Silvano - correct. All, if you don't hear a problem, you don't have a heat / melting problem. The cap melting is caused by sustained high volume use.
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!
13,522 responses Add your response
Regarding access to XOs for the 2.4, here are Rob Gillum’s instructions to me: “The crossover can be accessed through the passive radiator opening. The base is not removable, as it is screwed, and glued. To access the crossover, you must remove the passive radiator screws and let the passive radiator drop into the cabinet. It can be rotated 90 degrees, and removed while servicing. To re-install the passive radiator, you can place your fingers at the surround, pressing outward to hold in place while re-installing the screws that hold bit in place.” I would add two things, 1) be patient rotating the radiator to get the right angle for removal; 2) you don’t need to be overly paranoid grasping the radiator surrounds as I was initially. Not nearly as delicate as I first imagined, albeit still need to exercise care. |
My 3.6s are 1001 and 1002 I’ve found a few articles online about heat causing problems with the xos I haven’t experienced any problems with my speakers but after learning I have the first gen 3.6s and there were 2 revisions after that I’m thinking Tom’s hot rod upgrade could be a game changer! Tom keep sharing Thiel history and inside info I enjoy reading all your posts!! |
tomthiel Thank You for more history markers, this time, addressing the various series of Thiel Audio's wonderful loudspeakers. I did wonder and was curious how the models received their badges, names over the years. Again, you are important contributor here. I look forward in reading about the next history lesson. Happy Listening! |
unsound - there are real advantages for outboarding, and time may lead there. I have laid out the crossovers in outboard configuration. However, there are problems along with advantages. The separate enclosure flunked the appeal census by a wide margin. The electromagnetic field interactions of coils would require a fairly large enclosure. And the wire-cable between the XO and the drivers is a critical link that invites unknowns because an external XO might be moved, adding additional cable of unknown parameters, which could seriously impact the signal at the drivers. That cable snake requires engineering-development that I am not presently prepared to provide. Many of those disadvantages could be overcome by piggy-backing the XO on the back of the cabinet, but that reintroduces some of the problems. All things considered, including my limited time and resources, led to starting with the XOs remaining internal, which also preserves the classic Thiel value of simplicity of use. |
jon - I also enjoy the time I steal to write these messages. Note that I am reconstructing history from various supplier records and so forth. What I believe is that the 3.6 was upgraded in Feb 1996 via XO component changes for smoother performance (3.6.1) and again in March 1999 to separate some film caps on the woofer/tweeter board from resistors to eliminate overheating (3.6.2). You have 3.6.1s, but may have hot caps. That upper board is behind the passive radiator. Cap damage would show as melted spots where touching white rectangular resistors. If you see no melted caps and the speakers sound good, you're OK. If there's trouble, Rob can help you. Now for a little fun behind the curtain. My crossover modifications are specifically dealing with heat management, like in pro gear. All the layouts are modified to place all resistors along a central bar where the upgraded MRA resistors are mounted in metal clips screwed to the aluminum bar which is sunk to the input panel plus possibly a back-mounted heat sink. The result will preclude heat damage, but is also intended to introduce thermal stability to keep XO crosspoint behavior more stable during hard use. Congestion at FFF is mostly amplifier deficiency, but also includes value drift in hot components. Beetlemania's 2.4s will attach the hot bar to the SE input plate. Coils are also being elevated for 3D radiant cooling; likewise the caps are lifted from the board and the board is lifted from the cabinet wall for vibration isolation as well as thermal stability. Whew! My 2.2s are getting real serious treatment of an additional chimney-spine: a square tube up the back and vented at the back center of the top. That chimney sucks cold air from the floor to exit at the top and sinks the XO hot bars as well as an aluminum tube from each driver to sink magnet heat plus provide additional recoil resistance for the drivers. If all unfolds as dreamt, such a modification could be available from Coherent Source Service as a Full Tilt Boogie Upgrade. My 2.2s include double bypassed caps and 4-9s foil coils in all series feed positions. The original 4-9s coils are retained in the shunts. Good day all. Tom |
