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!
excellent point about boxes & packing. I must confess that I did not bring home (Texas to Alabama) the boxes for my 2.4SE speakers. I simply, did not have the room and did want wish to make that wonderful trek w/ the speakers in the bed of my truck.
Turns out the weather was perfect, no rain, that whole trip. Who knew? This is the 1 st time I have ever turned down the boxes. I did bring home the packing, manual and even the plastic bags/wrapping are #'d for this limited edition speaker. Top quality folks!
back to my old friend here- I know you and the Pass Labs will interlude again very soon. Go ahead and grab the amp before the value and prices continue to increase! PL is the best solid state in 2016.
Back to Ginger Baker- I saw the documentary and felt it was wonderful. Besides "cabling" I read -an avid reader on Biographies/Autobiographies on musicians and/or bands. The Beatles lead the way. Followed by The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Grateful Dead...so many others....
While most of these people are/were straight-up entertainers, others, like Keith Moon, John Bonham, Bon Scott and Mr. Baker, of course, have "demons" that make them tick. For better or worse (the ones who died way too early) those demons takes them to unhealthy places and dispositions.
The good news: we will always have their musical contributions! Happy Listening!
jafant, Yes I have run an All Spectral system for (20) years. All the required MIT ICs, Speaker, PCs. Currently MIT Oracle MA X. The best cables that I have used! And they love my current system: Manley Steelhead, Pass 160.8s, Avalons. The Oracle's are hard to beat! Yes the Spectral 4000 is a fantastic player. But I am a Vinyl Guy. (83) CDs , approaching (3000) LPs. $10,000 for a used Spectral CD is not an option. 25yr old CD connected to the (1) Manley input w/Oracle's makes CD tolerable to warmup system or listen while doing other things. MIT has updated their line. The Oracles can be had for fair prices on the used market and well worth the price. If you can pay even the used cost. Best Wishes
I want to hang out with you, my friend! Luckily, Manley and Pass Labs are sonic matches for Thiel loudspeakers. Additionally, I have read about owners using M.I.T. cabling to boot. A win-win-win- all around.
My X-150.5 is enroute from Nevada. Should arrive by this time next week.
Last night I heard my CS3.5's chanting for it, first a whisper, then a scream by this afternoon.
Couldn't take it any longer.
I might very well be DONE this time. I'm going to be more serious henceforth about what I THINK I'm missing with my system.
I'll post a revised set of photos in my virtual systems section upon its arrival. I'll be selling my Primare A34.2 class D amp to offset this re-purchase.
great to read! I can hardly await to read about your thoughts/impressions on matching the B.A.T. w/ a Pass Labs power amp! I do not think that I have read where an owner used both brands together. Interesting times indeed.
The main attraction will be the B.A.T. and your Transparent cabling. You may be the 1st to use such a combo. Hopefully ,synergy, will show up and blow you away!
I scored a replacement midrange driver for my 3.5s by placing a WTB ad on Audiogon. I soldered it in and voila! no perceivable change even though the mid driver I replaced had three holes on the surround. Since I thought the speakers sounded fine even before I started looking for a replacement there was no surprise. I will send the wornout driver to Thiel when the other one starts to fail. That way there is no down time for the repair. Now that I have the equalizer out of the circuit the other| driver may last forever.
By the way I've noticed a slight narrowing in the sound stage without the equalizer and a little better focus in the image overall. Everything involves a trade-off. For the moment I prefer the extra clarity in the sound to the slightly smaller stage. I have tube electronics so the highs are still smooth.
I also added a little more bass back in the system by raising the woofer crossover point. It may not measure as flat at my listening location but it moved the bass response closer to the original.
Good thread- Dave. Thanks! for sharing. I was not impressed w/ Aerial either after reading so many positive reviews. I wanted to like them do not get me wrong.
Flatter is better. I did some careful listening to mens and women's voices comparing the boosted bass mentioned in a previous post (which sounds closer to the bass with the CS3.5 equalizer ) versus the bass adjusted to have a flat response and guess what? Flatter is better. Women's voices are less chesty and Frank's voice is smoother.
If anyone wants to add a sub woofer to his system I strongly recommend one with the measurement and balancing tools similar to those that come with the Velodyne DD series. The auto-balancing feature is not so useful; you really have to get in there and manually adjust the phase angle, crossover frequency, crossover slope and several parametric equalizers as well as the subwoofer volume to obtain a flat response. And you need a microphone and a signal generator and software to display the measured response on a TV or computer screen. All of that comes with the DD series.
Well, it finally arrived this afternoon from Nevada...
My Primare A34.2 is back in the box, up for grabs here on the site.
Damn, I forgot how heavy the Pass X150.5 was. Is.
What I didn't forget was how great my Thiels sounded with it in the past. It's back, and it's staying. I'm done. It's playing now. I'm a happy camper.
Well...kinda done. I just bought a Khozmo passive preamp for a pittance here on the site just because...well...
