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!
Thank You for the follow up. When I contact AYRE about upgrading to the Twenty Series, I will inquire about replacing the stock Fuse(s). In the event Ryan or one of the other guys recommends a certain brand of fuse, will post the conversation here.
The base can be whatever design one prefers. Ideally it should also add stability to the speaker. I have CS 7.2 and CS 6 which are fairly heavy so I did not them to be tipsy.
I used the threaded inserts at the bottom of the speakers and ran a threaded brass bolt with a spacer to couple the speaker to base. Apply some footers and your set.
This material is sonically superior to aluminum. One who benefit from an aluminum outrigger. With the Panzerholz the audible difference is very obvious.
I prefer the sonics of my 2.4s with the outrigger/spikes. But I am uncertain how much of the difference is because of the extra 2-3” height versus coupling to the floor (rug over tile/slab).
Spikes are certainly better than no spikes, but can't even come close o the improvement that Starsound SP 101 platforms provide. Apparently the Townshend spring platforms are at least as effective.
I discovered the benefits of spikes in the same way Tom Thiel did, though likely even more exaggerated with my then Boston Acoustics A200 speakers. These were wide and tall floorstanders, but only 7" deep, with a simple plinth only 4" deep. The 3 drivers were widely-spaced vertically. So the woofer rocked the plinth substantially on the carpet, which levered the tweeter back and forth (relatively) substantially. When a friend suggested using aftermarket screw-in spikes, the entire soundstage (such that it was) snapped into focus as there was now zero rocking and the drivers sonically 'aligned.'
Despite my subsequent CS2.3 and 2.4 having a far deeper base, I still notice the benefits of their included spikes -- on carpet over slab. I had the 2.4 outriggers, but sold them as their primary purpose seemed to stabilize the speaker from being knocked over by large pets or small kids. Moving the existing 2.4 spikes a few inches outboard in each direction had no audible sonic advantage, only less-visible low-lying arms to trip over.
@jafant No, I’ve not played with fuse upgrades. I read an account of improved sonics by doing this with an Ayre product. Most everything makes at least some difference in sonics. I asked Ayre about this and decided the potential upside was not worth the money and effort. But let me know the results if you try this.
When I upgraded the 2.4s, there were a few changes that made relatively small improvements. These included the Multicap bypasses on the coax feeds and higher voltage caps as woofer shunts. But I heard the improvements and was already ready committed to the expense and effort.
At some point, IMO, you have to stop being a neurotic audiophile and just enjoy the music. That is where I am. And it’s easy being in this place as I know it would take $$$ to notably improve the sound I’m getting now.
One point about my situation is that I move my speakers probably more than most people. For one thing, I swap in various speakers (sometimes my Thiels, sometime my Joseph Audio speakers, occasionally different speakers). Plus I do play around with speaker positioning rather than just finding one spot and never moving them. So having an unfussy speaker in terms of movement is a plus for me.
Thanks for your additional comments, even if if you're not completely sure about the spike vs. spikeless comparison. It's helpful when you say that you don't remember the spikes changing the sound much.
For my Thiel 2.2 speakers, I may just let inertia (i.e., being lazy and cheap) shape my decisions about trying any new speaker isolation products. If I decide to do my own evaluation of the spike vs. spikeless set-up, it won't cost me a thing since I'm already using the spikes.
I know what you mean about how hard it is to move the speakers with the spikes in place, If I eventually decide to remove them, I would be able to fine-tune speaker placement more easily - so that is a factor to consider as well.
Again, thanks for sharing your experience with speaker isolation. I hope your speakers continue to sound great!
Unfortunately you are asking for clarification on the one comparison I feel less sure about.
It's been quite a while since I had spikes under my 2.7s. The 2.7s were second hand and didn't come with spikes. But since I also owned the 3.7s at the same time for quite a while, I had grabbed the spikes and tried them on the 2.7s. But I sold those spikes with the 3.7s years ago now.
Anyway, simply from memory, I don't remember the spikes changing the sound very much (which is a good thing IMO). But it was easier to shift the speakers around on the floor without them, so I didn't keep using them.
But spikes are definitely the case where my memory on this may be less reliable, since I haven't had them for a while.