Thiel's naming has been called confusing, although it is quite logical from inside the system. There are a few different series, which developed organically over time: O the original O series which was sequential, first product, second product, etc. without regard to what it was. That series ran through the O4a (second generation of O4) andO3b, third generation of O3. The next iteration of the O3 was dubbed Coherent Source by Peter Moncrief of International Audio Review. That CS name stuck and all subsequent floorstanding coherent speakers fell into the CS series, with the 3 being the 10" 3-way flagship. The CS3.5 was the 5th generation of the 3 and was replaced by the 3.6 and 3.7. The CS2 appeared as a smaller, less expensive model to inherit what we learned from the 3. The O4 - 6.5" 2-way became the CS1 series which ran consecutively all the way to the 1.7. The model 2 had much longer runs without upgrades than the 1 or 3 which received the bulk of Jim's development energies. The CS2 was an 8 inch x 3" x 1" ported design which ran more than 10,000 copies before the CS2.2 in 1990. The 2.3 and 2.4 sported the coincident-coax as a proof of concept while the CS3.6 produced robust sales and received internal, non-heralded upgrades. Note that in Thiel-land a new model designation means at least new drivers. When products received internal upgrades, they had names like 3.6.1, etc. but only dealers knew of those designations. When home theater came along more series were added to the mix. SCS (Small Coherent Source) the bookshelf - satellite series got the first coincident-coax 6.5x1"driver which ran to SCS4. MCS was Medium Coherent Source, often used for center channel, etc. The Personal Coherent Source was an executive - desktop little thing of its own. The SubWoofers were designated SW, but with upgraded room interaction software became the SmartSub or SS series. What holds true is that each number model series remains a consistent entity such as CS3 = 10"x3 way, etc. and the post decimal number is the generation with 2 being the second, as in CS2.2 etc. Each model retains its distinct personality and attributes, but grows in quality as new technologies and solutions were developed. The CS1 had a full series from CS1 to 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6 and finally the 1.7. The CS2 generations always ran longer for marketplace and R&D reasons. So it topped out at 2.4. The next generation was named after Jim's death and was called the 2.7 due to the radical coax driver and asterisks woofer it shared with the 3.7. Except for that model 2 number skip, the numbering is fairly consistent. Way, way many products for a small company. |
The model 2 has never been able to play as loud or deep as the model 3 and above. That's the main reasons it costs so much less. If you like Thiel and want louder, find a series 3 or higher. Hi Tom, Actually I am pretty happy with my the CS2.4. I only brought up the discussion to illustrate differences in design philosophy. Also before I didn't quite know the reason behind different model naming convention. Now I know 2 vs 3 denotes the size of the mid range driver and may be the bass driver as well. |
andy - your reservations regarding high-power output from the model 2 are valid. Small drivers with relatively low-frequency crosspoints serve to simulate a point source, with off axis / room energy being correctly associated with on-axis / direct energy. A real singer, drum, etc. in your playback room would act like a point source. The model 2 has never been able to play as loud or deep as the model 3 and above. That's the main reasons it costs so much less. If you like Thiel and want louder, find a series 3 or higher. jon - the ATC with a 3" midrange can play loud because it is crossed over much higher and steeper. Trade-offs. Physics rules. |
"An ideal speaker system should have phase response linear with frequency, which in simple terms means that all frequencies produced by the driver reach the listener’s ear at the same time. " This statement seems vague and lacking specifics. I am not sure what they mean by "reaching the listener's ear at the same time". May be written by the marketing department. :-) As Tom said, the only way to prove that a speaker is time-phase coherent is that it can produce a pulse response. You could come up with a lot of reasons as to why a certain speaker is time-phase coherent, but at the end of the day, it has to be able to produce a proper impulse response. And I think I've read somewhere that there is a law in which stated that in order to legally advertise your speakers as "time-phase coherent", it has to prove that it can produce a impulse response. Ideally there would be a single driver that can