Thiel Owners

Sgmlaw - We were aware of the Bell Labs research, which concurred with Jon Dahlquist's exclusive use of 18 solid in the DQ10. We compared 18 solid with 18 stranded and the solid won hands-down. Cousin Ted concurred and we went with 18.

In my present work, I am considering ganged runs of 18 solid for mid and/or woofer where the larger cross-section would increase instantaneous ampacity. Also in the mix is a various strand gauge litzed solid bundle with 15 gauge aggregate size.

Straight wire does have effects beyond resistance. I am keeping my layouts linear around a central wire corridor to minimize antenna effects and stray field losses. I have various wires to compare - in the mi are single, double or triple twisted 18s depending on use.

ronkent
how is the PS Audio gear settling into your system?  Hope you are well this New Year and playing good music today.
Happy Listening!

All-
I have a colleague and friend that is looking for a pair of CS 2.7 or CS 3.7 loudspeakers.  If any of you guys have a line, other than the usual secondary marketplaces, please post here / send a PM to me.Thank You.
Happy Listening!

oblgnyGood to see you this New Year. I know that you are a Pass Labs guy and once had a B.A.T./Pass Labs combo.  Hope you are well and geared up for more Audio adventures.  Happy Listening!

Andy - you're on it. My study over the decades has taught me that listening is far more active and synthetic than we would assume. Auditory input is pretty sketchy in that sound pressure moving the auditory cilia must be fundamentally interpreted for meaning. That interpretation occurs in many parts of the brain and is associated with many different functions of memory, emotion and cognitive processing. We're making up most of what we hear.

Sound can be broken into two processing categories much like light acts as photon particles and waves. The wave aspect of sound relates to the frequency domain of pitch and timbre. The particle aspect is the time domain. The gating mechanisms you reference have more to do with time than frequency. Temporal propagation occurs in real, interpretable space. Any sound, such as a finger snap, arrives at the listening pair of ears with time information that allows us to know what it is as well as where it comes from, including its reflective and absorptive environment. As you allude, the processing power of the auditory brain would be overloaded without organizing mechanisms. One such mechanism is the time threshold, generally considered about 5 milliseconds. Components within that 5ms envelope are conflated into the original sound, while those arriving afterward are treated as reflections/echos. Of note is that those sub 5ms components are perceived as slurred or de-focused when the various frequencies of the arrival transient cannot be combined into a sensible single event. A real acoustic sound source (the finger snap) arrives with all (frequencies of) transients intact and its reflections off the nearby boundaries also intact. The analytical fore-brain figures out / decides the nature of the source (the snap) and the particulars of the walls of the room. And we are very good at it, being necessary for survival.

Trouble comes when aspects of the transient event have been compromised by the reproduction process. Though there are many opportunities to compromise this transient information, the most pervasive is that scrambling introduced by non time/phase coherent loudspeakers where various frequency bands arrive at the ear at different times than a real-life intact signal would. In that case, the auditory brain must analyze the sonic elements and synthesize an opinion of its nature (finger snap). It must also repeat that analysis for each reflection. Those additional layers of decoding are processor-intensive and serve to distance the whole listener from the heard experience. One fine twist is that the more sophisticated the listener, the more he tolerates / succeeds at the cognitive process of figuring out what is being heard. Therefore I trust the aural impressions of non-sophisticated listeners simply because they are in closer contact with the whole, natural auditory experience, whereas the sophisticated listener can "overlook" the deficiencies of a temporally inaccurate sound because his skill enables him to "hear" it despite its shortcomings. Teenage girls are my first choice for test listeners.

The Kids are alright...

My oldest brother’s son is getting married this coming October. 

I’ve attended many weddings over the last few years, too many, in fact all of them, using deejays for the reception celebration.  

Recently my nephew’s sister threw a housewarming party. As it turned out it served also to announce HER wedding plans.  Sheesh.  

During this get together I was talking with my nephew about his affair and he related that he and his fiancé had spent the week prior auditioning bands for their reception.  

