jon_5912
Thank You for checking in with your Serial Numbers - a nice low numbered pair. Happy Listening!
Thank You for checking in with your Serial Numbers - a nice low numbered pair. Happy Listening!
Thiel Owners
Guys-
I just scored a sweet pair of CS 2.4SE loudspeakers. Anyone else currently or previously owned this model?
Owners of the CS 2.4 or CS 2.7 are free to chime in as well. Thiel are excellent w/ both tubed or solid-state gear!
Keep me posted & Happy Listening!
I just scored a sweet pair of CS 2.4SE loudspeakers. Anyone else currently or previously owned this model?
Owners of the CS 2.4 or CS 2.7 are free to chime in as well. Thiel are excellent w/ both tubed or solid-state gear!
Keep me posted & Happy Listening!
13,673 responses Add your response
| Post removed |
| Post removed |
| Post removed |
Prof - for the record, the first New Thiel team included audio industry insiders Bob Brown and long-time Thiel associate Steve Defuria. They lobbied for continuing Jim's designs and the CS1.7 and MCS1.7 were developed on their watch. A few of the original high-quality dealers came on board including Chicago area Audio Consultants. But the wagon never got rolling again. I suspect those 200s 2.7s may be the last of them. 1.7s probably have far fewer. BTW: I am investigating the 1.7 for upgrade parts for the entire CS1 series. Good reason to believe the drivers are highly optimized. Has anybody heard the CS1.7? Regarding cap failure. Value drift is slow and steady and most audible via direct comparison with new. Since series feed caps block low-frequencies, as they drift the low end of the upper driver gets excess low frequency signal. Caps in tuned circuits (like notch filters) can drift to cause mis-match between the cause and the cure for erratic frequency response anomalies. And so forth and so on and on. Failure, however, can come as severe driver distortion, but more commonly exhibits as 'breathing' noises and thunks and stutters. Bottom line: replace your O2 electrolytic caps, even if with same as new. I don't have a schematic and my pair is not yet here. The O2 preceded our phase-induced esoteric education, so all caps may be electrolytic. And the wire and resistors are 'ordinary'. Whatever is in there is highly up-gradable. This year I'll be fetching my prototype pair and I'm pretty sure I won't be able to resist going down the upgrade path. Todd - I would not think of tubes as a mis-match. Tubes do some things extraordinarily well. And even their weaknesses sound very nice. My first 'blown away' experience was Tim de Paravicini's big Esoteric Audio Research amp when we introduced the O3 at CES 1978. Awesome, before the word became diluted. |
Some amp news - about a month ago I acquired a BAT VK-55, it replaced my Krell 200wpc integrated. I know a 55wpc tube amp is not a conventional choice for Thiels, my 2.3s being no exception. However, every time I spend time in audio stores, I always am drawn to speakers powered by tubes. I saw a great deal on the VK-55 on another website, convinced myself that the BAT design had decent chances of working well (so easy to do when lusting for new gear), and was immediately happy when I powered it up - it really opened up the mids, with no loss of bass relative to the Krell. High treble is still my room's weakness, the VK-55 helped a bit, but as not much as I had hoped - complex passages still get smeared in the top end, and too much sibilants esp in female voices. Alas, room treatments will need to continue. One thing I am really enjoying is the resonance and detail - for example, I can hear the sound of strings and the resonance of wood behind them. Also staging detail, especially height and depth, improved. If someone has a more technical explanation of why this mismatch sounds so good, I'd love to hear it. And, just for you jafant, I researched and purchased what I hoped to be a good power cord for this amp - Cardas Clear M. Oh, I did make two tweaks to the VK-55 that helped a lot, probably not newsworthy for many of you - plugged it right into the wall outlet, and isolated it from the rack with a giant slab o' wood. Not really, it was a big 1" thick chopping board I found at TJMaxx, well worth the $38, as this made a modest but significant improvement, even more detail and I think better bass? I am afraid this means I might become a tweaker. |
Wish I had the money to spend ;-) Thiel CS 3.7 € 7.190,00 http://link.marktplaats.nl/m1349466028?utm_source=android_social&utm_content=vip&utm_medium=... |
Tom, thank you! Very informative, and that's a note I will save. As for the expiring of the electrolytic capacitors in my 02s, what type of symptoms occur when the capacitors start to expire? Not sure if I should bother replacing them. vair68rober, Thanks for that info. I finally bothered to check and my 2.7 serial number is # 244. So looks like they continued after the ones you bought. The 2.7s were introduced the same year - 2012 - that Thiel changed ownership and Jim's designs were discontinued. So they sure couldn't have made many of them (I wonder how many if any were made after 2012). I sure feel lucky to have snatched up a pair, especially in the rare ebony finish, as these feel like a "forever speaker" for me. |