produce 20Hz - 20kHz but since such a driver does not exist, one has to use electrical filters, and all all filters have phase shift. Some choose to optimize in frequency domain and some choose to optimize in time domain. Another things that often overlooked in Thiel design is the geometry of the baffle which I believe was designed as such to reduce the effect of diffraction and I don't think one can underestimate how it helps the speakers disappear. It definitely adds to manufacture cost and I don't think Thiel did it just for the look. When I see a lot of high end speakers that basically just have a rectangular and square shape I kind of frown ... I am sure they could do a lot better. It seems like Thiel products for some reasons produce a lot of polarized opions - you either like it or you hate it - at least that's the sense I got. I haven't heard all their products, but I appreciate the technologies behind their designs. |
I would say that there are many ways to produce some of the aspects of coherence. Rather than massaging the various aspects, I find the way to "see" that a transducer is keeping all the temporal information straight is to feed it an impulse. If the graph of that impulse rises immediately from zero to a peak and begins a downhill decline (as no more signal is being fed to it) creating a triangle . . . then and only then is the transducer coherent. A single driver such as a headphone acts this way. When using multiple drivers, they overlap and contribute additively and/or destructively in time and frequency and directionality. When they add to act like a single driver, the term of art is "minimum phase response". A valid test is to overlay (on an oscilloscope screen etc.) the input impulse and the resultant microphone output from the speaker. The speaker will always degrade the signal in some way due to Murphy's Law of Material Physics. If the waves look subtantively the same, then you have preserved the relevant information. Otherwise, I would find it difficult to wade through the various claims and side-steps and judgements associated with coherence. |
The ATC actives use some kind of active phase compensation to align the drivers at the crossover frequencies. I don't think they go to the trouble Thiel did to keep time alignment throughout. What big active ATCs have that little else can match is massive dynamics. I think there is a dynamic linearity as well that makes them very revealing in a way other speakers can't match. This ability lends a different type of realism that would probably be impossible for first order speakers to achieve. ATC believes in making the drivers as well as possible so the crossover doesn't have to be complex. They don't image like Thiels and they don't sound near as lively at low volumes. I consider my Thiel/ATC systems to be quite complementary. They describe the active crossover as "380Hz and 3.5kHz, 4th order, critically damped with phase compensation". They discuss phase response in their literature but don't give specifics. They're clearly in favor of linear phase response and it's a design goal. "An ideal speaker system should have phase response linear with frequency, which in simple terms means that all frequencies produced by the driver reach the listener’s ear at the same time. " http://www.transaudiogroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ATC_Engineering_Goals_and_Approaches.pdf |
jon - those ATC measurements are commendable and likely to produce very fine results in the frequency domain. For this Thiel thread, I will add a few comments. Loudness: 4th order or any higher than 1st order slopes allow the driver to operate in its robust range and attenuate the out of band requirements, so they can play louder cleaner. Things get so much easier in that world; that's why most designers go there. Thiel's 01 used 3rd order and the model 02 used 2nd order slopes. The change for the 03 and after to first order increased the difficulty of the design undertaking by an order of magnitude, at least. And as I have mentioned in the past, by removing phase and time coherence, the ear-brain gives a free pass to many other anomalies; they no longer are scrutinized as real and therefore can be ignored. Examples include the edge diffraction and soft-dome break-up modes. Diffraction isn't particularly audible with high order slopes because the brain doesn't associate the source with reality, and diaphragm breakup is attenuated to lower loudness and becomes less audible. Note that the literature considers 4th order Linkwitz-Reily filters to have 0 phase shift, but that is because they pretend that 360°, which rotates phase angle a full cycle, is exempt because 360° looks like 0 on a graph. Also, the speakers described do not look time-aligned, so the transient wave-fronts will reach the ear at different times as well