tomthiel
Fascinating, thanks again.
I’ve been listening to my little Spendor S 3/5 monitors in my system, for the past couple of weeks. Like the Thiel 02s these have, for me, some "magic tone" that makes me want to just keep listening.
I was listening to an LP I picked up, Genesis’ Abacab, and enjoying what these little speakers did with this record. But then I switched the speaker wires back to my Thiel 2.7s and cranked it. What a crazy difference. Especially from listening down the hall outside the room, the scale and punch to the sound was phenomenal. Phil Collins sounded almost like he’d invade a room in our house!
And the linearity and control of the big Thiels is something else. They sound linear and "boxless" not only in the listening room’s sweet spot, but even from just outside the room, in the hallway, or down the hallway.There’s no speakerly "bloat" that shows up, so it just sounds like instruments playing in that room, not boxes creating sound.
(I was inspired to hook up the 2.7s again after a listening session at my friend's house who has a big pair of over 20K speakers in for review...something of a new darling in the audiophile world it seems....and while they were excellent, I found my system much more convincing overall).
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I forgot to mention one big surprise (to me) from Munich show.....the incredible loudspeakers Maat Vector from Sigma Acoustics, a small italian craft company and extremely expensive one but wow!.... what sound! 100db of sensibility and absolute quality. |
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jafant,
Thank You.
George
Colonel USAF (Ret)
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Memorial Day - a time for reflection on those who gave All. |
silvanik Thank You for the report. It appears that you enjoyed all of the Audio wares and gear- this is not a bad thing. I would be interested in auditioning Vitus Audio someday. I, too, have heard the Vandersteen 7 Mk II w/ accompanying reference subwoofers. Thiel soul is certainly there. Good to read that you returned home to a pair of CS 3.6 loudspeakers. Happy Listening! |
thank you so much for your report
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Well guys!...time to put together my impressions from the last Hi End show in Munich to which I attended two days.
As first I can state two days have been not enough to appreciate everything ,first time there for me , couldn't imagine how large it is! Anyway, as usual for this kind of exibitions, only very few rooms were listenable, i mean that worth to listen to due to too much people walking around or poor acoustic treatment care, specially at ground floor. The upstairs rooms generally were much better prepared and some listenable only on booking, here almost only top brands among which Gryphon, Vandersteen, Dan D'Agostino, Naim, Sonus Faber, T+A, Pass Labs, Martin Logan, Magico and so on. Here also the incredible (for the age) old set of horn speakers from Western Electric, (that sounded amazing to me!...never listen such very old system before ) and a massive presence of chinese horn speakers makers and among the best for sure the incredible ESD system, impressive size from live but what a wonferful soundstage and the capability to disappear for the loudspeaker, very immersive sound.
Strangely Mcintosh jewels were only for display, not listenable and in a dark and not appealing (to me) room, what a pity for such brand!
Anyway generally I have to say that in such condition is very difficult to make a your own and reliable opinion of what you listened to, too much variables, time restriction and also no way to use your own music. I brought with me one Hd full of well known songs but It has been a waste of time, not allowed to connect it! So how you can make a clear idea of how good is the performance of any components, what should be the reference? This kind of exibitions are good to discover new products, tendency of the market and if you are lucky to meet and talk to some very talented Hi Fi designer.
Among few nice and attractive designed items I found too much awful ones, and furthermore very often crazy expensive...I whish to see substance, good looking but not such dumb style!
And yes!...Vitus SIA-030 was there, on the throne, really impressive from live, solid rock built and, for what it worths, the audition with Rockport Avior II loudspeakers has been really positive but I'm not familiar with these loudspeakers thus I really can't say much more, take this with a grain of salt.
Had the opportunity to listen to Vandersteen 7 Mk II too in a well acoustically treated room....wow! some clues of Thiel soul was there but then I discovered the price, around 70K $, damn, Jim, you was so humble!
One thing for sure, once at home with my Thiel CS 3.6 I can state that they are all but outated...Thiel will never die.
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silvanik
I am looking forward in reading your report. Happy Listening! |
jon_5912
Thank You for posting the link to auction. Happy Listening! |
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Yes Jafant, I got it!