tomthiel - happy belated birthday! If I am doing things similar to you when I am 70, I should be a happy man! prof - glad to find you are listening again - hope the rest of the recovery is speedy and total. gasman117 - glad to hear about the PS Audio amp - it is on my short list of products to try, glad to hear about its positive impact to your Thiels. (Also makes me wonder what happened to ronkent?) And I also run w/o a pre, have yet to convince myself it is necessary, much less worth the relative investment. Like anything else in hifi, might help, might not. mr_bill (and jafant) - I do indeed have CS 2.3s and enjoy them greatly, but I don't know any better, these are only my second speakers (third if you count midfi HT) in the hifi journey, so I don't know what they lack in SQ relative to 2.4s etc. One thing about the 2.3s, you might feel a bit left out of these discussions, as I think I am the only 2.3 owner who posts, and only rarely. On the other hand, they are a piece of Thiel history, being the first with the coax tweeter/mid, and they are generally lower cost. And with all the xover upgrades these guys are planning, maybe they could be just as desirable as the other models. btw - serial numbers - mine are 4467 and 4468. |
When I purchased my 2.7s I was able to pick from the last 3 sets available thru Thiel serial #s 229 & 230 , in Cherry wood veneer . That same day the last new 3.7s were listed for $7,000 a birds eye maple, if they were only $6,000 . The story was that the 3.7s were being kept incase there was a Thiel museum . The 2.7s were seconds or blems for $3,000 , so I don't think that these were the last produced . Anyway they had been moved to Tennessee but I had to purchase them thru Rob in Kentucky . |
Prof - Speakers have very few issues which I'll summarize here. The cabinet is basically permanent, as long as you avoid furniture polish with silicone, which breaks down the finish. Also avoid sunlight as practical. The drivers can last a long time - many decades. Thiel surrounds are natural rubber, the best of form. But direct sunlight degrades it. Keep the grilles on. The moving cone / dome /coil is connected via braided leads. They eventually fatigue and break. I hope to get and Rob does have the various lead braids. The usual cause of unabused driver failure is broken leads, which can be replaced. Voice coil burnout is caused by distortion or accident, which necessitates rebuilding. Avoid burnout. Crossover parts, used within power limits are virtually permanent EXCEPT electrolytic capacitors, which have a life generally considered 15 to 50 years. Your 02s are near end of life. Thiel always used best of form electrolytic caps, and we have never heard of a single failure to date, but the bomb is ticking. They are replaceable with care with original or equivalent or upgrade to ERSE PulseX propylene for permanent solution. The 2.7 has a large cap bank feeding the midrange to roll its low end out higher than the same driver in the 3.7. The 2.7 XOs were Lexington built, so highest quality caps were used. I would budget 40 years life from accumulated experience. Side note is that much of my present upgrade development revolves around heat management, which will extend life greatly and reduce age-related value drift. Electrolytics become less effective with age which shifts XO crosspoints. If shifted downward, then additional power can heat the driver motor to failure. Your O2's port helps cooling. Thiel's historical experience is that most Thiel customers who bought from first-rate dealers (use education) never had a single problem, short or long term. About 10% of the customers had near 99% of the problems. The great majority drove into distortion with under-powered amps. Our warranty covered, in fact, such abuse ONCE, with an explanation and warning. Next occurrence was not covered. Rob is educative and generous, but most failures are user created. |
Tom, More great reading, thanks. QUESTION: As you may know I have the 2.7s. I don't know how old my pair is, bought them over a year ago - apparently a dealer pair - though I know the 2.7s were introduced in 2012. Can you give me some insight as to how long I might expect these speakers to last, in good working condition? I bought a spare coax, woofer and passive from Rob for just-in-case scenarios. But in terms of just speaker wear and breakdown over time, how long should they hold up and what parts are most likely going to need attending first? My little Thiel 02s circa early 80's still work great, so I suspect the 2.7s should stay the course. Though perhaps their added complexity makes things different? |
