Thiel Owners
Had the opportunity to put an ARC CD6 into the system with Krell FBI and Thiel 2.7. The top through midbass was amazing...the best this system has ever sounded. However once you got into the bass it had no bite. Symphonic bass drum sounded like they were being struck with pillows. Double bass didn't have the grunt on the front of the note where appropriate. Overall I would describe it as "rounded". Has anyone compared the CD6 to other ARC spinners with Thiels? My 3.6 are currently damaged and awaiting repair so I couldn't test those. |
solobone22 Thank You for citing your system. It does seem a bit unusual with the CD6 presentation and sound. I wonder if ARC cut corners on this spinner? Over the years, I have read that the CD7 is the best cd player ARC made. I did not detect any "softening" with the CD5 nor CD9. I auditioned each player in an all-ARC system. I suspect that a touch of synergy was going on there. Which cabling are you using with the Krell and CS 2.7 ? Sidenote - I did find the ARC CD9 and Aesthetix Romulus equally excellent in a shoot out. Additionally, each of these 2 spinners feature a killer DAC (if this is a consideration?). Happy Listening! |
@jafant always appreciate your perspective I was using Transparent Super XLR. I have a much older pair and the dealer gave me a pair of the recent ones to try. The newer pair was better in the bass however I still couldn't live with it. I've read great things about the ARC CD9 and Aesthetix players however would be hesitant to buy either without auditioning them at home. I will say this - the depth, width, dynamics, and tonal qualities of the 2.7's never cease to amaze! |
solobone22 My pleasure. I once owned Transparent Super MM2 interconnects (IC) and speaker cables (SP). I have not auditioned the GEN5 series. I will try to demo the ARC CD6 as soon as possible for a comparison to your impression(s). It could very well be a matter of 'newer is not always better'. I concur w/ your assessment and evaluation of the CS 2.7 loudspeakers. Are you using Transparent speaker cables? A mix-match of cabling could act as a culprit to "rounding" as well. Happy Listening! |
jafant, I am impressed by your patience in your search for the best cables for your system. As I face my rapidly advancing years, I am finding myself becoming less and less patient in making decisions about my audio gear. I've come to realize that researching gear online is a lot less rewarding than listening to new gear at home, so I'm making faster and more quickly researched decisions. Lately, I've been upgrading my streaming gear, and the music keeps sounding better with each new change. Fortunately, my Thiel 2.2s have welcomed each upgrade and are not holding back my system in any way. |
sdl4 - The 2.2s are quite good, aren't they? And they're highly upgradable with better XO components and related goodies - when the time comes. Regarding cable, I have rotated a dozen or so interconnects and speaker cables through my setup over the past couple years to reference my ears in my room and system. My favorite is Morrow. You might consider it, with their generous take-back trial deal. |
sdl4 I believe in careful yet prudent calculations when building a reference system. I do not care to have cabling sourced to china in my system. This has been quite an exercise because too many U.S. companies are cutting corners. Nordost and Synergistic Research, are noted for not sourcing to china, I have inquired each of these manufacturers. Happy Listening! |
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/thiel-2-3-vs-2-4-the-real-difference If anyone else is interested, I found an old thread comparing the differences between the 2.3 and 2.4. In a nut shell, there are slight differences in the mids and uppers. Not as big a difference as sdecker claims (2021). According to him its “not night and day” ,and “NOT big differences”(2003). I’m thinking maybe his 2.3s didn’t have the upgraded coaxs, so with my 2.3s upgraded there should be even less of a difference. |
