@solobone22 I went the ARC route ( REF5SE but the Aesthetix has it’s many virtues. I have Jim Whites DAC.
Jim
Jim
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!
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@tomic601: "How they measure is hyper important IF the art is to move forward" I agree 100% with this when it comes to any and all speaker designers, manufacturers and researchers. Most of the real progress has come from individuals and/or companies with both the insight and the access to, or creation of, SOTA measurement gear. Uh, Thiel for example :-) My point was that the majority of those who purchase the end-product have little background to make sense of a manufacturer's (usually) minimal published specifications, or interpret the one or two independent lab tests, if they even exist for the speaker under purchase consideration. There's the small minority of us here who do have a clue about the measurements' relevance, but all of us will have to admit they don't substitute for how any speaker sounds in a particular acoustic with all the combinations of upstream hardware. |
As an electrical test engineer and lifelong audio geek, I've found Stereophile's measurements rudimentary. For the most part, the testing strategies, reporting, and the depth of analysis hasn't evolved in decades. And they don't tell us a whole lot; today all equipment should measure great to Stereophile standards, and, as mentioned, the attempts at correlating the minimalist measurements with the reviewer's impressions are weak at best. Looking back at some magazine equipment test reports from the '70s and '80s is instructive. People are right to complain the reviews were 50% or more a thorough reporting on a multitude of valid measurements, and at best a paragraph on the (particularly electronics) subjective sound. BUT the measurements were solid and for the most part far more comprehensive than JA's. The instrumentation and printing of the day didn't allow for as many pictures of graphs, but the authors got the information across, at least to those who could interpret the specs for what they were. A lot of the measurements that had the most relevance are of little use for today's gear: tape decks, tuners, tone controls. But two pieces that were very well-tested that seems entirely lacking today were turntables and phono cartridges, where the measurements generally did do a reasonably good job of reflecting each component's sonics when contextualized with listening comments. Today all vinyl playback gear I've read about is entirely subjective. A frequency response plot of a properly aligned and loaded cartridge is VERY relevant but for one example. Finally, to the points on this forum, even the speaker testing was often more involved. This was before FFT instrumentation and RTA analyzers, but Hirsch-Houck and CBS labs, among others, used the best techniques they had available to get a handle on loudspeaker measurements, and were clear where they encountered measurement limitations that may not correlate to actual listening. They published measured distortion throughout the frequencies at various levels, often toneburst reproduction and interpretations of it, impedance vs frequency, farfield frequency response with pink noise from various (and combined) positions, and more, that for 30-40+ years ago gave a good idea of how a particular speaker might perform. It doesn't seem this has evolved very much at the consumer level in any publication I'm aware of. Though I rarely read much of the audiophile press with any regularity! For me, like the rest of us, -- in this forum -- how my Thiels actually sound with proper setup and upstream hardware is far more important than how they measure. But the engineer in me still wants to connect with my chosen gear from the standpoint of thoughtful, solid, and often clever, engineering I agree with, long-term durability, fad-free design, and as far as I'm able to discern, specs that don't reveal shortcomings or shortcuts in the design or execution of the end product. To quote Michael Fremer, "I'm a Giant Walking Opinion." |
Yes, in the 1990s there were a couple of Thiel reviews wherein JA acknowledged the "suckout" was probably more a result of his techniques than actual performance. From the CS2.3 measurements section:
The 50" mike distance I use is a compromise between the need for correct drive-unit integration and the opposed need for midrange resolution in the resulting graph. But it is possible that the lack of presence-region energy in fig.3 is actually due to the 50" mike distance and is not real, in that it disappears at the farther distances at which a speaker like the Thiel will be listened to. There was at least one other Thiel review wherein he said something similar. But I think he didn't write a word about this in any Thiel review after ca. 2000. I am thankful for how JA built Stereophile up, particularly, becoming the only US audio mag with subjective reviews *and* measurements (even if the measurements have obvious faults, at least they're applied equally to all products). But present day Stereophile is not for me. |
Beetle - JA's testing procedure was dictated by physical / budget constraints. Fair enough. In the early years he explained how / in what ways his measurements were misconstruing the truth. But as time went on, he spoke as though the anomalies from his procedural limitations were real, such as not mentioning that anomaly A, B, Etc. would vanish at a 2.5 or 3 meter listening distance. He also gravitated toward language showing how his measurements confirmed or related to the reviewer's listening notes, rather than the actual parameters of the product under test. This editorial drift smacks of publisher's demands for internal self-legitimization. JA certainly has the knowledge and experience to understand the territory, and the linguistic skills to explain it well. Whereas founder Gordon Holt and second publisher Larry Archibald were true music and gear lovers, it doesn't seem like the subsequent publishers had service of music as their driving principle. |