“Bands?”, I asked. “Bands - actual bands?”

His fiancé overheard my question and quickly sided up to my nephew adding,” We settled on this great nine piece band from the Island.” (Long Island, that is)

I gave her a big fat hug, kissed her on the cheek while shaking my nephew’s hand. 

“Thank you for NOT having a $&@??!!** deejay!”

I had their attention for about five more minutes when his fiancé explained that a partial reason why they wanted a live band was due to the fact that the speakers I gave to my nephew a few years ago - a pair of CS3.5 - had them listening to different genres of music.  They started exploring different genres because what they usually listened to “sounded so good” through the Thiels...

A nine piece...

I’m pinching myself already.  

I said it before...THIEL MAKES EVERYTHING sound better.  

Happy new year, folks

But there is this other dimension. In my acoustic guitar design and archival recording I have identified an accumulation factor. Recording engineers and piano techs and other technical artists also experience this phenomenon. When on a particular path of exploration, guided by both cognition and intuition, there are many choices which are not provable or even discernible. But a conglomerate effect becomes identifiable / meaningful over time. There are so many subtle factors contributing to the overall result, that each of them could be ignored or over-ruled, but they can matter in their aggregate.

I think it may have to do with how our brain processes signal and the threshold that it will register a response.  For example, our brain could identify a certain amount of echo given the delay after the initial sound arrival.  Theoretically, there is echo everywhere, but our brain will only trigger a response only if above a certain delay.  If our brain is perfectly analog, then the brain should be able to tell use the exact amount of echo from small to large.  But I am glad because we would be driven to crazy if we are constantly bothered by all sort of echo around us.  So in a sense, our brain will only let us know if an echo is worth our attention.

I think this is our own built-in "hysteresis" not unlike the hysteresis in for example a thermostat.  Let's say you program your thermostat at 70deg with 1deg of hysteresis, then the thermostat would turn on when the temperature is below 69deg and will turn back on at 71deg.  Without hysteresis, the thermostat would oscillate constantly at 70deg.  In the same sense, our brain would oscillate constantly without a built-in threshold.

So given a small change may not make a difference but as the amount of changes built-up in the aggregate, our brain will trigger a response as if a switch has been turned on.  

A lot of people have reported a certain "burn-in" phenomenon in which the changes happened abruptly that lends to a certain mystery only adds to the whole "burn-in" controversy.

"esprits4s
Thank You for your assessment of the XP-10. Which ARC pre-amp did you purchase?   "
Jafant,
It is a Reference 3.
-Gary

Tom, I noticed in one of your recent posts concerning internal wiring that Jim settled on 18 awg solid core.

I find the decision for 18 gauge very interesting.  Bell Labs and NBS research culminating in the early 1930s determined 18 gauge the optimum conductor cross section depth for the transmission of audible audio frequencies.  This early research comtemplated both skin effect behaviour at higher frequencies and core transmission behavior at lower frequencies.  

Matthew Bond confirmed the same conclusion in the early 1980s.  However, it appears that Jim’s decision for 18 gauge even predated Mr. Bond’s work.

This indeed underscores your point that meaningful and established physics and engineering research was the primary guide for Thiel Audio’s materials selection.

While a heavier gauge in a single conductor may allow a higher ampacity, I am curious how signal response across the contemplated frequency range through such increased conductor cross section would be impacted.  Perhaps a multiple optimum conductor scheme would be a more desirable arrangement under such circumstances, or over longer distances where such frequency distortions are compounded.

All of this seems to reinforce a common EE maxim that even a straight wire distorts an audio signal to a degree.

Rules - I appreciate and concur with your concerns. You would be pleased to know the level of verification we employed at Thiel. Serious science.

But there is this other dimension. In my acoustic guitar design and archival recording I have identified an accumulation factor. Recording engineers and piano techs and other technical artists also experience this phenomenon. When on a particular path of exploration, guided by both cognition and intuition, there are many choices which are not provable or even discernible. But a conglomerate effect becomes identifiable / meaningful over time. There are so many subtle factors contributing to the overall result, that each of them could be ignored or over-ruled, but they can matter in their aggregate.