jafant - I suppose my experience might have some instructive value. Note that my approach is not that of a hobbyist, but that of an experimental observer. My choices must approach the ideal, including the assumptions, general practice and choices of producers upstream. I recognize that is an impossible task, but within my constraints I try. For example, I chose Sennheiser 800S headphones, not only because they are very good, but because many high-end producers (mastering engineers, etc.) use them; so my potential personal preference for some other audiophile darling cans becomes functionally irrelevant. This is squishy territory which can cause a strict, skeptical engineer to abort - to conclude none of it matters, because it is a functionally unsolvable problem. I conclude that I must make my most balanced evaluations and choices toward this ephemeral ideal. Let’s go to wire. I am lucky to have a personal beacon experience. Without an illuminating experience I can see being lost in the wilderness forever. You may remember cousin Ted, the aerospace physicist who suggested wire as a wild-card solution from GE’s deep space communications problems. I spent the summer of 1978 investigating, experimenting and choosing wire which became Thiel’s standard, and an early milestone for wire’s importance in audio. Over the years, Thiel compared various wire geometries, etc. and stayed with the 18-2 solid CDA101 in teflon for internal wiring. I am presently expanding that solution which we’ll address another time. Interconnects and speaker cable are more complex, since we can’t predict the particulars of length, environment, and source and load characteristics, especially with speaker cable. Let’s stick to speaker cable. Before wire was a known thing in audio, Thiel started with homespun, getting pretty quickly to 00 welding cable, and around 1980 had our ears knocked off by Ray Kimber’s prototype braided wire at $1K/ pair foot. Someone here might remember the model name. I remember the radical improvement and that we beta tested further improvements of that flagship cable over the years. Astonishingly good both technically and to the ear. Jim developed a test bed to read various reactances in frequency, distortion and phase /time domains. I hear knowledgeable people claiming there are no meaningful measured differences - I say emphatically that is not true. I rather think that opening Pandora’s Wire Box simply raises more questions and considerations than they want to address. Back to cable. There was a stream of Kimber. Also there is Straightwire who was a close ally with Thiel from their beginning. Steven Hill is an engineer and has developed and explicated a significant knowledge base over the decades. At present I have some early Straightwire (model unknown) that I’ve lived with since the 1980s. One of my studio workhorses is Straightwire Octave II @ 4 runs in 12’ lengths, star quad with individual terminations that I can mix and match for mono and/or bi-wire or bi-amp. I am not in the listen and choose my favorite game myself, lacking the time, access or budget to do so, and eschewing my personal preference, while valuing "rightness" and "standardness" in my decision matrix. So my process goes like this: discuss with Steven what I want, weigh his solutions and technologies toward those goals and accept his recommendation as to where to land, which is generally the performance sweet spot of the brand. In this Case the Octave II is suitable for my purposes - I use it every day. Let’s jump to preference. I prefer the Morrow SP-4, which I chose by a similar process, but in 12’ lengths it lacks some beef on the bottom. I have 4 runs which I can double and get the solidity I want. I could get it by running 6’ lengths (which I have demonstrated), but for my purposes, such non-standard runs defeats some of my reference purposes. Awhile back we explored here (or possibly behind the curtain with some of you, pardon my spotty memory) the pros and cons of parallel vs twisted runs. I agreed with those who preferred the parallel runs which produced an ephemeral, liquid-like presentation. But, my measurements and further listening led me to conclude that those pleasant effects were artifacts of delicious problematic behavior. Nix. So, I twist my double runs. In addition to those brands, I have and use some old Audioquest, model unknown as well as Benchmark’s Canare, Bluejeans Belden, ProCo (professional) 12’ gauge star quad and OCOS (Dynaudio’s coax), as well as various Audioquest, MIT and who knows what that are occasionally borrowed for comparison. I use many of these wires in live recording and off-site playback duties, and can identify their sonic fingerprints. I know some folks here just don’t buy the wire thing, and you among others are committed to pursuing those nuances as a serious undertaking. I don’t claim to understand much of what goes on in wire, but do know that some serious stuff is going on. Part of the mix includes dielectric considerations and many manufacturers just don’t go there. Of the thermoplastics, the Teflon family wins, both in listening and measuring. The hierarchy is known and agreed, and, who would guess, more expensive performs better. As an anecdote, I quizzed John Siau