as phase delayed relative to the input. Many commentators say that doesn't matter, which is because the ear-brain is so good at reconstructing the probable intended sound which has been scrambled by the speakers. Our work at Thiel demonstrated to our satisfaction how that brain-work of reconstructing the probable-intentioned waveform serves to decouple the listener from the emotional experience of the music. As I have said, most commentators disagree and deem higher order filters to be OK, and first order, phase coherent wavefronts to be unhearable and meaningless. I suspect that Thiel lovers have identified the "trueness" of phase and time coherence and are willing to put up with the attendant compromises including less smooth frequency domain performance and higher audibility of many ancillary anomalies. Jim spent a lifetime identifying and reducing those anomalies (sonic baggage) and I am now stretching the envelope to include cleaner electronic performance which original budgets and materials science did not permit. |
My ATC 110s have a 3" midrange that will play incredibly loudly. it's the same midrange that is in the SCM 300 ASL that will do 121 db continuously. I doubt any Wilson product can touch that. The crossover to the woofer is 380hz. The midrange also has extremely low distortion. I decided I liked small midranges a while ago and I think the main reason is that they don't beam. That means the off axis response is much closer to the on axis response. Reflected sound will not be radically different from what comes directly from the drivers. This means the speaker will sound good in a variety of rooms. This is one of the first things I noticed about my Thiel 2 2s. I got them for a living room system that was far from acoustically ideal and they were great. The first order crossover means that if you walk right up to them they have wild response fluctuations due to the driver interactions but the overall sound in the room was immensely enjoyable. Sit back in a good spot and get a great audiophile experience. Turn them on while you're doing other things around the house and get a great casual listening experience. http://atcloudspeakers.co.uk/hi-fi/loudspeakers/tower-series/scm300aslt/ http://studio-hifi.com/images/ATC75-150S_JeffBagby.pdf "As you can see the nonlinear distortion is extremely low, with 3rd order in the neighborhood of -70dB at my low crossover point. These levels are very close to the noise floor in my room and I would consider this to be in the state-of-the-art range for midrange distortion. " |
Pretty much all designs have trade-offs. You can reduce, if not eliminate, them by throwing more money at it but real-world speaker design is a series of compromises. Sure, Wilsons can play loud as hell, but at what (sonic) cost? The smaller midrange diaphragms in Thiels are much more rigid than those used in Wilsons. This is a function of both materials and size. The upside of Jim Thiel’s choice is that you hear far less distortion. IOW, a more realistic recreation of the recording, warts and all. Other than the TAD Ref One with it’s largish coax (beryllium at that), all of my favorite speakers have midrange drivers <5” diameter. Tbf, ability to reproduce The Who at concert SPLs is very low on my list. |
After spending a few weeks with the CS2.4, I start to notice a possible sound signature or if I am a bit overly critical, a possible weakness given the design. As with most Thiel speakers, the mid range driver is smaller than the average mid of other manufacturers. I was not part of the design process but I think the main reason for using small mid driver has to do with time-phase coherent. We Americans have a say "There is no substitute for cubic in." In speaker design, I guess the equivalent would be "There is no substitute for membrane area." When a small mid driver is used, one has to cross over to the bass at a rather high frequency so the bass driver can help out the mid when playing loud. In the case of the CS2.4, I believe I've read that the cross over freq. to the bass is around 1KHz. But still ultimately the laws of physics come into play and being a small mid the advantage is faster transient speed and better clarity which is the hall mark of the CS2.4. On the down side though, at high volume, the sound can be a bit strained as the mid does not have enough membrane area to pressure the air at low frequencies. With the CS2.4, especially with saxophone, the "blah" produced lacks a bit of weight and at high volume, the depends on the recording, the vocal can sound a bit shrill especially if your electronics are sort of in that direction. When you hear people complain about the sound of Thiel speakers in general, I think this is what they talk about. If you're used to speakers which use larger mid driver (for example the Wilson uses 6in and even 7in mid) that have a more relax and warm mid range, you probably think the Thiel house sound a bit on the bright side. Anyway, I guess you cannot have it all. surprised :-) |