Tom, I feel really good about your balanced, sensible approach to both theoretical and practical considerations to increase audible sound quality. I have become more cautious with assuming that when people make claims of improved SQ they have done their homework. Please include double blind comparisons to establish audible differences.

Correct,  I meant the driver frames, the results will be easy to check when unplugging the ground connection.

Btw, sorry for my crooked English.

So, it seems you may be grounding the driver frames?
Thiel drivers since CS2.2 in 1990 use Faraday networks / shorting rings in the voice coil / pole piece structure which should cancel stray fields. But, stray residual eddy currents are possibly in play.  Please report your findings.

Tomthiel,
The idea is to connect the chassis of the unit's to ground, not the coil's of the unit's, will find out how when I remove them.

Holco - I am very interested in your outcome reports. I have never experimented with such configurations, but considerable dynamic electromagnetic fields are at work in the speaker, beyond my understanding of their inner relationships.

I am unclear what elements would be grounded in the speaker, since the + and - leads are both active in the AC / signal feed. Are you envisioning some sort of additional shield in the cabinet? 

Changed my plans!! Resently I changed my van den Hul Magnum loudspeaker cable's for the Supra PLy 3.4/S cable's, this are screened loudspeaker cables and the screen needs to be connected to ground on the power-amp,  although they are relativ cheap cable's they give a great improvement on SQ in my case, so the idea is to use them also for the internal wirering and pass thru the shielding to the outside with some kind of extra connector to the Supra PLy 3.4/S cable, there is also the option to connect the unit's so everything will be connected to ground.

All - regarding upgrade pricing - there will be multiple plateaus for each model which are self-defining as the project proceeds. You know it is possible to spend more on crossover parts than the entire original speaker system parts cost. I'm not going there. In other words, I will not be putting Duelunds and Paths in a 2.4, even if an individual DIY owner might go that far.

My work is to determine the hard limits of format, cabinet and drivers, and then determine an ultimate cost-feasible implementation of that format considering traditional Thiel values. Beetlemania's CS2.4s are at or close to the highest imagined implementation tier. We must learn whether its $4 figure cost will be sonically justified.

There seems to be a middle plateau upgrade at half the parts cost of that. Brands have been chosen, but much remains to be decided.

The first tier upgrade will be a step up from stock in that sand-cast resistors will be replaced with Mills MRAs and all electrolytics will be replaced with polypropylenes. ERSE MPX caps are an outstanding bargain for that use. In this and all tiers, any questionable wire & coils will be replaced with 6-9s as in Lexington Thiels.

I would like to address design style. Many designers take many approaches to this subtle work - a high level of art is involved. I am honoring Jim's approach of reason-based, experimentally and musically verified choice. In Jim's approach, every element or change or choice must BOTH improve the sound and align more closely with the measured technical ideal. That might seem obvious, but it is far from common. Many designers mix and match various euphonic anomalies to arrive at a pleasant end result. A corollary of Jim's approach is that each component must be pure. A capacitor is a capacitor, etc. Again, that approach is far from the norm.

An example of Jim's straightforward style is wire. Wire is enormously complex in how it behaves and how it sounds. With the help of Ted and GE aerospace avionics, Jim decided on his wire configuration. That 6-9s, polished surface, teflon jacket twisted pair sounds great and acts predictably like an ideal, engineerable wire. Over the years he investigated other types and brands, but kept our wire because it does what good wire should do and doesn't introduce spurious anomalies (which some folks might prefer.)

Holco- your wire idea is fine. Its identical geometry and jacket will not alter the measured system functioning. Your diameters are similar to my calculations for upgrades. Silver is a better conductor than copper, but coming at a hefty cost. Silver also imparts a different sonic signature, which some people like. I am very interested in your feedback should you choose to make this investment.