I attended two days, Saturday ans Sunday, currently I'm preparing a small review of the show for you all, give me a few time more to organize the informations I collected...I'll be back very soon here , stay tuned!
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silvanik
A very nice contribution and jester on behalf of Jim, Tom. Did you guys attend the Munich Show? Happy Listening! |
Hi guys all, don't get me wrong for what I'm doing at home just now, since my enormous admiration for Jim Thiel and his strict collaborators as his brother Tom (that I want thank here for his very competent job behind the astonishing 3.6 cabinet and more), I collected some great pictures of them from the web (and even asked to Rob Gillum whom very kindly sent me some taken from his private archive) and now I'm preparing a photo composition to get just one big picture to install in my listening room....beside a real Fender Stratocaster guitar as that one used by Mark Knopfler (still to be found).
My small and personal tribute to the unforgettable Thiel cleverness. |
Happy Friday! All
Enjoy a fun and safe Memorial Day weekend.
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thank you BrayEagle for your response. and one can never have enough classical cds. my listening at home is all compact discs with about 50% classical, 40% rock and folk, and 10% jazz
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tomthiel
Nice score! on the 02s. Happy Listening! |
ahofer
Good to see you again. I know that you will find a good home for your CS 3.6 loudspeakers. Happy Listening! |
If anyone wants my CS3.6s, please let me know, I'm going to let them go.
The right tweeter needs to be rebuilt. My plan was to send it off to Coherent, but if someone wants them as is, I'd be happy to see them go somewhere to be loved as I loved them (since 1993, I think it was). I have none of the packing material. Thiel replaced it all for me once, but the second set of boxes were damaged in a flood.
They are here in NYC, and if you want to come get them....
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Prof - "well" is such an interesting and loaded term. For years I have been pondering what makes some systems sound so "right" and others, perhaps technically more advanced, sound less right. One idea that keeps popping up is at the core of what we are doing in recorded music.
In real, live, acoustic music, there are many distortion mechanisms in play: all the reflections of the site, the compliance of air, the bouncing of and off of the floor and/or ceiling, the audience . . . and so forth and so on. Live hearing is extremely multi-dimensional.
In recorded music, we generally capture each sound source very close-in and pure with little to none of that other stuff going on. Even in distant-mic'd orchestral recording, we go for high-up and clean capture.
Much of mixing and mastering is to introduce distortions to make the sound "better". But it is at best doctored and at worst pretty artificial on the disc. Yes, we play this doctored sound into our headphones or rooms and hope for it to sound "natural".
Many design(er)s of playback equipment accept adding compensations as part of their job. The BBC approach nods to that "sweeten it up" on playback idea. I believe that the ear-brain actually likes distortions, as long as they are harmonic, such as might plausibly have been in the original musical event. The 02 has something like 15% harmonic distortion in the port and a couple of 5%+ areas in the upper bass. Add some diffraction around the drivers and at the cabinet edges and the different panel resonances to the squirmy driver diaphragms . . . and there's a pretty rich soup. And it sounds quite comfortable, kinda friendly, maybe seductive.
At the beginning of Thiel Audio, we actively struggled with this dilemma: do we make a transducer that sounds inviting, or do we make one that replicates its input signal as faithfully as possible. As you know, we chose the latter, which is far more difficult to pull off plus the risks are large. Especially in the early days of digital, but even today, there are far more poorly made recordings than well made ones. And prior to that, there is no real agreement that I can find concerning where the responsibilities lie for what goes on the disc. At Thiel, the winning strategy was that the speaker should accurately translate its input signal into moving air. (Period.) Everything upstream is someone else's responsibility as is the downstream room. There are dozens or scores of aspects and technologies to manage in the chain; for the speaker to try to referee that whole kettle of fish is untenable, actually impossible. And therefore the purer philosophical stance is to make a clean speaker, which we attempted.