I think the Pass is as uncolored an amplifier that a body could hope for, I think that my 3.5's are also as uncolored a speaker that one could wish for, so why not toss a passive pre into the chain and see what is...revealed? (No, I'm not giving up my B. A. T. preamp.) My system is now complete, with the only exception possible being the availability of 3.6's or higher in a geographically/financially desirable future.
I would like to offer up another dilemna facing me. The Pass and the BAT have XLR connects that I would like to use, but this takes the Thiel EQ out of the chain since it has RCA connects. I could purchase XLR adapters, but that pretty much defeats the intent altogether.
Richardp01, This is fourth time this week I've tried to respond to your question with attention it deserves. Every other time I lost the contents just before sending. Oy! In the mean time your follow up posts answered a lot of questions I had for you at that time. Obviously you have found that for your preferred set up, in your room, the 3.5's sans eq with the Velodyne DD12 works better for you. Who am I to argue with your success and satisfaction? I generally suggest keeping the 3.5's eq in the system for a variety of reasons, even when using a sub. One can actually get deeper bass response from some of Thiel's smaller, less expensive models than using the 3.5's without the eq. Very often multiple sources of bass output will smooth out bass nulls and peaks better than bass output from a single source. Unlike the dedicated bass channel such as is found in home theatre audio, stereo bass when summed to mono can send conflicting signals, compromising bass output. Typically I would expect two 10" woofers to have less energy storage and more agility than one 12" woofer. As for the effect of the eq on the rest of output, I have no doubt that you hear what you do, but I am surprised. It's interesting that of the reviews printed around the time of the 3.5's release, such as those found in the Absolute Sound, HiFi Heretic, Sensible Sound and the original Stereophile review from Anthony Cordesman, only the later Stereophile review (and the only one that readers can now find on line) from then editor and owner of Stereophile Larry Archibald (who BTW kept the 3.5' s as his reference loudspeakers for longer than any other speakers other than the later and much(!) more expensive Thiel CS 5's) found any quibbles with the eq. Even he found the 3.5's better with than without the eq. Interestingly enough he suggested a bit of sharpening, of higher frequencies with the eq which is quite a bit different than the smearing you've noticed. FWIW, I do agree with Larry Acrhibald's opinion of the eq, including his observation that many audiophile often already have a prejudice to these type of devices. Such different impressions happen often, for example, as I recall the reviewer for The Absolute Sound found the 3.5's to be a bit (paraphrasing here (it's been a long time)) too buttoned down and reticent, where as Larry Archibald found them a bit forward. Go figure. FWIW, I find them neutral. Your suggestion of relieving the demands on your 100 Watt tube amp is not without merit, but keep in mind that the eq starts to increase impedance and ergo sensitivity as it kicks in which mitigates the demands on the amplifier, especially a tube amp. While a 100 Watt tube amp could certainly be adequate depending on room and desired sound volume, a bigger amp could negate those concerns. As for your use of the Velodyne DD 12, I think that the placement of which in your room might have something to with the improvement you've noticed. As does the digital processing it provides. That processing is especially interesting to me, as I've been long considering using a digital room correction device with adjustable eq function as a replacement for the Theil provided eq. As you've discovered, the likes of which can adjust the bass response to ones particular room rather than some anechoic standard. I've yet to find a budget friendly unit with enough eq adjustability to match the 3.5's equalizer yet. As for the recommendation that others try the Velodyne, I think it important to note that the original asking price of the Velodyne DD 12 is more than the original cost of the 3.5's! I would imagine used prices being similar. Furthermore, if one were to consider using a subwoofer, I'd recommend considering using two rather than one, for the reasons above, even if that meant using smaller ones.
Very good discussion about the lower frequencies. There are proven, valid points there. I have two Smartsubs and even though there is wonderful adjustment for these, placement is still critical. Too close together and summed ouput was difficult at best. Experimentation with placement smoothed them out very nicely. We are actually tuning the room when doing this after all.
Another consideration is the superior time and phase superiority of the Thiels sealed box bass response over the ported, vented, etc. bass output of many subwoofers. Typically the bigger the driver the better the response gets at the lowest 1st octave, but the worse the response gets at progressively higher octaves,.
Dlcockrum, Ordinarily I would suggest that amps with the DR-9's power specs might be adequate, but not necessarily ideal. But, those older Classe' amps seem to be an exception to the rule and work beyond what their specs would suggest. Conservatively/under rated? I don't know. But a lot of Apogee users with their even more challenging load, seemed to indeed be very happy running those older Classe' amplifiers with them.
