Thiel Owners

tomthiel

Thank You for the 4 seasons run-down there in New England. Do you know if Rob has been affected by the flood in Kentucky?

Happy Listening!

JA -

Here in New Hampshire we have different seasons than the USA. Winter starts in earnest in late December and through January and February we can get 10' of snow (12' in 2015.) Winter transitions to 'sap season' in late February / early March as the Maple sap runs and the sugar shacks boil it down to syrup. Temperatures can still be below zero at night. As daytime temps rise, we enter 'mud season' where a car can be mired to the axles on our gravel town roads, and roads are closed to vehicles over 6K#. Then comes 'black fly season' - biting insects that didn't exist in Kentucky > merging into 'mosquito season' in May. We say that spring weather keeps the riffraff at bay.

Then comes 4th of July when it turns to heaven and the 'summer people' come to fill their camps and lakes and villages. Varieties of glorious weather without appreciable insects continue into Autumn, sometimes 'till Thanksgiving. Even in the heat of August, night-time temperatures often drop into the 50s, and regularly the 60s, making the heat of the day more of a joy than a burden. September / October provide a glorious Autumn with forest canopy colors to rival anywhere and the arrival of the 'leaf peepers' bringing appreciation and tourism. Around Halloween to Thanksgiving, things turn rough and 'the bottom of November' can be quite deep. Christmas is more often fairy-book than not, and many older folks head south when snow starts piling up in earnest in January. Summer cars are stored and locals (year-rounders) hunker down for the very short days and long nights of winter.

For us, August is high summer, all month long. It shifts hard when school starts and families migrate to that reality. I came here in 1996, related to work, and feel fortunate to have found this village in this region. Northern New England seems more like England than the USA in its traditions and frame of mind.

tomthiel

Wonderful! Take all of the side-trip(s) you want. I am a big fan of the DMP label.

Excellent recordings there. Good to read that the Amp(s) arrived and 1 is headed to JW for upgrade. Exciting times indeed. Our hobby can benefit from all of the "modders" possible. Especially, CD and SACD players.

I hope that you are well this August evening. Summer starts to wind down now.

Happy Listening!

JA - Things got complicated. I now have 2 matching amps coming this Thursday. I plan to send one to Jim Williams and keep the other for comparison when JW’s comes back. Both can be compared to the GFAII which I have in my stable.

JW’s approach is to identify weak links in fundamentally great designs and upgrade those weaknesses to new strengths. The upgraded GFA555s will have bandwith of 1Hz to 300kHz with decidedly lower noise and faster slew rate. Jim works in the pro world and doesn’t use ’audiophile’ parts, but rather best-of-form ’normal’, high-performance parts to achieve his results at minimal cost. His GFA555 upgrade costs $225 plus freight.

May I take a little side-trip here? I met Jim when I got two mic preamps from Tom Jung, founder of DMP. Tom used CS5s as his mastering reference speakers in his ground-breaking early digital label, and passed his STs along to me for my recording work. The Studio Technologies Mic-PreEminence was 1980s state of the art, but were a little noisy and had become less than best-of-form in some areas. Tom told me about Jim, who re-worked one of my STs with stellar results. I sold the other ST to a fellow audiophile recordist who had it upgraded. Subsequent upgrades included a reel-to-reel and recently the CS3.5 EQ. Jim doesn’t normally ’do’ power amps, but he uses GFA555 as his own amps, and has tweaked them to their best performance. I’m looking forward to his work on mine!

tomthiel

Did you take stock of your Adcom amp?  If so, when will it go downrange for Upgrade?

Happy Listening!

Happy Friday! ALL

Along with a pair of mic cables with similar specs. Haven't yet put them to the test, but I have reason for high hopes.

Nice bonus!

Agreed - since mine came from BJ as an unasked-for bonus. What a treat!

tomthiel - When I checked BJ's SDI section, they showed BNC connections as the only option for the 4694R cable. I assume they will terminate with RCAs if you call in a special order.

sdl4 - stock Blue Jeans

This cable was sent to me by Iconoclast for evaluation as their best offering from the BAV line, short of Iconoclast. I don't believe it shows up in their stock offerings with RCA terminations. The cable shows up in BJ's SDI section, but the connectors look like their stock audio RCA's which are Canare RCAPs.

@tomthiel  What connectors are you using with the Belden 4694R cable?

tomthiel

Thank you for the Cabling update. Across the Audio forums, Belden, Blue Jeans and Morrow all have a strong following. Grover Huffman as well. Keep up the excellent R&D work!

Happy Listening!