thielrules - you would be in a legitimate position to ask Rob for your serial numbers . . . to answer our 3.7 question. And while you're at it, perhaps the 2.7 count. jon - 41 and 42 is early, type 1. If you have not had work done, there were 2 XO updates of the 3.7. If you don't know their status, I could talk you through what to look for, or Rob might know from memory. History anyone? Some might be interested in Thiel's batch size / manufacturing run strategy. First of all, speaker-making is fairly simple if you aren't making cabinets, especially cabinets as complex, technical and precise as Thiel's. So cabinetmaking manufacturing dictates batch size. In the beginning everything was manual with custom tools and fixtures. At the beginning our cabinet batch size was 40 with custom veneer species quantities from orders and hunchimations. Batch limit was for throughput and limited by shop size, which was my 28'x 30' garage with 5 people in it! What a zoo. Pretty soon finishing was moved to the farmhouse back porch and final assembly to what had been the girls' bedroom. Shipping was either out the bedroom window or off the front porch which we had modified for a drive-up truck dock. We were shipping containers to Europe out of that arrangement before 1980. The addition of the Nandino Boulevard shop in 1981 allowed parallel production which was another zoo to manage. New shop batch size grew to 200. As we adopted CNC and other technologies around 1985, I set upon reducing batch size for a more intimate customer-demand process. By the time I left 10 years later, we had reduced our batch size to 1 pair. Of course, pairs were ganged when back-orders permitted, but our work unit was a matched pair. All processes including cabinet making, from custom veneer faces to crossovers and so forth were real-time demand propositions. For those who know manufacturing, this change is a huge one. These times were at the leading edge of Just In Time inventories and so forth, and we were a leader in the field. This process-flow concept rather than batch-run concept allows smaller batch or trickle inflow of raw materials and parts. It allowed our worker footprint to decrease from about 500 square feet to about 200 square feet with all that entails regarding storage access, supplier quality feedback and so forth. From an end-user / customer perspective, products seem to just show up at the dealer. But from a manufacturer perspective, every process decision takes on live or die importance, especially when managing continual rapid growth. We doubled each year for the first 5 and then capped our rate at 30% / year for quality and sanity concerns. Quality always stayed high. Sanity, especially mine, suffered. Typical weeks were 80 to 100 hours with some months reaching 20 hours / day - 7 days per week. Growth isn't easy. |
Thank you all. On to business. JA - the answer to your 'how many 2.7s' question lies with New Thiel, which no longer exists. I speculate based on conversations with first New Thiel operations manager Bob Brown and its best CEO Tom Malatesta that the number is probably in the hundreds of pairs. Very few indeed. Someday I am likely to find out and will share. If each of you can note the serial numbers of any pair you can. I'll put it on my list. Thiel serial numbers always began with #1. Who here bought that pair of 3.7s directly from Rob? That's probably the high water mark for 3.7s. Number please. |
Tom, Happy Birthday to you! We are all proud here to have such a master with whom to share our opinions and listening to valuable advice. I'll never forget that day, long time ago, when I had the opportunity here in Italy to listen to a pair of 3.6 in a very good setup, since then that sound remained engraved in my mind and heart but I could only dream about Thiels. More of twenty years later I put my hands over these jewels to never let them go, a pure joy every time I switch on the system. I know that all this is also your merit, so, thank You Tom! Just to add a amp to the list that in my opinion has a very good synergy with Thiels, the McCormack DNA-2, with its ease and authority to drive loads around two ohm and even less,not to mention also the marvelous reproduction of the upper middle part of the spectrum. |
Tom tomthiel. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I think you nailed it regarding time. I’ve come to believe that like other things in audio some people are more sensitive to such things. And even if statistical data suggests that many if not most don’t seem to appreciate it; for the many that do, do it consistently and deeply. I also hope you realize that your time on this mass hurling through space, has brought about deep and enduring joy for many. I’m sure all here wish for you to be around for many more birthdays. Thank you. |
Pair of 2.7s in Chicago. I'm surprised how much they're asking. Maybe there's more demand than supply. http://audioconsultants.com/equipment-Thiel-CS27-7812 |