From my perspective that departure, both in value engineering and sonic signature, rules it out of consideration. We could make a sonic contributions list, and near the top would be inductors/coils. The short silver hookup runs attach to hundreds of feet of coil conductors. My reason-based choice dictates Thiel copper, same as the coils. My further investigations for hookup wire include litzed, graduated, multi-strand high purity copper - because theoretical considerations suggest its possible superiority. It would also have to improve sonics, and fall in my affordability value plateau structure. 

Right now I have 4 wire configurations awaiting evaluation and testing. Tier One upgrade keeps traditional Thiel wire because it withstood decades of testing and comparison. Other tiers may or may not change. Further work. Input welcome.

For my CS-2.4 I am also thinking of replacing the internal cabling with the HGC 99.999% pure silver wire (Teflon sheathed and twisted +/-), 1mm diameter for the coax and 2mm diameter for the woofer, what do you guys think?

beetlemania
Thank You for a little cost-analysis of the upgraded Cardas binding posts/wiring. I am interesting in learning the prices that you and Tom have discovered on the Clarity SA caps or better, Dueland caps and Path resistors. Take your time developing those beta-boards. A delay or two along the way is to be continued, expected. All of this is a process that has to work through on your timetable.

Happy Listening!

esprits4s
Thank You for your assessment of the XP-10. Which ARC pre-amp did you purchase?   Happy Listening!

My Cardas wire is, maybe, 5% of my total costs. For me, that’s not a dealbreaker when I’m trying to maximize SQ (short of $$$ Dueland caps and Path resistors). Now, the Cardas binding posts are more expensive and I’ll compare those in conjunction with the wire. If/when Tom brings kits to market he’ll have to decide on what to include.

With the 2.4 there are at least 3 iterations of XOs. IMO, the FST boards have no parts worth salvaging (the Clarity SA caps are good but are now surpassed by two generations of Clarity caps and the resistors, coils and other caps are plainly subpar) but Lexington boards have good coils that can be reused, probably a cap or three as well. I imagine Tom will need to accommodate these differences, perhaps also accounting for each owners preferences (which might include budget?). My beta-boards will probably be the only ones with this combo of parts, still under test.

That said, note Tom’s caution that additional delays are probable, even beyond the ongoing testing.

I used a XP-10 for several years and really enjoyed it.  I only sold it because I got a deal on an Audio Research preamp that I had been eyeing for some time.  The ARC pre is different, but not universally better than the XP-10. I used the the XP-10 with Rogue Audio, Levinson, and Audio Alchemy class a (om.90) monos.  It sounded great with all of them:)  It is a great audio value at current used prices in my opinion.  Unfortunately, none of this listening was with a Pass amp or my newly acquired Thiel speakers.

A few descriptors of the X-150.8 sound. Excellent bass, clarity, detail and midrange from bottom to top, top to bottom. This amp delivered effortless power and current- no clipping appreciated. A touch to the warm side of neutral ( a very nice characteristic). Pass Labs is not anemic, dry nor thin in presentation/sound. 

Happy Listening!

All-
I wanted to take a moment and give my gratitude and shout-out to one of our contributors. This gentleman took time out of his schedule to offer  an audition with a very sweet Pass Labs X-150.8 power amp.
As you guys know, this is one brand on my short-list to demo. Last year I spent some time trying to procure and purchase my long standing Reference amp (Conrad Johnson Premier 350). Over the years this is the one amp that I spent a considerable amount of listening time. Yes it has a little age on its design and topology. In contrast, the Pass Labs is a current design and topology. Fantastic power and current delivery to the CS 2.4 loudspeaker. I detected zero congestion nor distortion during the session. Now comes the next piece of the puzzle. Which pre-amp to complement this power amp? Tubed or Solid state for best outcome?
I am familiar with Aesthetix, ARC and Conrad Johnson on the tubey side.
I have auditioned the Pass Labs XP-10 model only with a Threshold amp.
I know we have a few Pass Labs experts here- the floor is yours for suggestions. Thank You- pwhinson for your hospitality and very fine system. 

