Thiel Owners
did not finish. Had a fine gentlemen drive to my home from Ohio ( I am in NC) and purchase my Thiel 2.7's. He had a pair of 1.6's but was ready to move up. he listened for about an hour and was bowled over. Of course the fact that all gear are the upper end electronics from PS Audio did not hurt. So we packed them up and he is taking them back home. I hope he enjoys as much as I did. Now i have to live with the 3.7's. poor me :( |
Outstanding! tomthiel Thank You for the update on Clarity Caps and the like. Hope you and Rob are having fun on the XO project. Good to read that you found a repair shop for your Classe' gear, restored to healthy status. No doubt that you have assembled a very fine team to tackle this project that will benefit us all in the coming months. Keep researching, testing and writing. Happy Listening! |
Hello folks; just letting you know that no grass is growing under my feet. I am making good strides toward first test samples. The CS2 2 development has dropped back till autumn and the PowerPoint and CS2.4 are now the first-tier projects. The big bundle of ClarityCaps is shipping in a week with lots of trial samples including the custom CSA-160 volt cap. This cap utilizes CSA technology with a 160 volt film to be small enough to fit inboard layouts. The outboard XO option seems to be dropping out via better inboard solutions. On another front, I learned that Rob got the Klippel Analysis rig from ThielNashville, so it will likely find a place in this development project. World-class tool. Also, I have ordered the new, long-awaited update hardware for my Metric Halo SpectraFoo analysis rig which now sports 32bit x 192kHz ultra clean conversion and 64bit real-time multi-chip processing. This rig is used for recording and concert hall analysis, but applies well to speaker development. I am learning it. Also, my Classé amps return this weekend from the rehab shop. While re-capping, I also upgraded the caps and added some bypasses. DR6 (late) preamp and 2x DR9 power amps. (100 w @ 8 ohms, 200 @ 4, 400 @ 2 ohms, one amp for each channel. They're old 1990 gear, but I know them well, and love what they do. Additionally, some very knowledgeable and experienced folks are contributing to the project. By year's end I hope to have a version or two of upgrade crossovers for the 2.4 and PowerPoint. Stay tuned. Tom |
Good to see you- arvincastro Baltimore is a great city for Audio and Jazz music. Denver will offer more audio shops in its general area, not far from Colorado Springs/Boulder either. Much Thanks! for sharing the updates in your system as well. Hope you are well and gearing up for Summer. Happy Listening! |
Hello all! Haven't checked-in in a while as I am currently in the process of moving from Baltimore to Denver for a new position. Glad to see that my fellow Thiel owners are as active & passionate as ever! I have made several additions & updates to my system. I still have my 3.5's with the Bass Equilizer that was recently repaired by Rob Gillum. Still have an all vintage Audio Research front-end with a D240 MKII solid-state amp (looking out for a second one so I can run them as mono-blocks), a tube LS-7 pre & a tube PH-3 phono stage. Turntable is my vintage Technics 1200 MKII with a Shure M97xe MM cartridge. Interconnects are AudioQuest Golden Gate RCA`s. All power cables are stock, plugged into a Tripp Lite LCR2400 line conditioner. However, I've made three important updates... First, I am now using a Bluesound Vault 2 for streaming & digital file/CD playback duties. I must say that I am THRILLED with this product! It's so easy to use & it is extremely versatile. I was able to rip my 500+ CD collection to its internal HD & the playback is every bit as good (maybe better?) than I got from my Denon 2900 player. As far as streaming goes, I'm using it mainly for Tidal & can tell you that the sound quality is simply amazing. The Masters/MQA & cd-quality stream decoding is better than my former PC/Meridian Explorer 2 DAC set-up & the Vault doesn't have any issues with drop-outs or other connection problems. The Bulesound app is very easy to use as well & the integration to Tidal & Roon is excellent. I'm considering an upgrade to a Mytek Brooklyn DAC to get even better sound. My only gripe is that the Vault 2 can't rip/play SACD`s. Guess nothing's perfect... The other thing I did was introduce some MIT gear into my system. I've always been interested in their "Network Box" & "Poles of Articulation" technology. Well, I'm not technical enough to tell you how it works, but after replacing a fine set of Gotham SPK-8 speaker cables with their AVT-3 cables, I`ve noticed that my 3.5's have a fuller bottom-end with much more detail than before. The bass now goes deeper, with much more definition & presence. Mids are similar as before, but the highs are now better controlled, with a detail that never becomes shrill. Any "bright" sounding tendencies are dramatically reduced or outright eliminated. For $120.00 used, best affordable update I have ever experienced! To add to the MIT experience, I replaced the AudioQuest Golden Gates running from the Bass Equalizer to my amp with a pair of MIT Terminator interconnects. This opened things up further in terms of overall detail & added a dramatically deeper sense of depth. I paid $80 for these cables & again, I couldn't be more happier with the added performance I got for the price I paid. While I was extremely happy with my system before, I am now blown away with the sound I am getting. While I know that there are certainly limitations in sticking with the "vintage" route to system building, I can't help but feel like I'm getting way more performance & enjoyment than what I'm spending. And it all revolves around the Thiels. While my system components may change, I do know that they will change with the intention of making these remarkable speakers sing ever better! Thanks for reading & I hope you are all enjoying your music! Arvin |