@tomic601 Did Stereophile review the Kento already? I didn’t renew my subscription last year. Not happy with JA’s promotion, even hype, of MQA. Jim Austin taking the reins was a deal breaker for me. Meanwhile, JA’s protocols really put Thiels and Vandersteens at a disadvantage. Comparing Stereophile’s and Soundstage’s measurements of the CS2.4, for example, it’s almost like they were not measuring the same speaker (Soundstage contracts with NRC which has a real anechoic chamber and they can measure at 2 m). The 2.4 has what appears to be the flattest frequency response in the Soundstage database! |
@solobone22 Hello! Thanks for sharing your experience...especially considering Bel Canto’s amps are definitely on my short list of auditioning. I may have to adjust my thinking as I am primarily looking at D-amplification from an efficiency standpoint but haven’t researched too deeply in how well it would match with the rest of my tube-based gear...especially considering I went with tube line stage & phono preamp to add some “lushness” to the revealing nature of my CS3.5’s. Thanks again & please let me know how those 600M’s go along with your Levinson. Arvin |
@arvincastro regarding Class D amps - I have a pair of the Bel Canto REF600M monos. My initial impression driving either 2.7's or 3.6's wasn't favorable and I believe this was due to a poor match with other associated components. At the time everything that I had was going towards the accurate side of the spectrum and this may have not been a good recipe to insert the Bel Cantos into. I need to try them again with the Thiels using my newest preamp - a Levinson 326s. As a point of partial reference I'm running the 2.7's with Bryston 7BST monos and the 3.6's with a Krell TAS in stereo mode. The Bel Canto amps are currently running B&W CDM1SE's in an office system with excellent results. |
Well, I bought a pair of ViewPoints off ebay for $450. I don't have a real specific use in mind yet. They might be surrounds, might end up used as computer speakers. Maybe I'll take them to work and use them to listen to music at work. I'm frequently the first one in the office and I have an hour or so before anyone else gets in. I'm guessing these are probably as good as the PowerPoints and an off the chart bargain at the price. |
Tomic - Thiel's early approach was to strive for a product line where the primary delineater was bass extension. Bigger products with deeper bass for bigger rooms. It seems that Jim wandered away from that approach in that the later 2s and 3s go nearly as deep as the 6s and 7s. My experience is that sealed bass with its 2nd order roll-off tends to pressurize rooms more than vented bass with its 4th order roll-off. So, perhaps the game changed. The market certainly did with homage being paid to Home Theater. As a historical note, my original farmhouse, 5 miles up Georgetown Road from the factory had a more normal listening room, which we used as a cross check in product development. The Victorian farmhouse's room was 10' high x (about) 18' wide x 18' deep with a bay window-wall behind the speakers. Plaster on wood lath walls and ceiling, Hardwood floor. Transom openings above doors to 3 walls. Lovely sounding room. The 0 series was totally developed there, plus the CS2 and the CS3 and 3.5. By the mid 80s we had added a modest room in the Nandino Blvd factory, but used both rooms simultaneously. The CS5 development in 1988ish used the new, big factory listening room. We continued to have a playback system at Georgetown Road, along with band instruments set-up for live vs recorded music and jams with traveling musicians. Just as with electronics, Jim considered the room to be the users' problem and playground. He balanced for 'average' rooms without consideration for standing waves, etc. Some dealers cracked the code and sold lots of speakers. Many users never figured out how to optimize, and generally blamed the speakers. |
Several thoughts, will try to parse a bit... reminder I have a pair of 2.3+ Yes, Charlie at Ayre a brilliant designer and EE with ears, to wit his A to D converter ( and musical recordings) and DAC with listen and measure filters ( a fantastic poke in the eye to those obsessed with measuring the wrong things), yes his SS amps some of the best, TomT the old 100 watt amp very affordable used, getting long in tooth for sure but still quite musical |
Prof - that was a great review EXCEPT that both John and Larry included the statement that they couldn't get the CS5 to sing. That product sold poorly and didn't pay back its R&D costs; Jim was discouraged and dropped the idea of deep sealed bass. By the way, Rob has retrofitted CS5s with dual inputs to raves from the customers. Taking the deep bass killer low impedance burden off the main amplifier solves tons of amp issues. Also, I have imagined a physical solution to staggering the drivers on the baffle to eliminate the two bucket brigade delays on the upper and lower midrange circuits and thus radically simplifying the feed circuits for those critical drivers. At that time Jim was convinced that those custom styrene caps and high purity coils were sonically invisible. I have my doubts from my present-day perspective. I wouldn't mind finding a CS5i pair for the hot-rod garage. |
I was just re-visiting the old Stereophile review of the CS5.It sure did impress that magazine! JA had a room-based problem which didn’t work with the CS5s so LA took over the review and raved. In the measurements section JA concluded: "All in all, the CS5 is both the most thoroughly worked-out speaker design I have ever come across and perhaps the best-measuring loudspeaker I have yet experienced." Which is about as strong a comment as I’ve ever seen from JA in the measurements section before or since. |