Richardpo1, Obviously I haven't examined all that many 3.5's without their grills, but the only times I've seen a 4 holed midrange drivers is on mismatched with a 3 hole midrange driver, on used pairs sold on e-bay. I've never seen a pair with two 4 holed midrange drivers. Perhaps different runs of drivers were made with different mounting brackets? I don't know. I'd hazard a guess that the 4 holed drivers might be the off the shelf drivers not made to Jim Thiel's specifications. Not sure what the exact differences might be, if any. Perhaps it's the short coil/ long gap motor, something else? I really don't know for sure, but until I know better, suspicion would cause me to avoid the 4 hole drivers.
dlcockrum, I always look forward to your contributions to this thread. IMHO, the CS 5's price aside were Thiel's absolute best performing speakers. When price is considered I have to give the nod to the 3.5's as his best total value. I agree the "I" versions without the pad damped woofers were a very nice improvement. Regrettably there was very little, if no follow up in the rags on the very nicely improved "I" version. Though I am not aware of any testing that would confirm this: I would imagine these later woofers without the attached damping pads would be much more amplifier friendly as well. I also agree that they are especially demanding of set up and associated gear. If it weren't for the expense of proper amplification, I'd probably own a pair. While very nice amps, I always felt that the afore mentioned Krell 250's were hazy in the upper frequencies and didn't quite have the signature bass quality typical of Krells. As much as the pressed loved it, it wasn't my favorite Krell. I much preferred the earlier KMA 160's and 400's. For a while Larry Archibald was using Levinson. Never amongst my favorites. For me they lacked the crispness that is sometimes part of the music, and didn't have the micro and macro dynamics that the Krells had in spades. Some time after the formal Stereophile review there was some mention that Larry Archibald was enthusiastic that he got the CS 5's to really sing with bigger 600 Watt Krells. I can't help but believe that the Thiels sometimes got unfairly blamed for accurately portraying what was really on the recording.
Obviously Jim Thiel did not work within a vacuum all those years. I have to assume that he assembled a fine team of craftsmen to assist in bringing his theories to fruition.
My question is, where did they all go when the new regime arrived and chose to abandon all that he worked for? I know a small part of the story already gained from articles on the web, so I guess my question here is does anyone have any further information?
By the way, this thread is one of the most informative and enjoyable ones I've come across here. The comments and suggestions I've received from many of the posts have made vast improvements in my system to date. Intelligent, rational discourse is as enjoyable to me as is listening to music.
I have a pair of 3.6s. And I want to say upfront, that I love my system. I was new to all of this, and the 3.6s were the first component purchase. And then the research soon took me to how important it was to power them correctly. So, initially I considered matching it with a Levinson, and called the current Thiel people, who recommended Bryston, which I settled on. At first, I looked at a lesser model, but decided to pony up for a few hundred dollars more and get the 4B SST, at 300w. The preamp was a long painful story, and once again ultimately ponied up a bit more than budget, and got a Tom Evans Vibe. Now some of this stuff is a bit uncommon, but good stuff (and expensive in it's time) but I was patient and got good deals on all of it. After a brief, initial go-round with cables/wires from monoprice, I returned the speaker wires, and began to focus on Anticables and Paul Speltz. I started with speaker cables. (Budget was pretty exhausted at this point.) And then several months later ditched the monoprice RCA interconnects for Anticable ICs, more or less completing the system, which is how it sits now. It was interesting: Through all of this, since I'm starting with no media collection, I'd subscribed to Tidal for lossless. And they have a page at their site where they'll play about six songs, and you choose A/B which one is lossless. If you get most all of them correct, they'll gift you a free month. The interesting thing is, try as I might, I could not succeed in correctly picking these -- until the final ICs from Anticables. Then it was clear; and I got six out of six. I was fascinated at just how much strong equipment I had, and it was that last element that enabled the system to "sing". The next upgrade (who knows when the budget will allow) will be for Anticable power cord. And then a second, for the amp. Yeah, I know I'm starting to sound like an advertisement, but I REALLY like their stuff. What I'd not yet mentioned is that I finished it with an OPPO blu-ray/media server, which I also like very much. Plugged my AppleTV into it, as well as a few terabytes of Network Attached Storage, for lossless downloads, and TIDAL streaming.
In all, I probably went about $500 over original budget for each of the amp and preamp. But I like the match; and really have no question that my current level of quality was driven by the Thiels. But I'm glad for the journey.
Jafant here is a vocal proponent of finding the correct cabling for our equipment. Until I began membership here I had a snake pit collection of various brands that I gave little thought to overall.
It's difficult for me to acknowledge that I've been a member here for only three years - and I mean that in a good way. Since joining this community my system has improved far beyond what it once was.
When I snared my first pair of 3.5's I was using what I would now term Radio Shack 12 gauge wire from a spool, and yet the Thiels literally "wowed" me upon first listen. One of the first "high end" speaker cables I purchased were entry level Anti-Cables from Mr. Speltz. I still have two pairs of different lengths due to changes in my audio stands, both Salamander.
Currently I have Transparent cabling throughout my system. I'd never before compared brands with across-the-board application since it's rather costly to do so, but it seems to be the only method of fairly reaching an opinion.
Today, as a result of your post I am going to reacquaint myself with my Anti-Cables speaker connects. From what I recall upon my first experience they made an articulate loudspeaker become even more so. And that's saying a LOT when it comes to my Thiels.
Excellent exchange of ideas, intel and thoughts about our beloved speakers- unsound and Dave. I look forward in your continued contributions. Happy Listening!
most important of all, is that , we have Rob at Thiel in Kentucky to take care of us older crowd and our legacy speakers. Cheers to Rob! Let's continue to keep him gainfully employed! Happy Listening!
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