FWIW: The Herbies big sliders worked really well under my speakers. Didn't "help" the sound in any way I noticed but didn't seem to hinder it much. I took them off recently to try the Townshend bars but haven't bothered to put them back on afterward, so the speakers are just sitting on my floor. Sounding great :-)
Thanks for the detailed information about your speaker isolation "experiments." This is exactly the type of info I was looking for. In your system and room, what specific sonic differences have you noticed between the use of the standard Thiel spikes versus placement of spikeless speakers directly on the carpeted floor?
I'm presuming that the spikes would couple the speakers more directly to the wood floor while eliminating the spikes would allow the carpet and foam pad to "slightly" decouple the speakers from the wood floor without losing the density and realism you're trying to achieve. Or maybe that isn't how it actually works. Any further clarification of your findings would be very helpful.
I’ve been going through just those experiments again.
I’m sure it will be room and listener dependent. My Thiel 2.7s are on a carpeted wood floor.
I have tried herbies footers, sliders, spikes, various forms of decoupling, isoacoustics footers, and finally even (expensive!) Townshend audio isolation bars (spring based).
In every case I found the sound to be "better" when the speakers were simply sitting directly on the carpeted floor. No spikes. Nuthin.’
The thing is one of the aspects I’ve been going for in my system is a sense of density palpability and impact. Not just the airy-fairy hologramsof many speakers, but a sense of instruments and voices having some acoustic power, moving air. In essence - the opposite of the electrostatic speaker sound :-)
Horn speakers tend to do this by nature, I find. But I can’t accommodate horn speakers (and not sure I’d fully get along with them anyway). So I’ve tried my best with regular box dynamic speakers. Thiels have a dense, focused sound. I find my CJ tube amps add yet another aspect of being filled out sounding, sometimes vinyl playback add yet more of this effect, and I play with room acoustics and speaker/listener arrangement to get there too.
Whenever I have decoupled the speakers from just sitting on the floor, whatever benefits there were have been outweighed by a change in the tonality away from what I like and find convincing in my speakers (usually footers/decoupling makes it a bit too dark sounding when decoupled) and a loss of density and impact.
The speakers may "disappear" a bit better, the sound may get a bit smoother etc, but the actual sense of realism and air-moving/room engaging impact takes a step back. I don’t want to take that step back.
For Thiel speakers placed on pad- and carpet-covered plywood floors (on 16" centers), is there any consensus that it is better to couple the speakers to the floor using spikes or better to decouple the speakers from the floor using springs or similar isolation products. Or is it simply a matter of choice based on the "sound" of the floor and the user's preference for tighter but leaner bass versus looser but fuller-sounding bass?
There are no shortage(s) of Isolation products for loudspeaker improvement. Reading across other Audio forums, original Thiel Outriggers and Sound Anchor receives the most praise.
IsoAcoustics and Townsend platforms are another modern option. The possibilities are end-less. All of my auditions were conducted in carpet over slab rooms. I have not heard any Thiel loudspeaker on hard-wood flooring to date.
I am reminded of the other part of the can of worms when coupling to the floor - what the floor itself sounds like. A cello, washtub bass, etc. actually play the floor, but we don't want the speaker to play the floor. I like the idea of isolation feet or platforms that decouple from the floor, while still providing rigid non-recoil. A conundrum. What products out there come close to filling that bill? No springs or sponge. Yes to decoupled rigidity. Any thoughts?
I wrote an opinion on Outriggers that starts on page 59. Peruse the information at your leisure. Let me know if you have more specific question(s) after the reading. I did cite a few Thiel models for reference.
I hope that you are well and enjoying Fall in New England.
dsper - I'll chime in regarding spikes and outriggers. I don't claim any esoteric knowledge, but developing the spikes was in my cabinet design wheelhouse. This story might seem happenstance, but that's how a lot of high performance audio actually unfolded. There wasn't a playbook, nor was their internet or a particularly 'sharing' culture regarding innovations. We went to shows, mostly CES in those days, but we were too busy with managing our own display to pay much attention to what anyone else was doing.