Happy Listening!

esprits4s

Thinking outside of the box- I like it.  Perhaps wire upgrade could become an option once Beetle and Tom have an implemented and tested XO available for purchase.  These guys are the experts.

Happy Listening!

beetlemania

Right On!  Putting a smile on one's face perfectly describes our hobby.
Keep up the excellent work.  Staying tuned.

Happy Listening!

I hope that wire choices don't significantly drive up the cost of these upgrades that the team is working on.  I won't weigh in on the overall audio cable debate, but transmission line effects are generally not relevant in audio equipment, at least the analog audio frequency sections (pcb design for digital portions are another matter altogether).  There is a reason audio equipment output impedences are so much lower than input impedences, and it isn't to control reflections.  Maybe you could go a bit a la carte and offer the crossover update with or without the wire upgrades?

@jafant not a garage like Tom’s who has 2.2, PP, 3.6 with 1.6 on the way. I only have my SEs, which are no longer SEs. I am giving Tom subjective impressions of a couple of caps and bypasses among other XO possibilities. Already did the Mills resistor subjective comparison. I’ll just say that the improvement put a smile on my face. 

beetlemania
Thank You for your diligent hard work on the XO project. Good to read that Mr. Rob Gillum is of service to you as you guys figure out a working prototype. Do you have a Hot Rod garage like Tom?

Happy Listening!

tomthiel
I concur with sgmlaw. This is outstanding information. Thank You, for the continued history lessons and unique insight into the vaults of Thiel Audio. Hope you are well today and enjoying working in your Hot Rod garage.

Happy Listening!

andy2
Thank You for sharing your perspectives and thoughts on internal wiring as it pertains to loudspeaker building. Cabling, industrial internal or OEM, is imperative to an excellent sounding system. This is my second passion, music being the first. Any cable discussion is warranted and welcomed.  Happy Listening!

internal wire is definitely a factor. It carries a slightly different set of requirements from external cable, which must cope with many unknowns of run length, electromagnetic environment, speaker impedance fluctuation, and more. The internal wire is engineerable to the known requirements of the speaker where it is installed.

I agree.  For most cases, the internal wirings are much shorter than the external speaker cables, therefore I think it is less likely to modify the signal phase and amplitude vs. the external cables.  Some of the expensive speaker cables nowaday I have seen have rather sophisticated geometry and dielectric core material and grounding that together act like a transmission line to deliver the signal as uniformly as possible across all frequencies.  Some people think that audio frequencies are too low to be affected by transmission line but I do not think so.  Some lesser cables may have resonance issues and the effect is exacerbated as the length increased. 

Some believe that the only difference between cables is the resistance.  I think it's more than that.  You also have the effect of inductance and capacitance - the longer the cable the worse the effect.  A perfect cable should deliver the signal from the amp to the speaker input with a constant phase and constant amplitude losses across all frequencies, but since there is no perfect cable (or is there?) by the time the signal arrives at the speaker inputs, the phase and amplitude will be affected differently vs. frequencies.  This affect materializes itself as a form of jitter (although there is more than just jitter)  A good cable has better phase and amplitude uniformity compared to a bad cable.  Some speaker cables are engineered to intentionally have a transmission line affect so the signal phase and amplitude can be better controlled by the designer.  With twisted pair, the number of variables  is somewhat limited by the wire gauge size and number of winding per in. therefore it may not be able to optimize signal transmission. 

In some speakers, the xover boards are located at the bottom so the wire to the tweeter could be as long as 3ft.  At that length, there could a transmission line like effect that may modify the signal phase and amplitude non-uniformly vs. frequencies therefore the quality of the cable is more important.  But I have personally seen that something as short as 1.5ft length could make significant difference with quality cables.

Anyway, I don't mean to make this into a cable thread (I don't want prof to loose his sleep :-).

Sgmlaw - indeed electrolytics are an issue; they fail over time, drastically and sometimes catastrophically at the end, but also by decrease of value over time, as you say. ELs show up in 6 figure speakers, it's expensive to avoid them.