My observation is that the recording process often doesn't produce a signal that sounds good when played back neutrally - it requires or assumes various distortions being re-added through playback. The Thiel 02 is by far the highest distortion speaker Thiel ever produced. And it had in its day a very loyal following. I like it surprisingly more than I think I should. My experiments here with bracing the cabinet, upgrading caps and softening edges all serve to clean up the sound and make it sound more "Thielesque", but at the risk of losing some charm. This is like deja vu all over again. The end of the 02 form is the SCS4. I am shopping for a pair of those to help sort out what the Renaissance 02 should be.
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tomthiel,
I'm jealous of your finding that mint pair of 02s! I sometimes think I should get another pair as a back up. But then, I'm a hoarder of speakers :-)
Your mention of the BBC sound is apt as I've recently set up my old Spendor 3/5s in my system and I'm loving the heck out of them too.Incredible with the human voice and general ease-of-tone with a generally believable timbre.
I know we are all supposed to keep moving forward in fidelity, but it's often rewarding to re-visit some things old designs seemed to have done really well.
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Welcome back brayeagle.
From the other end of the upgrade lens, I just snagged a pair of 02s in near mint condition for $210 delivered: 0687-0688 (around 1980) from one-owner in Michigan. Cabinets never opened, parts all look new, the improved-cone woofer; they sound great. Thanks for the nudge Pops.
In the day, the BBC and therefore most "sophisticated" speakers were using thin walls and diffractive edges and "tuning" it all for a pleasant response. The 02s fall in that camp. The 5/8" walls sing and the sharp baffle edges add some zing and the stock caps and carbon resistor (only 1) all add up to a nice, musical presentation. Part of the magic is very few crossover parts and a well behaved driver complement. I'm looking forward to comparing them to some modern audiophile monitors in the area, just for fun.
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brayeagle
It is a blessing to have good health and hearing above the median age of 76. Enjoy your (2) systems as another birthday approaches.
We Audiophiles could never own too many CDs...or SACDs.
Happy Listening!
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ronkest,
Yeah, I’ll be 96 next month. Thank goodness I still have most of my marbles, and my hearing is still much better than the median for my age.
My thinking (and beliefs) of what good audio should be was forged in the late 40’s and 50’s when I built the speakers and wired the preamps and amplifiers. Lotsa’ Fun; however, today’s speakers and electronics are far above what we used to build and use.
Bryston BCD-3, BP 17 cubed,BP-26, 4BSST2, 4B cubed, BDA-3, Magnum Dynalab FM tuner, Thiel 2.7 speakers with a SS2.2 sub for primary system, AR 3a speakers for secondary system. - - and more classical CDs that I should have. |
hi Brayeagle, i think at one time that you said you were in your nineties? is that correct? You are one of my audio heroes
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ronkent
Thanks, being fully retired I keep my primary 2 channel stereo going for most of the day - - feeding it with classical CDs and a nearby superb classical music FM station.
Yes, great music really does help the healing, and playing some of my older CDs brings new insight.
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Brayeagle,
welcome back and i hope you are feeling better. listening to great music through a great system is definitely a real healing force and i play my system 2-3 hours a day.
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brayeagle
Good to have you back and in better health. I concur, music is a natural healer in many aspects. Happy Listening! |
Finally back online and enjoying all the posts and chatter.
Had a very bad fall in March, ended up in the hospital and then rehab. It's so nice to be home again and able to listen to music through my Thiels.
Until you've had to listen to nothing but TV through tinny excuses for speakers for a couple of months, you really can't appreciate what Jim Thiel has given us.
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oblgny
As always, good to see you again. Hope 2019 is shaping up better for your situation. I can hardly await for you to return to the Audio driver's seat. Happy Listening! |
gasman117
I, too, use a Richard Gray conditioner (Pro400). I can hardly await to use it in an Audio manner. Since purchase, I have used it in a Video manner to excellent effect. These are excellent products that really elevate an Audio system to the next level w/o degrading presentation and sound.
Happy Listening! |
Using Roon to explore new music and parts of my collection long neglected. Playing some Dixie Chicks not heard since I had the Vandy 2s and Ayre AX-7. Just wow! These modified 2.4s plus AX-5 are superb.
:chefs kiss:
Thanks again, Tom Thiel!