Cabling is the least “sexy” part of our systems and, only until quite recently, I never gave power cords, interconnects, and speaker cables a helluva lotta thought. When I more or less finished with assembling the various pieces of hardware I’ve owned the next step, logically, had to be cables. After all, I had an amp, a preamp, a dac, a disc player, a turntable, a streamer/server. What else could I spend money on? Up until this particular moment I had been satisfied with the stock cables and whatnot that came with most of the aforementioned stuff. Plug it in, listen. Simple. I bought my speaker cables at Radio Shack or Best Buy or whatever. My first dive into spending more money/improving “things” was with a power conditioner - a Furitech something or other. Okay, good. Then I read something somewhere, maybe here, about power cords. Hmmm. Okay. I’ll go there. Got all the cords for everything that didn’t have one built-in. Wow, the cords certainly LOOKED and felt far more substantial than the stock cords. Good. Then I went to interconnects. Again, the simple color coordinated ones from stock or aftermarket were simply no good anymore - my equipment deserved better. So I got a whole buncha interconnects. Again, good. Mind you, I’m a pretty cheap bastard when it comes to parting with my money on things that are pretty much completely out of sight 99% of the time, so I went with the “cheapseats” versions of the brands I had read about. Synergistic Research, Furutech, Goertz, Anti-Cables, Cardas, and a few others I’ve forgotten. Did going from stock cords and interconnects and speaker wire from Radio Shack improve things? Well, yes - but to what measurable degree is debatable. Was it worth the expenditure? Well, again yes. Compared to my amps and preamps the cost to explore the possibilities was negligible. When I noticed an improvement I upgraded within the particular brand, when I didn’t I purchased other brands. S’periments! When I couldn’t detect a difference or an improvement did I feel that I squandered my money? Nah. People here with far more technical experience than I will ever have convinced me that being curious about improving things is worth the minor expenditures I’ve employed. The dialogues for/against more expensive cables/fuses etc will never be satisfied. Can you taste the difference between an $8 bottle of wine and an $80? The answer is, sometimes. If you can taste the difference is it just different, or is one better than the other? Why am I submitting this in this forum? Because until I heard Thiel I was satisfied. After/since my first pair of 2.3’s it’s all been...tremendously fun. I bought my first pair of 3.5’s from a guy in Massachusetts for $800, driving 3 hours to meet him in a parking lot. $400 apiece for speakers that sounded THAT good? How could I not? Alluva sudden I became aware that making whatever improvements I could made sense. Thiels made me an audiot - and I don’t regret it. |
Indeed wire is a squirrelly stew. Considerable knowledge exists, much of it in the realm of very high tech-space research-at the fringe of measurement. High end audio "found" wire as a new frontier in the 1970s and some very good work has been done since. There also seems to be considerable borrowing of second-hand knowledge, repackaged with huge mark-ups attached - commonly called snake oil. But most oil has no snake in it and much wire technology is indeed real and crucial for ultimate performance. To the material dynamics of bare wire, add reactance of coatings and influence of geometry, and you see that complexity increases exponentially. We know much less than we don't know. Exploration of these frontiers adds to the richness of our journey. Presently I am comparing coil configurations as fed from the circumference or the core. The oscillation of the electromagnetic fields behaves differently in each layout. Opposing opinions exist among intelligent and qualified observers. Most say "it doesn't matter", which I interpret as "I don't wanna go there." Who knows where this road goes? |
@jafant, I was commenting on the speaker wire/cables that happened to be the subject of discussion at the time. In particular, why some folks aren’t worried about internal speaker wire or even cables. Are cables and internal suddenly not associated gear? Specifically what I was commenting on is why folks ignore or are afraid of wires and cables, after spending a small fortune on good speakers? Even if one is a little overly skeptical, perhaps. Try to keep up with the discussion. |
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prof “Fortunately I don’t burn much brain-fuel over the wires in my speaker (or otherwise). Whatever Thiel chose, it met the values and specs they were going for, and the results are speakers that are still highly competitive with anything today, whatever wiring those other speakers may be using. For me I’ve got enough in this hobby to obsess about, without throwing concerns about high end wires/cables in to the fray. I’m as prone to thoughts of upgraditis as anyone else. Having recently acquired a high end turntable, now I have to think about things like VTA, VTF etc - I’ve gotta draw the line somewhere and my skepticism about the high end cable/wires industry makes dropping concerns for expensive cabling an easy move for me.” Shirley Temple: I don’t go all the way. J. Edgar Hoover: I don’t go all the way, either. “There’s sometimes a fine line between skepticism and superstition.” 😀 |