So, a 30 year old speaker XO has almost surely drifted out of spec, as well as in some level of danger of failure. Rob says he has never seen a failed Thiel cap so far. Thiel used VersaTronix and ERSE, both in their long-life versions with a predicted life of 30 to 50 years. All are bypassed in some way, which extends main cap life more so.

All that said, I am replacing ALL electrolytics to create an effectively "permanent" XO, comparing cost / performance at this time. The likely first-tier upgrade will use ERSE metalized polypropylenes @ highest voltage that will fit, bypassed or not depending on function. Next-tier upgrades will be to a custom ClarityCap CSA - expensive, but stunningly high performing - again, bypassed or not with Cornell Dubilier PPs or RTX styrene film and tin foil, depending.

Early indications sound like we'll be playing a league or two up from original Thiel. The view is getting clearer. 

This is outstanding information, Tom.  Many thanks.

I was aware of the Solens that the crossovers were often fitted with.  Can you add anything as to the electrolytics Thiel has used over the years? 

I say this because typically electrolytics do have a serviceable time window before capacitance starts to shift, and techs tend to focus on them when addressing older instruments.

Beetle - that is correct, the twisted pair wire I sent you was sourced from StraightWire, which is an industrial as well as OEM and consumer source. As you mentioned, we will be comparing that wire in various gauges against other contenders when that time comes.

Andy - internal wire is definitely a factor. It carries a slightly different set of requirements from external cable, which must cope with many unknowns of run length, electromagnetic environment, speaker impedance fluctuation, and more. The internal wire is engineerable to the known requirements of the speaker where it is installed.

Thiel wire is very good. In fact, Thiel "found" wire as a design variable in the development of the O3 in 1978 and introduced aerospace wire to the industry. All models of Thiel wire is, and has always been since that time, 99.9999% pure, low oxygen, long crystal copper developed originally by ITT for the space project, and since then cloned by many makers around the world and now improved by continuous casting and other advanced technologies. I'm guessing that Thiel wire trumps all but some of the highest cost and/or DIY speakers out there. 

Although various configurations are appropriate for hookup wire, Jim chose 18 gauge solid in teflon @ 2.5 twists per inch as a well considered judgement of maximum versatility. Economy of scale was a major concern - good wire is very expensive and big order quantities reduced cost, so all hookup wire is the same, and therefore might stand upgrading via specific-use engineering. More on that in a minute. Beyond hookup wire, the same quality criteria apply to coils. The signal meets hundreds of feet of series and shunt coils inside the speaker. Thiel uses 6-9s copper coils, tightly wound and oven baked. Great coils. In Thiel's and  third party testing, our wire and coils are best-in-world performers.

However, it's never that simple. In the present XO upgrade project I have learned that later speakers including 2.4's were supplied with Chinese-made crossovers. The copper (and other parts) is supposedly a clone of Thiel Copper, but it is not certified and my research causes me to doubt the claim. The coils are obviously lower grade manufacture as learned from Beetlemania's work on his 2.4 upgrade project. The resistances and topologies of the wire and coils are all good, in fact the coil values have been tweaked to account for inductive changes with Printed Circuit Board mounting. The XO performs properly, but sound quality probably suffers a little, as ascertained by Thiel insiders.

My plan is to evaluate the source of each XO encountered to decide whether to keep or replace particular parts. Beetle's late 2.4s have every element replaced. My 2.2s keep all coils and French-film PolyPropylene caps and German Styrene x Tin foil bypasses. My PowerPoints include a Lex and a China pair. Lex are better and will retain some parts. No China parts are being reused. It's a riddle which I am systematically solving.

Another element is wire gauge. Lower resistance is the primary reason for larger wire. However, the overall circuit resistance from input terminal to driver lug is measured and accounted for in the XO, so resistance considerations become nearly insignificant. Our upgrades are increasing some (woofer) hookup wire diameters for greater ion flow optimization. Coil gauge is only changed where required for foil cap upgrade availability. Contrary to some opinions, the small gauge shaping coils are superior to larger gauges, because they can be tuned to their parallel resistor for balanced resonant circuit performance.