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Ob, my exploration in alternative setup for the 3.5 are motivated by lack of original mid-range and tweeter replacements and parts for damaged eq. Just like you, I value the Sonic properties of the 3.5 and want to examine ways to preserve or enhance what we have.
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unsound typically relates a valid point regarding how good the 3.5’s are. My listening room was 24 long by 14 wide with a ceiling sloping from 9 to 17 feet. On the left is a wall, on the right the wall is 14 feet away.
Tough room to tame.
As I’ve related before my listening level is, 90% of the time, conservative. My amps were almost all uniformly 150/8 ohms, 300/4ohms - IMHO quite sufficient for my needs. (Pass Labs, B A T., ARC, to name a few.) Good stuff.
With just a little bit of cable swapping and very minor positioning the 3.5’s had no issues putting out excellent sound. I always employed the EQ. They were designed to use them so who was I to quibble?
The only other speakers I’d owned that managed the same effect were Maggies - albeit with a lot more fussing and sacrificing the low end.
Financial setbacks and and a whole lotta other shite conspired against me in 2018, forcing me to sell off all my equipment. I’m now listening with a Bluesound integrated through Meadowlark Kestrels - it ain’t bad considering my budget.
When my circumstances improve I am going to reconfigure from the ground up. First order will be finding a pair of 3.5’s, having Coherent Source bring ‘em up to snuff, then look for amplification. This will easily exceed the basic cost of a used pair of 3.5’s, but my previous statements that Thiels are an investment, not just a purchase, holds truer for me now than ever before. And I won’t get as crazy with the whole equipment thing this time around, either.
This forum is still impressive - 6000+ posts and nary anything negative. Bravo. |
Great Improvement!
My 2.4's were a little hot and i had a mid upper bass "bloom".
i got a Richard Gray RGPC 400 and foam bass traps and side panels.
What a difference. The bloom is flattened out and the bass has extended! Better yet, the ear "burn" on my aging ear drums is gone.
I also found the stereo image has changed, so i have a to move the speakers around to find that sweet spot. nice i don't have the bass nodes any more. |
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Arvincastro, the audible differences between the 20 and 40 Hz setting is very dependent (!) on the particular music recordings and the listening room.
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tomthiel, no reason to apologize! Indeed there are numerous benefits to multi-amping, as thielrules has eloquently pointed out. Truth be told though, the cost of multi-amped CS 5's starts to make alternative choices a compelling consideration. |
You have a point that feeding only the woofer with the eq can cause a delay in the signal and should be avoided. For the bass, a slight delay may not be as critical as it would be for the mid and high.
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Unsound - my apology. Indeed adding an amp and cables is a huge expense. My thought is with used market prices such an upgrade has potential to raise the performance level of the 5i a lot. And more to the point, the CS5i's difficult load practically limits its performance to where it rarely sings. Jim used a Krell FPB-600 - and it sounded beautiful. But doubling your existing favorite amp might be an attractive alternative to finding that Krell or other beast to drive them. Most amps buckle under the load.
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Hello all & Thank You so much for the incredible input!
Looks like my initial thoughts of increased performance are seconded by you all, while my fear of potentially damaging my Thiels was not as big of an issue as I thought.
I will definitely keep you up to date on how adding the second amp goes. Right now, I’m waiting hear back from ARC to see if they can take both amps and “refresh” them so that they are as close to each other in terms of measurements and sonics as possible.
If I may, a question regarding the Bass EQ: How noticeable should the audible difference between the two EQ settings be? The reason I ask is that while I can definitely hear the difference in my system with the EQ in place than without it (I went about 2 months sans EQ while it was being service by Rob at CS), the difference I hear between the two settings is much less noticeable to me, if at all.
Again, Thank You all for the great help!
Arvin |
Unsound, you probably know that the xo is a parallel design and each section is wired to the binding post. To bi amp is only a minor modification.
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In addition, according to Paul at PS Audio, not only do mono blocks let you play louder, the sound quality is substantially increased with greater definition and a larger sound stage.