of Benchmark about such dielectric considerations, to which he had no response, side-stepping to star-quad geometry’s cancellation of distortion mechanisms as the important factor. I bought his wire. It’s good, one up from ProCo, similar to Belden, but lacks the higher order performance of audiophile cable. I don’t think he could be convinced of such further considerations, but then that’s not my job. I overlooked AntiCables. I like Paul’s approach and the product, and he seems now to be addressing directionality. I know that directionality matters, but I also know how wire is drawn and how little I could trust the process to yield consistent draw-down monitoring to guarantee which direction the crystals lie. Anyhow, directionality can be heard, so therefore probably tested via some method beyond my scope. In the ’no insulation is the best insulation’ stream, Morrow is on to a big deal. Grown cellulitic fibers are better dialectics than thermoplastics. Morrow uses cotton fiber, which is excellent. (Ever notice how great those paper capacitors can sound?) I’ll mention a recent lesson from my internal wiring quest. Dialectic matters, and two or more different dialectics in the bundle is better than one - to spread out the anomalies. If we assume CDA101 (best) copper and great insulations, geometry is a really big deal. The cost and consistency of braiding are unfeasible to me. Small irregularities in braid more than undoes the advantages. Same-direction twist wins as an implementable solution well grounded in known physics and within reach of conscientious manufacturing processes. My proprietary configuration may end up being patented or proprietary to Straightwire, so I’ll not go further. And, believe it or not, craftsmanship is a far bigger issue than I assumed. Small physical / mechanical variations in my hand-laid samples create audible and measurable differences, which go way down with optimized mechanical lay-up. I note that Jim ended up with Goertz flat wire and the Absolute Sound or Stereophile reviews of the 3.7 noted its superiority for that speaker. I have read about flat wire, but never heard any. And I wouldn’t go there myself because its market marginality would buck my practice of swimming mid-stream. So, that’s a look at my little corner of the world of wire. It’s a fascinating world, and one who’s dismissal would leave many delights unsavored. This post scratches the surface - there’s always more. I enjoy hearing your perspectives - I don’t get out much - and I should get back to work now. Cheers |
@jafant I've found that an old pair of simple AudioQuest (I think 4) cables sound the best on the 2.7 and DHLabs Q-10 sounds best on the 3.6. The rooms are also quite different. The 2.7 better damped and the 3.6 a little bit more live due to hard surfaces. Another note on the ARC CD6 test. I didn't mess with speaker cables at all during that test - only interconnects. Thiel/Krell has never been known for soft/weak/wooly/uncontrolled bass so I didn't think to mess with the speaker cables. If I get the chance to test another ARC spinner I'll mess with speaker cables as well. @tomthiel I've been looking for a pair of the Goertz cables to try however none have popped up locally. |
jafant, Please continue to keep us up-to-date on your cable search. I have to admit that I have not had much luck with Synergistic Research for interconnects or USB cables in comparative demos I've done in my system. However, I know others who love SR wire in their systems, especially when using the more expensive SR offerings. |
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tomthiel, I am always amazed at the depth of your knowledge of areas in audio where my knowledge is so much more superficial. I'm looking forward to the possibility of upgrading my CS 2.2s when options are available. As I mentioned earlier, the 2.2s are doing a great job of keeping up with some amazing changes in my streaming system, including adding an Innuos Phoenix USB reclocker that just arrived yesterday. I've looked at the Morrow speaker cables several times but never taken a chance on ordering them. It seems like all of their models use the same set-up of lots of insulated small wires, with the more expensive models simply having more wires. It's never been clear to me how to decide what the right match for wire density is in my system - so I don't decide. My speaker wire runs are too long (8m) to take a trial lightly, so I haven't. My current (from the 1990's to today) speaker wire is Straight Wire Encore in a 24-ft pair, but I'm planning to install Cardas Parsec soon. After several comparative trials, I've been using Cardas Clear Reflection balanced interconnects and Shunyata power and USB cables. I can't afford to use the higher-end Cardas speaker cables in my 8m runs so I've chosen the more mid-range Parsec as a compromise. I like that the Parsec uses Star-quad geometry, high-quality Cardas copper, multiple small gauge Litz wires, and even some of the "matched propagation" strategies from the more expensive Cardas wire to equalize timing of the conductors and dielectrics. I've wondered if this focus on timing will especially matter for Thiel speakers. |