I'm still a Thiel owner (my entire HT is Thiel and my subwoofer is a Thiel SS2/Integrator), but my main speakers are as of last night Audio Physic Avanti 3. On a whim (well not so much as my buddy has a pair of AP Virgo 2's), I listened to them and was completely blown away. They do everything that I love about the Thiel's equally well, but added a smoothness and that famous AP ability to "disappear". The only thing I really had to give was the Cherry color of the AP vs. the maple that makes my 2.4's look so stunning. Guess you can't have it all! It's a shame to keep the 2.4's in storage (well, in a finished attic, so not much of a storage per se), so I will put them up for sale. If I had a second system, I would keep them, but I simply don't have the space for that (I've already claimed a room for my stereo and the basement for the HT, so I can't ask the wife for yet another space...) |
Excellent discussion Andy, Tom, Prof I know that Beetlemania and Tom, specifically, are working diligently on this XO project that will benefit us very soon. I am looking forward to the final products for upgrade and excited by ClarityCap CSA best offerings. To address Andy's initial query, yes, the CS 2.4SE is an extra dose of sweetness to an already sweet CS 2.4 loudspeaker in stock form. Happy Listening! |
In the few minutes I have . . . Andy, good observations - the 2.4 upper coax is crossed over as a single driver - the electrical signal drives the tweeter only, and the midrange piggy-backs through a mechanical elastic surround. Indeed the CC-SAs in the 2.4SE are less than state of the art, but at the time were CC's best offering. Regarding the "glow", Thiel always avoided artifacts even if they sound beautiful. In my present upgrade work with beetlemania, we have chosen ClarityCap CSA's which are 2 generations beyond the SA and are extremely good as being extremely neutral, without artifacts. We're testing efficacy of various bypasses in parallel to the CSAs. You are correct about the 2.7 XO midrange feed cap. It is a 400uF electrolytic, which is audio grade, but nonetheless degrades the mid signal a little, even though it is bypassed by a 15uF polypropylene and a 1uF styrene & tin foil. My upgrade strategy is to eliminate all electrolytics (somehow!) to make the speakers virtually perpetual (electrolytics drift and fail over time). As you say, great caps are very expensive. I am assembling cap bundles based on a custom Japanese best in world film, bypassed by CC CSAs, rebypassed by the custom Thiel Styrene/tin and possibly a CC-CMR - all depending on which circuits. Much comparative evaluation will continue toward finding the best performance/ cost plateaus. It is easy to spend $thousands on caps. We are likely to have at least 2 upgrade levels for each of the products we address. The 2.4 is on the list and progress is being made slowly but slowly. |
Prof, I didn't get to listen to the CS2.7, but from what I've read, the CS2.4 concentric driver uses mechanical cross over where as the CS2.7 uses electrical xover. It means that the CS2.4 driver probably uses a high pass capacitor in the signal pass and since the midrange need a lower xover frequency, the capacitor probably has a large value which usually is not optimal for high frequency. The signal has to pass through this capacitor even for high frequency. I don't have the information but if I was correct about the CS2.7 concentric driver being electronically xover, the tweeter can have its own xover which means it can be optimized using a more appropriate capacitor therefore it may explain what you heard in term of the treble glow. The CS2.4SE has upgraded capacitors and although I don't know the specific detail, but my guess it's the series capacitor of the concentric midrange is most likely. These high end capacitors do cost a lot of money. For example, a typical for a tweeter capacitor is around 5.6uf which could cost somewhere from $50 - $200 depends on how much you want to spend. For the CS2.4, since the midrange part has to play much lower frequency, the capacitor could be as high as 10uf or more which will cost even more. A quick look up, a 10uf Mundorf Supreme is $55.0. I've read somewhere that the capacitor used in the CS2.4 is Clarity SA which although a good cap but probably not the best. When I used Clarity SA cap in my own speaker tweeter xover, for example Cowboy Junkies Trinity Session track Mining for Gold, the background noise of the recording is not that apparent. But when I switch to Mundorf Supreme cap, the background noise was a lot more apparent and more 3 dimensional. When I listen to the CS2.4, I always told myself that the treble could use better capacitors. As for comparing plasma vs. LCD or LED, I have always prefer plasma over LCD or LED not only for having wider viewing angle, but plasma was always more natural to me. A lot of people may not realize it but picture processing also use filters not that unlike xover in speaker. They also high order or low filter. High order filter in picture processing allows for sharper and clearer image, but at the same time less natural - sort of like music as well. Each TV manufacturer has its own picture characteristic. Sony tends to have a more vibrant and sharper image. Where as Panasonic tends to have a softer picture and I suspect it has to do with the filter design. |