Thank You Tom I had no intention of trying these as you had advised me to just use better electronics on the cross-over board , ( I had to ask out of curiousity ) this is the same advise that Mr. McCormack gave me when asked about upgrading my DNA-250 amp ( Which I have almost finished with great success ) . |
Robert - I know a little about those add-on filters. I spoke with the maker, who would only say that he is fixing known problems with the 3.7 upper frequencies, as well as with Rob at CSS, and we ran a cost thumbnail. The Stereophile review near-field response shows a rough rising high end and the undamped oil-can tweeter resonance. Jim let that ring due to its out of band frequency and that the required notch filter imparts a veil on the whole sound. The low-treble roughness is, in my opinion, in the time domain and primarily an artifact of near-field measurement. In other words, it will not be fixed by more XO circuitry which modifies the frequency domain. Note also Stereophile’s averaged listener-position graphs, which show no hint of that alleged roughness. Rob and I looked at the parts vs retail selling price and determined that those parts, if of Thiel quality, would cost more than his asking price for the assembled unit. So, he is inserting coils, caps, resistors and wire of lower quality, which quite probably reduces global transparency. Neither I myself, nor Rob to my knowledge, has heard the mod. Plus, he may be doing more or differently than what I’m saying. It would be instructive to hear direct experience. But at this point we would not recommend it. |
Good Morning All I had to look at the 3.7's on E-Bay , listed at $7,300 . When I purchased my 2.7's new and delivered for $3,000 I passed on the chance of owning new 3.7's for $7,000 delivered , the same birdseye maple finish ! ( if they were $6,000 I might have ) While looking at all the Thiels for sale there was an ad for an add-on filter for the 3.7 & 2.7 speakers , does anybody have any knowledge about these ? I'd like to thank sdecker for all the info about McCormack amps . . |
And, by Dynaudio's ad copy, a couple 'tricks' in their crossover to capitalize on their first-order slopes to mimic a sloped baffle and correct the phase response between drivers. Stereophile's step response plot
of the C1
even looks more coherent than most small two-ways. Good design intentions didn't equal my high expectations I had for their sound. |
jafant, these were separate amp and preamp shootouts. The Plinius power amp compared to my McCormack was a class-A SA-103 (125wpc 8ohms, 220wpc 4ohms), that had comparatively unremarkable sound. The Plinius Kaitaki preamp vs my Sonic Frontiers was remarkably good-sounding across the board, the only preamp in the shootout to better my preamp in its current configuration. Just to stay on topic to your thread, the most recent in-house speaker comparison was my 2.4 vs the Dynaudio Confidence C1, a modern, large-for-a-stand-mounted $7500 2-way. To my great surprise, the Thiels crushed them in every possible aspect. Even their vaunted Esotar tweeter had no discernible improvement in natural accuracy, smoothness, or micro-dynamics over the 2.4 simple aluminum dome constrained within a jiggly midrange cone. And the Thiels smoked them in every form of soundstaging, imaging, center focus, wide speaker spacing without loss of center-fill, etc. Nobody was more surprised than me that such a highly-regarded monitor had nothing - *nothing* - on my 'old' Thiels... |
unsound, thanks for the compliment. I'm hardly a 'vintage' guy, but my late-production (2001) Line1 SE has been *completely* reliable over nearly twenty years of often daily use. Of course, I can't leave well enough alone, and it too has been substantially upgraded over the years, to the point where last year it bettered 4 modern $5-15k preamps, though did get 'beat' all-around by a wild-card Plinius solid-state unit. If our house burns to the ground, the insurance 'replacement' cost for my stereo is going to be far more than what I paid, starting with those CS2.4s... |
@sdecker, thanks for the specifics. It's helpful. Checking the c-j website: https://conradjohnson.com/vintage-conrad-johnson-products/ It turns out that the output impedances aren't quite as severe as I thought. I might have been confusing the Audible Illusion pres with them. In any event, unless one is using some weird esoteric cables I doubt there should be many issues with that. On the other hand, the gain and output voltages can be even higher than I thought. Let me compliment you on your choice of the Sonic Frontiers pre. I am a huge fan. I typically fall in the ss camp, but the SF models are exceptional. A dear friend had an SFL 3 that I heard quite often. Despite rumors of troublesome volume controls; count me as mightily impressed. One of my all time favorites. |
All McCormack power amps have a 100k input impedance which is fine for any preamp. EXCEPT for the DNA500, and its monoblock equivalents DNA750 of only 10k, and I believe these to be the only McCormack amps that offer balanced inputs via a phase-splitting transformer (hence the low Zin). Most if not all of his amps do have a high input sensitivity for Steve's preferred (?) passive preamp mating, that forces conventional volume pots to work at the very low end of their range with your typical active preamp with 10+ dB gain. |
Mod Squad seemed to really start to make their mark with "Tip Toes". Some conrad-johnson pre's can work quite well with some McCormack amps. But due to the high output impedance of some of the c-j pre's coupled with the low input impedance of some of the McCormack amps it can be a bit trickier. Furthermore, the high output of some c-j pres with the high input sensitivity of some McCormack amps can reduce the effective range of the volume control. Of course c-j doesn't offered balanced outputs for some of the McCormack's balanced inputs. |