So, from my perspective, we invented / developed spikes, granting that others may have done so independently. By that I mean that we didn't copy spikes from anyone else. Here's how it came about. The models 01 and 02 were 'bookshelf' speakers, which could be used upright or on their sides; no feet were appropriate. The 03 was floor-standing and its base was a plinth, smaller than the footprint. Our listening room and measurement lab had hardwood floors. A rocking speaker could be shimmed with a matchbook or penny or dime. The 04 had no base - we used 4 rubber feet. The problem became obvious when we moved to Nandino Blvd (final factory site) in 1980. Jim's first lab had carpet, and subsequent rooms had padded floors and carpet to help suppress the first floor reflection. In that configuration, the speaker would recoil.
The aha moment of what was happening came when comparing time-domain scans around 1981 while developing the CS3. Things looked as expected when scanning each driver separately (in the actual cabinet), but became slurred when all three drivers were driven simultaneously. Some experimentation and math revealed that recoil, especially from the woofer, was moving the tower enough to spoil the time alignment, especially of the short wavelengths of the tweeter. Spiking to the floor was the obvious solution. Since our tilt-back design put more mass at the back of the cabinet, we added two spikes at the back and one in front with no adjustment necessary because 3 points define a plane. Those spikes were in the plinths, which were significantly inboard of the footprint of the speaker, but it worked and worked well. Flash forward to 1988 while developing the CS5 with its marble baffle which raised its center of mass considerably. I enlarged the plinth to the entire footprint, but the three pin arrangement could still fail if the speaker were bumped by the hypothetical rambunctious child. So, the pins moved to the 4 corners, where they had to become adjustable for less than flat floors. Those pins employ a zero-clearance thread with very tight tolerances. They allow virtuallly zero slop; and they can be turned over to put a rounded end on finished floors instead of the points to penetrate carpet.
Over time all the bases moved outboard, the lighter speakers retained 3-point support and the heavier ones 4-point, all as far out as possible. The addition of outriggers came later, after my time. They would geometrically increase the stability, and as long as they could not flex, then I see no down-side. I don't know the forces that drove the outriggers, whether market or tech, but I suspect market since the perimeter pins are quite effective in themselves.
Question: do any of you hear sonic improvement using the outriggers?
Yes, I own an AYRE AX-5 integrated amp. All DAC duties are provided ny by disc spinners. Mix/Match of Cabling can be accomplished with careful selection.
"Interesting" is a good way to describe the evolution of my cable selection. At this point, I am unlikely to use a full loom of any one cable brand in my system. I guess I've kind of standardized on Shunyata for power cables and Cardas for analog signal cables. My digital cables are more of a mix.
My choice of analog cables has been strongly influenced by trying to avoid cables that make the music sound too bright or harsh. Brightness has tended to result in rapid listening fatigue for me, which has led me to trade away a bit of high frequency detail for smoothness/sweetness in the overall sound. However, as I have gradually reduced noise in my digital signal chain (using an ENO filter for Ethernet and an Innuos Phoenix reclocker for USB), I have experienced a more relaxed sound that allows for greater detail retrieval without producing listening fatigue. This has allowed me to consider cables that I would not have considered in the past.
Fortunately, I'm pretty happy with the overall sound of my system right now, so my cable explorations are focused on tweaking the sound rather than starting over from scratch.
If I remember correctly, you're using Ayre equipment in your system. Is that an integrated amp with a built-in DAC? If so, do you use your CD players as transports or have them send an analog signal to your amp? Just trying to figure out if you're relying on any digital cables that would also be part of your search for reference cables.
@thieliste The COAX, with mid and tweet, was $500 from Rob G. He also provides a really good solder to help attach the COAX to the speaker. I am not sure if Rob sells individual tweeters. He did say to repair my tweeter was around $250.
There were 2 iterations of the COAX. I had the very first iteration with the extra capacitor (?) to fix some gremlin. I opted for the later iteration (maybe called black) instead of repairing my older iteration, which did not have the extra capacitor. I got 2 of them to match the LEFT and RIGHT.
I sold my 2 old COAX’s to a DIYer for I think $250.