I whole heartedly agree with you, prof, which is why I haven’t spent much on cable myself. However, when I upgraded my amp to monoblocks and needed longer interconnects, I took the opportunity to get some "better" second hand cables. I don’t need speaker cables that long anymore and as Tom has recommended I will be looking to get a shorter run. However, I’m just waiting to get some good, used Goertz at this point. The two aspects of cables that would cause me to spend additional money isn’t necessarily about performance, but about: 1) its simplicity, and 2) investment potential. First, you can argue that cable technology really hasn’t changed since it’s invention, short of better insulation materials. Anything else IMHO really doesn’t improve its capacitance or inductance, and resistance is a function of gauge. (Yes, I’m simplifying this a great deal). So unlike equipment that will wear much more quickly or become obsolete due to change in standards or technological advancements, cables will stand the test of time. It’s not like they don’t age, since copper does oxidize and dielectrics can lose their properties over time, but cables age much better than everything else in the audio chain. Second, commodity metal prices increase over time. In the ’90s, copper sold at $0.80 to $1.00 per pound. Today it’s around $3. (Silver has been much more volatile, with prices of $8 per ounce in the ’90s and around $60 today. In the early 80s, speculators cause silver to run up to $100, so that may happen again. You don’t really see that with copper.) Therefore, I am more apt to spend money on a nice set of cables knowing that it would last and I could possibly get my investment back if I sold it. I would also most likely go through many iterations of source equipment, D/A converters, processors, amps, and maybe even speakers before I needed to replace the cables. But the reason I don’t spend additional money on cables is exactly about performance. I just can’t justify spending $3000 on a pair of speaker cables because I just don’t see the performance lift for the money. Alas, I am not a billionaire playboy like Bruce Wayne. Otherwise, I would get those Goertz AG3s and "speakers that you can hug with your arms and your legs." [reference to Lord Business in response to Bruce Wayne when Bruce said "You’re telling me that you have a machine to control the universe but you can’t listen to tunes and surround sound?" - The Lego Move 2014] |
Fortunately I don't burn much brain-fuel over the wires in my speaker (or otherwise). Whatever Thiel chose, it met the values and specs they were going for, and the results are speakers that are still highly competitive with anything today, whatever wiring those other speakers may be using. For me I've got enough in this hobby to obsess about, without throwing concerns about high end wires/cables in to the fray. I'm as prone to thoughts of upgraditis as anyone else. Having recently acquired a high end turntable, now I have to think about things like VTA, VTF etc - I've gotta draw the line somewhere and my skepticism about the high end cable/wires industry makes dropping concerns for expensive cabling an easy move for me. |
I have no actual knowledge of Goertz except that Jim used it in the lab as a reference quality cable. The industry works in many ways and each company develops its own value-style. Thiel valued long-term mutually sustaining relationships built on product, company and dealer synergies. In such relationships, the players share feedback and experience for mutual benefit. Thiel and SW worked this way for many decades. So it is no surprise they used each others' products or co-exhibited at shows. I can't make product recommendations, because my personal experience is thin and very dated. |
Thank you Tom for your thoughts. Your comments that the internal wire is a different animal from the amp-2-speaker one does make me want to revisit just going with SW without auditioning others. Maybe I should just save up my money and go with Goertz AG3! Can't argue with the equipment Jim used himself, at least as a starting point. Do you happen to know why Jim didn't demo the 3.7s with Goertz, but used SW? Is it because SW just offered to front the equipment and marketing? Not sure how the industry works... |
Hi pops, thanks for sharing your experience with SW. Very interesting indeed! I haven't spent much time with cabling other than making sure it's sufficient gauge (all at least 10awg). However, as I finalize all my components, I'm sure I'll reach the point where cables will be the last area I want to investigate. |
Thiel has used the same internal wire since the 03 in 1978, before the time that wire became a component. We identified a high purity, long crystal, oxygen-free polished wire in teflon jacket, developed for the aerospace avionics industry. That wire, twisted at 2.5 per inch does the job in separate runs from input terminals to XO and XO to each driver, with no shared grounds, etc. The wire is a known component of the XO network, so all its factors are measured and listened to as system characteristics. When ITT / Florida stopped making that wire, StraightWire developed an equally excellent source and Thiel used that exclusively going forward. This internal wire is a different animal from amp to speaker cable runs which must be engineered without knowing source or load or ambient impedance, capacitance, length of run and so forth. |