tomthiel et al, What are your thoughts on this paper from Townshend Audio about cable technology. Would seem to fly in the face of everything we - or at least I - know or believe about speaker level cable: http://www.townshendaudio.com/PDF/The%20Sound%20of%20Music%20and%20Error%20in%20Your%20Speaker%20Cab... Then, on a separate topic... going back a few pages (I don’t get here as often as I’d like), you were commenting on the development of “coherent source” in various Thiel models over the years. During your discussion, you referred to second order crossovers being used in the SCS series. Would that include our beloved Powerpoints? I’m crushed! Although I can’t argue with the results. |
sdl - knowledge is lovely stuff, but never enough. At 72, some seeps in. I have used my 2.2s as my main playback tools for my whole professional life. I love them, but they will get better, similar to the improvements in beetlemania's 2.4 upgrade. Old Thiels age well and die hard. I like Cardas, have evaluated some samples here, and like them a lot. But so much history with Straightwire precludes jumping that gunwale. Their focus on timing should matter a lot for Thiels. Tell us what you learn. 8M is a long way to run. I have that run for my 'far end' 3.6s to compare my nearfield 'corner launch' system under test to the mid-far field 3.6 reference. I'm getting best results with the OCOS (doubled) coax which is comparatively immune to cable run length. Have you tried an amp close behind each speaker with long interconnects? You could use Mogami, etc. pro interconnects as a trial. I could send you a pair for trials. Carry on, there's always more to come. |
sdl4 I certainly will keep you guys posted. I would not mind delving into Synergistic Research, however, their company offer several lines of products. It is easy to get lost in the weeds so to speak. And then there are those magic bullets... I wished that I had a local dealer/retailer to test drive those offerings. Happy Listening! |
tomthiel et al, What are your thoughts on this paper from Townshend Audio about cable technology. Would seem to fly in the face of everything we - or at least I - know or believe about speaker level cable: http://www.townshendaudio.com/PDF/The%20Sound%20of%20Music%20and%20Error%20in%20Your%20Speaker%20Cab... Then, on a separate topic... going back a few pages (I don’t get here as often as I’d like), you were commenting on the development of “coherent source” in various Thiel models over the years. During your discussion, you referred to second order crossovers being used in the SCS series. Would that include our beloved Powerpoints? I’m crushed! Although I can’t argue with the results. |
snbeall Thank You for the link and post regarding Townsend Audio. Impressive abstract and article. I found the information highly interesting. Pretty cool to fathom that cabling was researched and tested way back in the 1970's. No matter how you guys feel about this White Paper, always, trust your ears. Happy Listening! |
As a cable skeptic, I'm wondering how the length of speaker cables plays into this. If we assume that the perfect cable is transparent, shouldn't the ideal situation involve extremely short runs? Since I run mono amps I have a very short run of Audioquest type 4 cables, 3 feet I think. I could pretty easily shorten this to less than a foot if I believed it mattered. Is 1 foot of moderately priced cable better than 10 feet of expensive cable? This length vs price relationship has to be relevant. And if this sort of thing is so important shouldn't we see a lot more mono dacs and preamps so you can send your digital signal from your digital source to the mono dacs right next to your speakers that are hooked directly to the preamp that is hooked directly to the amp that is hooked directly to the speaker? Why not just eliminate significant analog cable runs altogether? I could buy a second identical dac, use only one channel on each one but make the dac/preamp/amp connections essentially plug to plug. If cables have the potential to do such harm why not just get rid of them? It's terribly difficult for me to believe any of the cable talk. I feel a little bit bad about it. |