@tomthiel - happy birthday. I'm certainly happy you're here. There aren't a lot of places for audio enthusiasts to get knowledgeable opinions from someone who doesn't need to be biased because their livelihood is wrapped up in selling something. @beetle - I'm not sure if the phase coherence is the difference either. I've wondered if the biggest difference isn't that designers who believe that everything makes a difference are forever listening for changes in sound due to small changes in materials or design. Even if they were wrong about some factor making a difference their belief could lead to them developing a better ear and being very careful about a wider variety of factors. I'd expect that to ultimately lead to better products. I know Charles Hansen of Ayre was like that. He believed that everything made a difference. I don't really believe it's possible that everything he believed was true but I'd guess that his beliefs led him to be a more careful and open minded designer. Regardless of the minute details of what does and doesn't make a difference in amp design, it seems everyone agrees the end products were great. One speaker that is readily available and is most likely much more phase correct than average is Martin Logan electrostats. I don't know if anyone has mentioned them but the panel typically only has a single crossover point to the woofers and that is at a fairly low frequency. I doubt the crossover is first order but everything above that point would be coherent. They're available at a lot of Best Buys, they're probably among the most available brands out there. |
I investigated the Vivid speakers. They are seriously competent. But I can't find anything about their filter alignments; I strongly suspect they are higher order, whereby they can more easily solve all the other design aspects and produce convincing music.If I had deep pockets, Vivids would surely be on my audition short list. But until then, I'm plenty happy with my 2.4s and anticipate being even happier soon! My short list of best-ever speakers includes those with and without first-order filters, so uncertain how important that feature is to my ears. But I notice that since I moved up from mid-fi to hi-fi that I've only owned either Thiel or Vandersteen. Hmmm. To be fair, domestic production and affordability were also factors in my decisions but I did prefer the sonics of the CS1.6 to the widely acclaimed Revel M20s, among other contenders. FWIW |
One thing I hope we can all agree on is that live music, or any live sound for that matter, is, by definition, phase-time correct. From the moment we try to capture that music or those sounds on any recorded medium, phase-time takes a hit, if ever so slightly. Those speaker designers who knew, from both an intuitive and engineering standpoint, that it mattered by doing the least amount of harm to an already compromised signal, were on the track for phase-time accurate, in-home music reproduction. As I’ve written several times here in other threads, our auditory system evolved to be acute in its time-domain sensitivity purely for reasons of survival. Studies have been performed, but we really don’t know the absolute time-resolution limits for directional cues resulting from differential arrival times between our two ears. And, it turns out, pressure receptors in our skin have some ability to detect these time domain elements as well; some directional perception comes not only from our ears. From what I’ve read in the peer-reviewed literature, the human ear can tell the direction of a 90 degree side-presented, 1500 Hz pulse of 660 microseconds (or 0.660 milliseconds). Most speakers cannot even accurately resolve that timeframe when subjected to step-response measurements; those that can are phase-time correct. This is a clear case where objective design, measurements and bioacoustic science merge to create a subjective advantage. About 15 years ago, when downsizing my system from CS7.0 (which I loved!) to go to a pair of Dynaudio speakers, that experiment lasted less than a year before I purchased a new pair of CS6s. I have now found a home for these due to yet again more downsizing, but my 2.4s are indeed keepers. |
I found Stereophile reviews of Vivid products. John Atkinson - Giya. Indeed they use high-order filters with concomitant wavefront delays from each driver. Common wisdom considers this temporal distortion to be OK / non-hearable. I agree that the hearing brain can reconstruct the sonic deconstruction reliably and well. But, I also believe that on an emotional-involvement level such reconstruction activity removes the whole person from the well-recorded sonic event. |
Good to see you, prof! Your Vivid experience dovetails with Andy's "image density" query. My perspective is complex and deep and would take a book to explore. But in its simplest form, the 'reality factor' and 'image density' issues revolve around how the ear hears. We make it up. Hearing is a synthetic activity of very high order. That mental process requires significant cognitive processing (which is why closed eyes help!). All that cognitive processing serves to decouple the experiencing-listener from the real-direct aural experience. A major part of that cognitive processing is the brain reconstructing the aural meaning from signals which have had their phase-time information compromised. So, I don't think that Andy or anyone else can get 'it' without first-order alignments which preserve phase-time. Once it's scrambled, work is required to guess the meaning. Being a synthetic process, hearing benefits from all the cues and clues it can get. So all the other elements such as edge diffraction, panel resonance, component and thermal distortion, etc. all matter. The more that is 'right', the better we can hear - synthesize a meaningful aural experience. I investigated the Vivid