reference sake, here’s what my little listening area looks like: https://www.flickr.com/photos/arvincastro/sets/72157713245305663 Going into this, I set a price limit for $1000/component to see how good of a system I could assemble on a modest budget. While I know I am decidedly on the "vintage" path in terms of ARC gear, the high-quality, fit and finish and performance remain as good as anything I could hope to get for the price. Plus, I just love the way it sounds! Thanks for letting me share...Hope everyone’s doing well! Arvin C |
tmsrdg "I realize this is getting somewhat off the forum topic, but the folks at Berkeley Audio tell me that they run the Alpha DAC directly into Spectral amps, with excellent results.So right now, I'm looking at the Spectral DMA-300. " Without being cheeky I think your making a good decision , one less interconnect cable , one less power cord leaving more $ for your amp or speaker cable upgrade . I use a passive preamp because I need an attenuator and selector . I'm one of the minimalists , less between the music and the speakers . You should look into other forums on the topic passive vs. active , in your case preamp or no preamp that is the question . And The Band Played On Rob |
My two cents and two thousand words on Spectral products. It seems the only press they get (along with the Berkeley Alpha DAC) is Robert Harley, for better or worse. Goodwins audio outside Boston carry both, and I had a thorough audition of the Alpha DAC in 2012 soon after it first came out, but more to the point here, a good taste of the Spectral DMC 30 preamp (driving non-Spectral amps in this case), after auditioning DACs through a very good ’other’ preamp. On the same material, in comparison, the front-to-rear layering of the soundstage, even on studio recordings, was unlike anything I’d heard in hifi before, combined with a near-holographic stereo image. The top octaves, despite modest digital source material (on a $22,000 dCS CD player), were pristine, precise, super-fast, but entirely natural, and actually seemed on the ’darker’ side of neutral. My initial response was certainly amazement, but that didn’t allow for a more-accurate long-term assessment. As my time in the room (after coming to hear DACs) was finishing up, I couldn’t listen to all I would have liked to, but my impressions were beyond other high-end preamps I’m familiar with, or was . The company seems pretty low-key, archaic website, and design the best product they can, and leave them alone for years. The preamps have the decent control flexibility I like. It seems the wide bandwidth can cut both ways. There’s certainly no musical information in the MHz, but it does make for perfect transients, even if the high frequency noise screws with downstream amps. My own preamp is spec’d -3dB@>0.5MHz vs Spectral’s 1.5MHz, so I don’t know what frequency the issues begin, but I’m sure there’s more to it. This engineer likes their internal layout, design approach, relevant innovations, product cycle longevity, sane pricing, application of RF instrumentation technologies, true research into semiconductor physics and other details that are taken for granted out of necessity by other high-end designers. I would sure like to audition a DMC-30 at home! A good friend had Alan Goodwin design a ground-up ultimate listening room within the foundation of his cost-no-object new construction, optimized for 2-channel, but also has 5.1. Spectral DMA-360 amps (and preamp) all around (driving large Avalons), and to my current awareness they’ve been on 24/7 for twenty years without issue. Yes, it sounds amazing, but primarily because of a perfect acoustic, perfect absorption and T60 across all frequencies, and perfect bass loading, something never heard in even a well-treated home room turned listening room. |
OK, I realize this is getting somewhat off the forum topic, but the folks at Berkeley Audio tell me that they run the Alpha DAC directly into Spectral amps, with excellent results.So right now, I'm looking at the Spectral DMA-300. Specs as follows:Power Output (continuous): @ 8 ohms - 225 Watts RMS, @ 4 ohms - 410 Watts RMS, @ 2 ohms - 615 Watts RMS Output Current: 60 Amps peak per channelFrequency Response: a0.1 dB, DC-150 KHz,a1 dB, DC-1 MHz, a3 dB, DC-1.8 MHz or the DMA 400Power Output (continuous): @ 8 ohms - 225 Watts RMS,@ 4 ohms - 410 Watts RMS,@ 2 ohms - 615 Watts RMS Output Current: 60 Amps peak per channel Frequency Response: same as DMA-300 to use with my Thiel 3.7s in my 20x20x8, one side opening into another room, listening spaceThiel 3.7 specs: Amplitude Response 33HZ-22kHz +/- 2DB; Sensitivity 90db@2.8 V-1m; Impedance 4 ohms (2.8 minimum), Recommended power 200-600 watts As far as I can tell, either of these amps would do fine, with the caveat that they do not do the coveted "doubling down." I need some help with this. Any thoughts on these amp/speaker pairings will be greatly appreciated!Todd |
@nkonor & @rascs: How does Spectral's high-bandwidth, ultra fast designs manifest themselves in the final sound that one hears from the system? Again, I have not as yet had the pleasure of listening to a Spectral system, but my intrigue grows the more I learn & read about them. Thanks for any thoughts! |
@ tmsrdg and @ nkonor Thanks for your question. It looks like Spectral is getting a lot of attention here recently. I am also a long term Spectral owner, going back to the mid 90s and as I mentioned before I have never had any reliability issues apart from a backlit logo failing 15 years out of warranty. I am only superficially familiar with your Berkley D/A, I have read their reviews. Remember the amplifiers can reproduce high frequencies much higher than the output of the D/A- which is 59KHz . The amps are rated to over a mega or million Hz. Without knowing what the analog circuits are doing at extreme frequencies you are and Spectral techs will confirm that you are running risk of damaging the amplifier. In addition, I see the the maximum energy usage of the Berkley is 25-30 Watts, which to me infers that you would likely do better to have the Spectral preamp between the D/A and the amp. Remember the D/A will have to drive not only the interconnect cables, but also the input impedance of the amp. The output of the D/A does not have a current rating but does have a maximum output voltage of 3.25V. The preamps from Spectral typically have a peak to peak voltage capability of 100V and maximum current output of 1amp (!!), fully comfortable with driving difficult loads. I have heard the phrases of "wire with gain" or "the best preamp is no preamp." I would agree that it is very counter intuitive to add something between the source and the amplifier and not lose information in the process. But, I have heard in my system, in friend's systems, adding a preamplifier can dramatically improve the sound of the system because it is more comfortable driving the cables + amplifier. By dramatic, I mean in every way- quieter background, deeper bass and drive, complex harmonic textures revealed, wider and deeper soundstage, holographic imaging, more engaging dynamics. Spectral did make an amplifier called the DMA 150 Universal in the early 2000s that had an extra, small internal circuit board that allowed you to switch the amp to work with a non-Spectral preamplifier. But engaging the circuit that limited the bandwidth of the amp at its input and was detrimental. I would recommend a preamp. I would gladly trade you one of mine for your CS3.7s :) Hope this is helpful and I am happy to have discovered this thread. Happy listening! |