jon_5912 interesting points-of-view. Certainly many factors to consider regarding cables/cords. Shorter runs of SP are preferred. A flat SP like Nordost can benefit from a longer run, as it is a very fast cable design. Otherwise, I enjoy a more robust design with a smaller gauge in diameter. The possibilities are endless. Thank Goodness. Happy Listening! |
jafant, Yes, some of the Synergistic Research products seem too good - or too weird - to be true. I'd have to be working with a friendly dealer to even try them. The latest SR product I tried was a USB cable that was among a group of 5 USB cables from the lending library at the Cable Company. The Synergistic cable had screw-in modules to tune the cable to be warmer or cooler in overall sound. I liked the imaging of the cable, but it seemed to emphasize "air" at the higher frequencies at the expense of the bass, The group of cables I tried included "mid-priced" cables from Cardas, Audience, Synergistic, Stealth, and Shunyata. I ended up buying the Shunyata Alpha, which is pretty high-priced in my world, but far lower priced than the Shunyata Sigma or Omega models. |
tomthiel, I'm only 70, so you have two extra years of knowledge acquisition compared to me. Hope you keep letting interesting ideas seep in. Thanks for the thoughts about my 8m cable runs. I've been worried about the long speaker cables, but I can't easily rearrange my multi-purpose living room to move the amps close to the speakers. Most people now seem to recommend going with short speaker cables and long interconnects rather than the other way around, just as you suggested. I spoke to a tech at Cardas about my long speaker runs, and he said that the Parsec cables should work very well at lengths up to at least 30 feet. I hope he's right about this. The Parsec is the latest evolution of the classic Quadlink, which may have been a cable you've come across in one of your previous audio endeavors. |
Jon_5912, About wire/cable effects, I’m with you - a bit skeptical (and feeling bad about it). That said, I have to think that if there are effects, many would come from length, not to mention physical connections/interfaces (as tomthiel has found), so that eliminating or reducing them would be a good goal. The end result of what you describe as you shorten the connection chain is the active speaker. And the end result of your other notion of taking it a step further and keeping the signal in the digital domain as far as possible are Meridian’s DSP speakers. It’s why I’ve owned a pair for two decades. My Thiels are a more recent enjoyment. tomthiel, I can’t help but think that going active was discussed/explored @ Thiel Audio. Could you comment? I can’t imagine what could have been produced were Meridian to use Thiel drivers.... It ruins all the mix and match tinkering that many audiophiles love, but I think you would get a lot more of the younger generation (not to mention spouses) interested in audiophile sound. And honestly get better sound in the end. KEF and Devialet are interesting current examples. In my perfect world, there would be standardized module sizes similar in principle to rack mount 1U, 2U, etc. that manufacturers could produce and swap out to update as advances come. |
similar to the improvements in beetlemania's 2.4 upgrade. Two years later, I remain of the opinion that these are my last speakers. Compared to the very be$$$t speakers/systems I’ve heard, the list of faults is short: 1) no audible output below ~30 Hz; 2) low bass is not as resolved as a quality sealed box design (eg, Avalon Ascent); 3) image density not SOTA (eg, TAD Ref One). 1 is noticeable only on music with organ. 2 is only apparent in direct comparison. Those two faults could be addressed with, maybe, a stereo pair of the Vandersteen subwoofers and I would have a near SOTA system at a relatively “affordable” price (but not excited to have two more large boxes in my living room). Meanwhile, my sonic priorities - resolution, transparency, and neutrality - are very close to the best I’ve heard at any price. Bravo, Jim and Tom Thiel. Thank you. |
I have recently tried for long periods 3 speaker cables with a Thiel CS3.7. From my Benchmark AHB2 amps I used the following: 1) Benchmark SpeakON terminated cables. (6 foot) 2) Audience Conductor SE (9 foot) 3) Audience FrontRow with SpeakON termination (1 meter) Both Audience were better sounding, though the Benchmark was also good. The FrontRow is a great sounding cable. I am still using all 3 cables with #1 and #2 for different purposes. |