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^That sounds most interesting. Though, I not sure doubling the amplifier budget comes across as quite easily fixed? Two short runs of cables cost more than one run of cable of equal length. Still interesting. |
Unsound - Regarding impediments to CS5i ownership, I am confident we can address the primary shortcoming quite easily - and that the amplification problem would be reduced significantly. The impedance drops to 1 ohm in the deep bass and doesn't rise above 3 ohms till 200 Hz. That severe bass load drains the amp of ability for transient response in the upper bands. By adding a second input for the 3 woofer/ subwoofer drivers, we can sequester the "amp problem" to the bass.
From history: Jim was aware of the problem and the solution. His personal make-up caused him to avoid the fix due to the potential chaos of cable and amp interactions in the field. However, if you used 2 identical amps with identical cable runs, you could successfully vertically bi-amp each speaker with its own channel for each band. As was mentioned earlier, each amp could sit close to its speaker so the 4 cable runs would be less expensive.
While in the XO we could easily upgrade some caps and resistors if desired.
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Thank You for chiming in to assist arvincastro -
Happy Listening!
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@thielrules, while I agree with what you've posted, I think there are few things to consider. The 3.5's as supplied only have single amplifier inputs. What you are suggesting is not possible without modifications to the speakers, which could depreciate their resale value. Sending a separate signal to the eq and then to the woofers, and a separate signal to the rest of the drivers could present a time lag to the woofers compared to the other drivers. Time is after all really what makes speakers like Thiel different and special. Of course in the digital domain it could be compensated for fairly easily, but in the analog domain, well that might take someone like Jim Thiel to figure that out. Also, 6 dB may not be much compared to say what a port rolls off, but it still is rather significant. That 6 dB is per octave, and there are two octaves to cover. |
I've been using my 3.5's with eq on full boost in a moderately large room (15' ceiling peak) and play music at the volumes which were intended, scaled back for domestic room size, in other words; fairly loud on peaks, with an amp capable of 500 Watts (and double that for a couple of minutes at a time) per channel into their 4 Ohm load for many years now, without a hint of problems. Though, I do wish they could play even louder on dynamic peaks with less strain. My 3.5 midranges drivers were rebuilt by Thiel shortly after I purchased them. The previous owner used what IMHO was an underpowered receiver to drive them. Again, no problems since. Not using the eq would be an anathema for me. Even on steadily loud rock music, I would use the eq at least on the 40 Hz setting. With more lowered tuned 5 string basses and synthesizers being used, there's too much music below 70 Hz where the eq kicks in to compromise without it . That coherent sealed box deep bass is part of the reason I like the 3.5's so much. Without it, I might have kept my old CS 2's. I still prefer the 3.5's to the later Thiel offerings, except of course for the only other sealed box Thiel's; the CS 5i's. The amplifier requirements for which are the only obstacle towards my ownership. That up to 12 dB eq boost might seem a bit extreme, but it is mitigated somewhat but the concurrent rise in impedance.
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My recommendation would be
1. Carefully check your mid-range drivers with the willingness to discover cracks in the surround ring. It is common after 10 years of regular use with the equalizer that signs of deterioration develop, according to Rob G.. if you are fortunate and your mid range are fine, consider extending the lifetime by coating the surround ring with glue.
2. Get the second amp for Bi amping. Decoupling the woofer from the rest protects the mid-range from the eq that is applied to the bass. The sloop of the filler is only 6db, so the mid-range is getting some of the extra bass. This decoupling also increases the impedance and an easier load on the amp. The biamping is vertical, so you can place the amp near each speaker, have short cables and the amp can compensate for a higher load in the base channel by the lower load from the mid-high range.
This is an easy and affordable improvement that increases the lifetime and Sonic qualities of the 3.5.
3. Check the eq carefully. Static electricity can blow out some transistors although for later eq this was fixed. You need the eq to get the best out of the 3.5. If your eq is needing repair or your mid-range needs replacement, it makes sense to switch to digital crossovers as I did and shape the mid-range to your system and compensate for differences in sensitivity of the speakers. You also create the opportunity to mitigate room effects. I have successfully done this with a minih dsp opendrc da8. The specs are only average but as far as I can tell, no Sonic weaknesses in the audible range.
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