@batman I believe Thiel used Straightwire as their cable supplier for most models. Funny enough, I am using SW Mastro II SC with both my 3.6 and CS6. It is just a great cable that has beaten out many higher priced cables in my system, too many to mention in one thread! Great synergy, not sure internal wiring has anything to do with it but a great match nontheless. I owned SW Virtuoso R SC for a while and preferred the Maestro. I did a cable shootout using the Cable Company years ago when SW was still making the Maestro and determined it to be the best sub 1K cable in my system. Later, I ventured off into many way more expensive cables and always ended up putting the Maestro’s back in. Could have saved alot of dough....but at least now I know. It is really the only time I have used the cable company to make an educated choice and it was time well spent. |
Hi Jab, If S&V were listing them for $1400/each, then prices must have gone up without my knowledge, which is quite possible. Back at the end of 2013, Crutchfield began clearing their Thiel inventory since they stopped carrying the brand. They sold the HigherPlane 1.2 for 50% off the MSRP of $990, at which point I grabbed a couple. I confirmed it by checking my order confirmation which I still have. Also, check out Thiel's press release back in 2007: http://wircmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Inwall_Onwall_REL.pdf Again, prices certainly may have gone up since then but the original MSRP was $990 each. |
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Very informative information - batmanfan. Bryston and Thiel are a sonic match. Good to read about another brand of cabling that mates well with our loudspeakers. I have only heard a few entry-level Straight Wire cables from a few years ago. I wish that I had written down those models at that time. Happy Listening! |
For those interested in cabling, in my discussions with Gary Dayton, he also told me that my Thiels were internally wired with Straight Wire, so his entire system uses Straight Wire. (Not sure if it was specific for my 2.7s or PCS, or just Thiel speakers in general--I didn't ask for clarification.). Straight Wire cables were used in combination with the 3.7/Bryston set-up that elicited the following response from James Tanner, also from Bryston: "We shared a demo room with Thiel at the recent Vegas Hi-Fi show in January (CES 2008) and used the 28B's on the Thiel CS 3.7's. Jim Thiel himself told me that it was the best sound they had ever had at a show. Also George Cardas of Cardas cables was so impressed with the setup he was sending people to our demo as his quote was - 'that's the best sound I have heard at a show in 20 years'." Curious how this setup compares to the reference one used within Thiel with the Krell mono blocks and Goertz cabling. Still, this is impressive evidence of the synergy here. When I talked further with Gary, he expressed that he uses the Virtuoso R2 interconnects, but he recommended that I reach out to Jerry Willsie from Straight Wire to get his thoughts on my system. Beyond the interconnects, Jerry recommended Pro Thunder power cables and Expressivo Grande II speaker cables. While Gary believes Straight Wire take a scientific-based approach and price their cables accordingly, these reference cables Jerry's recommending are not cheap. For example, the Virtuoso R2 are MSRP at $700/meter and the Expressive Grande are $1450 for an 8ft pair! Jerry was also very helpful and willing to send cables directly to me so I can audition them for an extended period of time and compare them with my current Kimber Kables. In terms of purchase, he said that I could keep what I liked and I could pay them, but they typically sell only through a dealer network, not directly. |
Thanks jon_5912 for forwarding the audio consultants list of used equipment. For those interested, I don't believe the HigherPlane 1.2's were ever priced at $2,180! I think MSRP was around $995 or something like that. So the price here of $990 isn't a discount at all. Not to say that it's a rip-off because these are very rare nowadays given the introduction of atmos so getting your hands on some is a feat in and of itself. Just didn't want anyone here to think they're getting a discount when they aren't, especially for used equipment. |
Regarding impedance, it is what it is. The designer chooses the nominal impedance for fundamental reasons and then optimizes all parameters around those dirver particulars. In particular, Jim needed low inductance drivers for high-end extension and low distortion, which is determined principally by voice coil turn count. Jim believed that if amp designers took their work as seriously as he took his, they would make amps that did their job of doubling their power into halved impedance loads to 2 ohms. I have expressed a differing opinion here previously. IF the nominal impedance could have been 6 with minimum 4 ohms, the voltage sensitivity would be lower, but more amps could drive the load well. But, that's a big IF, because the laws of physics can not be suspended. So, we have 4 ohm speakers to contend with and the amplifier choice is of fundamental relevance to system performance. For the Record: Audio Consultants in the Chicago area was indeed as good a dealer as a manufacturer could ask for. Count on them for straight dealing. In those days of knowledgeable brick and mortar dealers, such questions of system pitfalls and synergy were a big part of the dealers' function. Nobody would be sold an anemic amp with a Thiel speaker and dissatisfaction and driver failures were a rare occurrence. |