andy2, Very interesting post. Thanks. I know what you mean about the "sparkle" that some speakers may have (in this case yours) vs the Thiel sound, and certainly agree on the advantages of the concentric mid/tweeter design. I wonder if you have heard the last, re-designed version of Thiels concentric mid/tweeter in the 3.7 or 2.7 speaker? I was familiar with previous Thiel speakers (including having had the Thiel CS6 for quite a while with it's concentric design) and the 3.7 design, with that new flattened, corrugated mid and new tweeter, was really another step ahead, both in terms of smoothness, clarity, and coherency. I have auditioned a great many speakers and heard too many to count over my fervid audiophile career, and I've simply never heard a more coherent speaker top to bottom, but especially in the mid/upper frequencies. It's impossible to hear any crossover or discontinuity, just a perfectly whole, seamless presentation. Every time I came home from auditioning highly lauded, latest greatest speakers (including new Magico and others) one of the first things that stuck out is how the Thiels made those other speakers sound less coherent. Same for soundstaging. As you mention, I really enjoy how consistent the sound is from the Thiels from a wide variety of listening positions. That to me is a very natural aspect of sound. If a speaker starts to sound phasey, or really shifts tone/imaging quickly with listening position, that's a turn off to me. I'd draw an analogy to TV technology. When plasma displays and LED displays were battling it out, I had the same issue with LED lit displays, as their image altered in contrast/color noticeably with any shifts of the viewer off axis, which gave it a a "shifty" quality to the presentation. Plasma, being emissive light source was completely even and stable, so it produced a beautiful, consistent image from any reasonable angle. An image of a painting on a plasma would be akin to what it's like to view the real painting, insofar as you could walk around and examine it from whatever angle you wanted. Whereas LCD, especially in previous incarnations (and still to some degree today), had a shifty quality which made it more like those "hologram art" pieces, where you have to stand in just the right position for the illusion to work, which instantly identifies it as artificial. I get the same issue with really fussy speakers. It's one of the reasons why I don't care for most electrostatic speakers, especially Martin Logan. ML have long claimed they have mitigated the "head in a vice" electrostatic problem by curving their panels. But whenever I listen to ML speakers I still hear the same issue. Move my head and the image quickly slides in to one speaker side. Whereas with my Thiels, while of course there is a sweet spot for the stereo illusion, it's wider and tonally there isn't some obvious change with listening position which make it feel lessy fussy, more natural, and more realistic over a wider listening area. And as Andy says, the Thiel design is fantastic with soundstaging and imaging specificity. The 3.7s were just about the best soundstaging/imaging speakers I've ever heard, at least from a conventional box design (only my MBL omnis exceed them in some ways). Though of course now I live with the 2.7s. In my long "speaker auditioning" thread on A-gon, I mention a lot of speakers I auditioned, and every time I came home I'd spin the same tracks on the 2.7s and one of the first thing that would impress me (aside from the beautiful tone) was the soundstaging and imagine. The Thiel soundstage is huge, the imaging dense and palpable. Playing live concert recordings especially had the sense of expansiveness and being at a concert. As I've mentioned in the thread before, one of the performance advantages I heard from the bigger 3.7s over the 2.7s, is that the 3.7s imaged more consistently across the whole soundstage, speaker to speaker, so even instruments panned hard left or right floated distinctly apart from the speakers. I find that less so with the 2.7 design, where instruments to the sides tend to sound a bit more 'coming from that speaker' than