speakers. They are seriously competent. But I can't find anything about their filter alignments; I strongly suspect they are higher order, whereby they can more easily solve all the other design aspects and produce convincing music. Prof, I suspect you are particularly attuned to phase-time element. When the ear doesn't have to perform that aspect of sonic reconstruction, things seem more real. Because they are. Thiel attempted to tame the dragon, to wrestle with all the elements that became even more aurally important when correct phase-time was preserved. Sane engineers and business consultants all say 'don't go there'. The current consensus is that 'there' either doesn't matter or it's not worth the effort. I appreciate the regard you all have for Thiel speakers because for you what we did was worthwhile. It matters to we few. |
jon - a little history might help. Thiel's original balance was -2dB shelf below 200 from anechoic flat to compensate for room gain. Purist, first-principle approach. However, 40 years ago there was little marketplace agreement of what constituted flat, and Thiel was often called 'bright' - we were lighter than the BBC / Advent, etc. broad 100Hz bass bump. Over time, our interpretation has become standard. The 2.2 had historically the richest bass due to better room coupling of the passive radiator than either the previous ports or single-driver sealed enclosures. I am experimenting with adding a little midrange to the hot-rodded 2.2 balance to align it closer to other Thiel designs. It conveniently has a midrange series resistor for straightforward tweaking. |
"density of sound" I keep hearing this phrase coming up when describing the sound of Thiel speakers. Is this a special characteristic of first order filter? Or is it a matter of speaker voicing? For example, if I were to design my speakers using 4th order filters, can I still achieve this aspect of sound? |
@prof, I completely agree that Thiels aren't remotely thin, bright or harsh. My experience is mainly with the 2 2 and 3.7. From what I've read both are on the warm side of the average Thiel. That said, I can't imagine anyone finding either of them bright. They're both very well balanced. I find the 2 2 to be slightly warm and the 3.7 to be too close to call. I think any deviation from neutral can be reversed by raising or lowering your seat a little. I've powered the 2 2s with a Yamaha HT receiver and a B&K st202. They aren't bright. Anybody who says they are likes really rolled off highs or has some other axe to grind. I haven't heard the 3.7s sound bright but I have heard them sound a little bit indistinct and soft in the bass. That was remedied by doubling the power. With enough power it's hard for me to imagine anyone finding significant fault with them. They're fantastic all around performers. |
My hearing issue is improving enough to get bits of listening in on my system (not too loud). And on that note: I visited my pal’s place today because he currently has in the new Vivid Kiya speakers. He has many thousands of bucks worth of Nordost cabling, power conditioners etc. He switched a while back from tube amps to a Bryston 4B3. He’s happy. I find his system lost something I valued quite distinctly when he made that switch. Anyway, listened to a bunch of tracks on the very expensive Vivids. In a nutshell: very vivid! More "transparent" sounding with super extended sounding high frequencies than I hear at home on my Thiel 2.7s. It was super-fi in terms of clarity. I’ve heard Vivid speakers before, so this was more of the same. But beyond that, as usual when I got home and whipped music on my Thiels powered by my big ol’ CJ 140W side tube monoblocks: wow what a difference. So much bigger, richer, so much more believable tone and organic quality. And despite that the Vivids are known for really "disappearing," which they did quite well from the low mids up, the Thiel system just whipped their butt in terms of a sense of soundstaging dimensionality, with solid images totally detached from the speakers. The same tracks with stand up bass on the Bryston driven Vivids sounded a bit boxy/speaker-bass to me, where on my Thiels, in my room, the bass just exists as a taught, natural instrument detached from the speakers top to bottom. I missed that Thiel focus and density to the sound and imaging when I listened to the Vivids. Played some Johnny Cash on the Vivids and, while super clear, it was "hi-fi" sounding insofar as Cash’s voice just sounded artificial and a bit crispy around the edges. And the acoustic guitars, again, vivid, but bleached of tonal color. On the Thiels/CJ combo cash sounded like a human in front of me. And when the acoustic guitars came on on both sides, they sounded so much bigger, thicker and richer, and tonally it was "aaahhh...THAT’s that authentic acoustic guitar tone I was missing from the Vivids." If anyone still had the idea that Thiels are bright, or thin or harsh sounding speakers, I can confidently declare a listen to them at my place would dispel that instantly. They are chameleons that you can make sound as you wish, via associated equipment, positioning, etc. Just thought I’d share. |