As many of you know, I've been on a wire odyssey this spring and summer. The goal is finalizing internal wire upgrade options. But prior to those trials I have compared my various component and speaker cables to assure myself that I have a neutral and articulate signal feeding the speakers. More on that as things progress. Tonight I'd like to report on the digital S/PDIF from the CD player (Philips CD80 gone through by Bill Thalmann) to the DAC (Benchmark DAC3B). My digital cable stable includes Audioquest, BAV, Benchmark, StraightWire and Morrow. I consider the Morrow a cut above, and the rest basically equivalents with subtly different sonic shadings.

The good news is a sample which Iconoclast sent to me which ups the ante. The cable costs around $30 and appreciably outperforms the others in my trials, which are admittedly less than the league of many of you. The winner is Belden 4694R cable made for ultra high definition (12GHz) video, using high purity copper clad in silver. It's available from Blue Jeans cable. I'd love to hear from any of you who know it and are willing to share your opinions about it.

Excellent Cabling discussion Guys.  Keep up the good work.

Happy Listening!

thieliste - while you’re waiting for hands-on experience to chime in, I can provide some history.

Early-on (1978 model 03) we discovered the deleterious effects of eddy currents, first in steel driver baskets and later in aluminum voice coil formers. Part of that exploration over the years included binding posts. Either in direct power transmission or the secondary effects of changing magnetic fields, back-currents are generated from reflections and discontinuities along and near the signal path. Best practice is to keep cross-sectional geometry and resistances as even and smooth as possible to avoid distortion. Thiel kept its plastic-capped binding posts a very long time, and reviewers consistently took pot-shots for their ’RadioShack cheapness’. Fact is they weren’t cheap, and they outperformed most bigger, bulkier, brass rigs.

Somewhere around the CS1.6, Thiel converted to big, brass, gold-plated posts to praise from reviewers. I haven’t directly compared their sound quality to the ’old style’, but I will. I did hear that Kathy deemed the change as more politically expedient than trying to educate reviewers, dealers and customers.

Note that some of the high end posts have plastic caps. Danny Richie of GR-Research invented and sells a tube connector for the reasons outlined above. Some amp companies tried and rejected big metal posts.

My recommendation is something with approximately similar cross-section and conductivity to your cables and/or internal speaker wiring to avoid electrical reflections and resulting eddy currents. Copper would be a plus. A disadvantage to gold is the typical nickel under-plating which many consider to sound bad. Simple, small and high conductivity are pluses of course.

thieliste

I installed Cardas silver/rhodium with gold nuts , or CCGR posts .

This was one of the first things I did during the upgrade ,

I didn't notice a difference , maybe if it was the last thing done then possibly a difference could be heard . 

roxy - regarding speaker cables.

I've been out of the flow and the shows and the budgets to audition or live with 'serious' cables for some decades. But the first generation predecessors of those 'Black Pearls' from an 80s CES rings clear in my memory 40 years on. Also, I heard real Black Pearls in 2012 at the Thiel Listening Room when comparing CS3.7s to the newly finalized CS2.7s. The sound was the best that I've ever heard. I didn't peruse the gear, but I have found out that the Black Pearls were the speaker cables in use.

Did some of you change the original binding posts for aftermarket ones like Mundorf gold plated pure copper ?

And would that make any difference ?

tomthiel.

I remember that Kimber fire hose very well. It was called Black Pearl. At the time it was the most hideously expensive (but very pretty) cable I had ever seen. 

Happy Friday! ALL

tomthiel

Thank You for the follow up. I hope that you are well and accomplishing much R&D.

In those early days, it must have been enlightening to watch Cable manufacturers develop into their own niche of our Hobby.

Happy Listening!

JA - during my 20 years I don't remember any silver in the mix. For one thing, 'wire' wasn't really a thing yet in the early years. And also, we had very little spare cash, and 'wire' seemed over-priced for our sensibilities. The price of silver was a bridge too far. We were exposed and traded for those Kimber super expensive and magnificent speaker cables, but at that time those were copper. I've been told the later ("Black Swan"?) version, which became one of Jim's staples, may be silver, but that was in the 2000s. The Goertz that he used to develop the 3.7 was (I think) a copper version. (Someone on this forum may know for sure.)

Short answer is that from the mid 70s to mid 90s, silver wasn't in the picture. At that time we had found the 6-9s / aerospace wire which we brought to AcoustaCoil and Straightwire, which defined our approach to wire.

tomthiel

When Jim and You were developing Thiel Audio, was there a duration or time for experimenting with Silver cables? Interconnects (IC) or Speaker (SP)?