the big Thiels. I also get the sparkle thing Andy spoke about. Depending on how I position my Thiels I DO get a beautiful sparkly golden tone in the upper frequencies. But it's more of a consistent "glow" over the whole spectrum. There isn't ever a sense of the upper frequencies "sticking out." It's very inviting. But on some other speakers the design can seem to add a bit of additional sparkle to the upper frequencies that can be appealing as well. It's one of the thing that appealed to me with the Joseph and Devore speakers. It makes, for instance, picked acoustic guitars sound more vibrant and present. I don't mind it if that character doesn't sacrifice too much in the way of coherence, and it's a nice place to visit, sonically. |
Listening to the CS2.4 and comparing to my own speakers I notice a couple of things. The CS2.4 like most Thiel speakers use concentric tweeter midrange driver. And because of that, the soundstage is very stable. I can move my head but the sound remains constant most of the time. There are not a lot of quality off the shelf concentric drivers available commercially and those that are available are not of high quality. So my speakers use separate dome tweeter and midrange driver. Since I build my own speakers, I could afford very high end capacitor. When I listen to Jewel song 2 Find U on her album 0304 on my speakers, there is this treble glow that sort of being sprinkled over the soundstage that is kind of addictive. It's like the golden glow over the atmosphere you see during a sunset at the beach. I use the track above as an example but on my speakers this treble glow is there in every track. I mention that because I use very expensive cap in my tweeter cross over, but when I put in a low cost cap the glow was greatly diminished. When listening to the same track above on the CS2.4, I notice that treble glow was not really there. So I was wondering if the CS2.4 might not have used a good cap? Or it could be the concentric tweeter midrange driver is a compromise to achieve time-phase coherent? Also, some time-phase coherent designs use a phase delay network on the tweeter, and the phase delay network uses up 2 capacitors per network so if you want to use high end capacitors it will cost a lot of money especially for a commercial design. I don't know how the CS2.4 xover is designed so I am not sure. As for the CS2.4SE version, from what I heard, the xover was modified to use more expensive capacitors, and some people have said that the SE version sounds sweeter than the regular version so maybe it's the capacitor that is responsible for the treble glow. My speakers tweeter is ScanSpeak AirCir soft dome tweeter where as the CS2.4 uses aluminum so that could explain the difference as well as soft dome is known to have a sweeter sound vs. aluminum. Anyway, back to the concentric tweeter midrange driver. Theoretically I always knew that concentric driver has the advantage as far as soundstage presentation stability and coherent and having a bigger sweet spot. Now that I can personally listen to the CS2.4 in my own home, I am more than convinced that it's the way to go if you want a good soundstage presentation. Earlier Thiel speakers used separate tweeter and midrange driver. But later designs, all Thiel designs have all used concentric drivers so I guess he came to the same conclusion. The problem of concentric is the motor design. Basically you need to have a motor that have to drive both the tweeter and the midrange, hence you have to compromise. Not only that, when the midrange driver vibrates, it modulates the tweeter as well so it's another thing you have to take care off. If you have to separate tweeter and midrange driver, you can optimize separately to your heart's content. I have seen a few concentric drivers available commercially but their frequency response do leave a lot to be desired. In that sense I admire what Thiel have done. They have gone their own way and I wish more speakers manufacturers could take a bit more risks. |
vair68robert No- the other Audio forums send a maintenance notice well in advance reporting that the site goes down for said amount of days, times. I follow all of the sites listed on dailyaudiophile.com on a very regular basis. Audiogon appears to have a different interaction, look and operating platform in comparison. An exact location here in the USA and its server(s) locale would be of interest to me. |
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Buggy for me today ever since it was brought up this morning , different each time . It opens and when I try to go to last page " sorry ", then refresh , next time it won't open at all - then refresh , next time no problem ! next time it opens but no last page until refresh !! This time no problem . Question is is happening on other forum threads ? |