I am accounting for wire and coil resistance changes, which may sometimes require a resistor value tweak for proper system performance. Project process is being made. We'll have more to report when the Thiel Audio bankruptcy settles.

I don't have any information on the cables used, something tells me the CS2.4 could use some improvement on the cables used in the xover wiring.

Rob Gillum informed me that my 2012 built SEs have wire sourced from FST. Supposedly it’s equivalent to what was on Lexington sourced boards but, judging from the caps and coils, I’m doubtful. Tom Thiel supplied me with, I think, Straightwire for the onboard jumpers. I plan to replace the input and output wire with Cardas. The coax out looks to be challenging, however, as the wire is in a tube so that the coax chamber is isolated from woofer movement.

Regardless, this will be the last thing I change. I’ve been making some of the changes one channel at a time so that I can control the variables in subjective mono listening tests. I hope to know sometime next month whether replacing that wire makes an audible improvement. But my test may not have inference for non-FST 2.4s?

I have been through tons of speaker cables and I can tell you that you do not need expensive cables to enhance characteristics of the 3.6.  There are several sub 1K cables that have worked better for me than many low to mid 5 figure cables.  All depends on your tastes and your amp.  Enjoy those great speakers!

I am thinking whether it is a good thing or a bad thing.  It could mean the bottleneck could be in the internal cables used for the particular speakers.  So the overall improvement by the external cables is held back by the quality of internal speaker cables.

I have used various cables in my speaker designs.  I have used some cheap cables from Fry's electronics and Supra cables from Madisound and the Supra cables significantly improve the sound.

I have seen various pictures of the CS2.4 xovers and although I don't have any information on the cables used, something tells me the CS2.4 could use some improvement on the cables used in the xover wiring.

Happy Friday- All.

Excellent discussion -All.
5000 posts and going stronger than ever. Way to Go Panel!

Happy Listening!

I vote for cables as short as you can make them. And then however they're made doesn't matter as much.

Erh....I meant 4 figure cables.  

rosami they are great speakers indeed, my favorite all-time.  My pair are in backup mode right now, I am using my CS6's which do deliver a little more bass and dynamics.  I have a rather large room.  However, the CS6 is not quite as transparent throughout the frequency range, but just by a smidgen.

I have been through tons of speaker cables and I can tell you that you do not need expensive cables to enhance characteristics of the 3.6.  There are several sub 1K cables that have worked better for me than many low to mid 5 figure cables.  All depends on your tastes and your amp.  Enjoy those great speakers!

pair of 3.5s with the EQ in Chicago suburb $550.

https://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/ele/d/skokie-thiel-cs35-coherent-source/6786015093.html

Yes - it’s kind of amazing given the age of these speakers. My only “want” with the 3.6s would be a tighter bottom end. I’ve had the 3.7s in my room and they had way better base-to-mid-base definition and control, however the vocal range sounded somewhat thin and lacked body. I’d guess the electronics/speaker combination was a big reason for what I heard with the 3.7s but I’m not willing to start changing my electronics. That was the main reason I stuck with my 3.6s rather than getting the 3.7s. I still think the 3.6s are terrific speakers and may do a little experimenting with speaker cables going forward. 

rosami, I feel the exact same about my 3.6s. I have visited numerous dealers when I travel, and I have not heard a newer model that I had rather have in my home.

It's anecdotal but FWIW:  I've run the Thiel CS6, 2.7 and 3.7 on my CJ 140W tube amps, playing soft and loud (I crank them especially when I'm listening from another room in the house, make it sound like a live band).My amps have yet to be eaten by a Thiel speaker :-) 

Fan - Very helpful in deconstructing some performance differences between the round and slot reflex system. When we're finished with the 1.6, I believe we'll have something quite worth auditioning.

imhififan
Good to see you again. Thank You for citing those slot dimensions and measurements. I do not believe that we have many CS 1.6 nor CS 1.7 owners on the Panel.

Happy Listening!