Happy Listening!

jon - thanks for your perspective. I can't say I understand what the naysayers actually object to.

tomthiel - they sound great in bad rooms.  I put my 2 2s in a reflective living room in a townhouse.  It was a second system, not something I put effort into.  Yeah, if you stand a foot away and change elevation you can hear dramatic changes.  Other than that they're great.  Resolution is limited by the room but that was taken into account and they still sound great in low rez rooms despite the limited detail.  Compared to other brands I've owned they're so clearly better, the imperfections  are there, but completely overwhelmed by the strengths.  

prof

Nice pics. Feel free to post in Virtual Systems.

Happy Listening!

Also, btw, the L speaker is closer to the reflective fire-place wall, so I have a thick brown velvet (same material as the curtains) cover I hang over that surface for listening.  Balances out the upper frequencies perfectly with the R speaker, where I have a velvet curtain on that side cutting down higher frequency hash from the sidewalls.

jazzman,

I'm usually between 6 1/2 - 7 1/2 feet from the speakers.  Closer usually if I've set up any of my stand mounted speakers (e.g. Thiel 02 or Spendor s3/5).   Those Thiels are 7' 8" from my listening position at the moment.  I have the sofa on sliders so I can actually move it back which I do sometimes.  The normal listening distance is super immersive,  but even a few inches back snaps the imaging and tone in to more solid form.  I like both.

@prof

Nice setup!

Looking at your pictures, are you doing most, if not all of your listening, in the near field?

Oh, I should mention you don't see the projector because it's actually hidden down behind the listening sofa.  It's on a telescoping automated lift, so when you turn the home theater "on" the projector lifts up to over 6' high to project the image.

Just inside the room.  You can see some of the drop down brown velvet ceiling.

(It also helps stop sound getting up to our bedroom right above, helpful when I want to listen to music when my wife has gone to bed earlier):

Now that it's easier to post photos here...

Here are some photos of my Thiel 2.7 speakers set up in my listening/AV room.

The room used to be a single use 2 channel listening room.  However in 2009 I got bit by the Home Theater bug and renovated the room in to dual duty: my 2 channel speakers now share the room with a projection based home theater, a large screen that has automated 4-way masking so it can change shape and size for the movie as required.  The home theater surround speaker system is separate: Hales Transcendence speakers for L/C/R flanking the screen,Monitor Audio speakers for surrounds and rears. 

The room was re-done with the input of an acoustician and my architect friend.

The ceiling is a drop down build that is actually stretched fabric (but looks solid) of brown felt.  This is useful both for absorbing ceiling reflections from the screen so the image doesn't wash out.  But also because all sorts of acoustic treatment/traps are hidden in there, and hidden elsewhere.  It's a gorgeous sounding room and it's funny, even guests often remark when we are just sitting in the room talking "it sounds so good in here!"

I built out a bit of black velvet-covered "stage" area below the screen, and covered all the HT speakers in very dark black velvet.  The result is that, unless the room is very bright as in the photo, you often can't even see those speakers against the velvet backdrop behind them, so you just see the Thiels, making for a less cluttered look.  Best I could do given how much I was trying to fit in to the room!  But it worked quite well.

All source and amps are down the hall in a separate room.  I prefer a neat, tidy look that way.  (In fact, the shag rug actually helps hide even the speaker cables to the Thiels.  Horrors for those who use cable risers!)

If anyone remembers my long-ago posts on looking to replace the bigger Thiel 3.7s in this photo you can see my problem.  The 2 channel speakers have to be pulled well out from the back wall.  That's good for sonics, but also puts the right speaker out in to the entranceway path in to the room.  The 3.7s were just a bit too deep making it a bit awkward walking in and out of the room.  The 2.7s were just smaller enough so that they can go in the same spot, but they don't impede walking in and out of the room at all. 

My Joseph Audio Perspectives are even smaller and less deep, so they work great too.

Pictures:

From the hallway just outside the listening/HT room :

Thanks for the update Tom.

I'm sure looking forward to the finished product!

Prof - the little critter has become a different animal. I began experimenting with the CS2.2 and 3.6 but migrated toward smaller models for practical reasons. I collected a few pairs of 02s to further simplify my learning experiments. I soon learned that I didn't want to live with the 2nd order XO due to higher reactivity and difficulty time-aligning the wavefronts. Jim had always (in every product from the start) kept onset transients arriving in same polarity. (Whereas most 2-ways flip polarity for one or the other driver.) Your stock tweeter signal arrives a full cycle before the woofer (which sounds 'normal' due to its ubiquity.) That's very non-Thiel to my ear and sensibilities, so I ended up using CS.5 drivers and a first order crossover, moving the woofer forward on a standoff and the tweeter backwards behind a waveguide for . . . Phase Coherence. 

Now, of course, diffraction and so forth become much more audible (you know my hypothesis) - not just to me, but to collaborators as well. So the cabinet edges are eased in an elliptical cross-section to meet the new (forward) super-baffle plane. Rear edge easing is also in the mix. Internal bracing (not visible) beefs up the panels. The diffraction-causing grille is gone, replaced by (most probably) a CS2.4 / 1.6 type arrangement, except I have no magnetic metals in my enclosure systems.

The crossover of the stock 02 is built on the rear input panel, right behind the woofer magnet, with audible and measurable distortion. In a portable speaker an outboard XO cabinet is a bit much, so I've mounted the XO on the exterior bottom of the cabinet in a plinth with ventilation holes. A chimney is under consideration to take heat through the cabinet and out a flared outlet in the top.

A big area of experimentation has been laminar wave-launch technology. It's not particularly visible, but no front or edge surfaces will be smooth or hard. Similarly the port looks like a 2" port, but it now contains patented and proprietary technologies that impart an uncanny realism. The increase in clarity, dimensionality and musicality are hard to describe and harder to explain, so let's not for now.

So, what's left of the 02 is the cabinet, the driver sizes and port, but everything is subtly to radically upgraded. I won't have a 'fix kit' for a normal 02. I know you love yours, but it is an ordinary if well-done second order 6.5" ported two way. My mission is to develop ways and means to improve performance beyond stock Thiel levels. The 02 emerged as my baseline platform due to its simplicity, flexibility and accessibility. My vision is for the Renaissance 02 to be a uniquely high-performance stand mount speaker with discrete drivers. It is fiction-ware in that no such product actually existed. I envision a limited edition inaugural run and that all this learning and solutions will be applied next to the CS3/3.5 which has gotten the bulk of my attention of late. Stay tuned, sorry to be so slow . . . 

Pictures aren't appropriate. They change constantly and aren't yet very pretty.

jon - hyperbolic figure of speech. But, Thiels do require care in setup. A consistent source of the brightness disparagement came from show-goers making judgements from standing in the doorway. Thiels baked-in design constraint requires sitting down for proper driver integration. Another aspect of driver integration is the 8' minimum listening distance requirement, which when subverted causes sonic problems.

Whether it was cable or amps, Jim chose to use very good ones, beyond a $-balanced norm.

@tomthiel 

What's the state of your Thiel 02 development?  Could you remind me what you've done to the little critters?

Too bad this forum is so 1998 in tech terms; I'd love to see a photo of your 02s posted here.

Maybe some Thiels are bright but a big chunk of that is about something else.  Maybe personal or political or oven some sort of ethnic thing.  They're mostly not bright and mostly not that hard to drive.  My 2 2s were slightly warm hooked up to a <1k HT receiver.  What 2k pair of speakers required a 10k amp?  When was this?  I'm not trying to be combative I'm having a hard time believing it.

@harrylavo ​​@tomthiel 

Thanks for the Adcom 555 recommendations. I’ll definitely check them out. Harry, you mentioned to me to go ahead and hook up my gear to the Thiels? Are you sure it won’t damage my Sansui? Obviously keeping the volume low would be prudent.

Thanks again for the suggestions gents!

- Dave

jazzman7

Thank You for addressing amscott's query.

Happy Listening!

amscott

Welcome! Good to see you here. As above, Consult Mr. Rob Gillum at coherentsourceservice.com (CSS). He is located in Lexington, KY.

Keep me posted on the CS6 repair process. I look forward in reading more about your Musical tastes and System.

Happy Listening!

Happy Friday! ALL

@amscott

Recommend contacting Rob Gillum, former long time Thiel employee, at https://www.coherentsourceservice.com/.  He specializes in the servicing, maintenance and repair of Thiel speakers.

Hi everyone,  I just broke a binding post on my CS6 because of over tightening the speaker cable.  Is there a way to get replacement parts for these speakers? 

tomthiel

Excellent! An Adcom GFA 555 is not hard to locate. Good to read that you found one. Looking forward in reading your report then upgrade via JW.

Happy Listening!

I'm having a 555 sent here to compare to the 555 II. Then the 555 goes to JW for upgrade. When it comes home I'll re-compare to the 555 II and let you guys know.

I have a pretty good idea how the mkII drives various Thiel models, so I'll develop an opinion (valid enough for myself) how the mkI compares to the mkII.

tomthiel

Check out eBay. There are a few Adcom GFA 555 power amp(s) available. (2) are in White color which is very rare.  I hope that you score one!

Happy Listening!

tomthiel

Thank You for the Adcom follow up. I notified my resources about locating an original  GFA555 power amp. More to follow.

Happy Listening!

beetlemania

Thank You for the Cardas follow up.  I have a good feeling that this whole Covid-19 situation will make Audio companies re-think business dealings with china.

Happy Listening!