I've had the Vovox in and out of my system over the past few weeks. I haven't decided if I want to live long-term with the smoothness of the Cardas Clear Reflection or the sparkle of the Vovox Sonorus interconnects. When I have time to listen carefully, I'm going to try the Vovox between my DAC and preamp instead of between the preamp and amps to see how that changes the sound.
For digital signal handling, I had been running a DH Labs USB cable from the Innuos Phoenix to the DAC, but I recently replaced the DH Labs with a Network Acoustics USB Cable III. The new NA USB sounds a bit more open and clear than the DH Labs USB without sounding as bright. I'm still running a Shunyata Alpha USB from the Innuos Zen Mk3 to the Phoenix, but I may switch the two USB cables around to see if the sound changes in a way that sounds even more musical.
I continue to be surprised at how much the sound of my system can change with just a little bit of cable shuffling.
I hope you're making progress in your cable search.
You asked about the basic system components I used to demo the Vovox Sonorus XLR cables described in my 9-7-21 post. I use a DirectStream DAC, BHK Preamp, and M700 Mono amps (all from PS Audio). Speakers are Thiel CS 2.2. I do most of my listening via Qobuz streaming or playing WAV files ripped from CD and stored on an Innuos Zen Mk3 server/streamer. The Ethernet feed into the Zen first goes through a Network Acoustics ENO filter and streaming cable to reduce noise. The USB feed to my DAC goes first through an Innuos Phoenix USB reclocker. I'm using Shunyata Alpha and Network Acoustics USB cables. I use Cardas Clear Reflection balanced XLRs from DAC to preamp and preamp to amps. Speaker cables are Cardas Parsec.
I hope this info is helpful. Good luck in your search for "live sparkle."
Good to see you here, as always. Stand by until one the Outriggers/Spikes (coupling) Experts chimes in to address your query. My pleasure to provide this insightful thread on all things Thiel Audio.
Any point or points will work most effectively inside the confines of the outer dimensions of the speaker base. An outrigger mounted to any speaker is to add stability and greatly reduce any chance for a speaker with a high center of gravity from falling over. Sonics are not a benefit only stability and safety will benefit under a tall narrow speaker. There are platforms that can be mounted and secured to a speaker base that have direct coupled points that be placed inside the outline of most any speaker which will certainly improve the sonics. I have sold and installed several pairs of CS 5s in the past and they sound best when direct coupled to the inside of their base . Tom Tone Acoustics Star Sound Technologies
I am intrigued by the idea of outriggers for my CS5i's. What I do not understand is, with a nearly 200 pound speaker, how can one expect the outriggers to sound superior to the original Thiel spikes?
This is not intended to offend but to understand the value of outriggers. I would assume the floor contact points being further from the actual base of the speakers provides a noticeable sonic effect? Or...?
I have Thiel CS3.6 serial numbers 0309 & 0310, they are a black laminate exterior. Rob @CSS guessed they were built around 1992.
Barely into the ownership but they are being powered by a McIntosh C22 Mark 5 pre and MC462 amp which are both new and have a ways to go before reaching maximum performance. I’m guessing the speakers are going back into a warm up mode also since they had been sitting idle for few years.
My past equipment has been all over the place from high to low end, tube and SS, component to integrared, mostly depending upon how stationary I was at the time. Early 1960’s childhood was exposure to my parents Leak Varislope 3 tube pre and TL/12 tube amp with signals fed by Tandberg 64X or a Garrard 301 (I still have and use the 301). This emptied out into Wharfedale W4 Airedale speakers. The speakers are long gone and the Tandberg lost, I still have the Leak pre & amp.
Just getting into the vinyl & CD collection for burn in, musical taste range from classical to country. I can’t explain why but I like Hank Williams Sr, then I’ll follow up with Maria Callas, and finish the session with the Romones...
tweak - there's something there, but there's also something to be noted when an idea doesn't rise to the top as time goes by. In the late 90s, I made cabinets for Shanhinian. One of those models used a resistive bass loading developed in Germany for infrasonic weaponry. The bass was indeed deep for its size, but the frequency response was odd and the impedance was extremely reactive. No one else picked up on the idea and that speaker was the only one in Shahinian's line to use it. It remains a curiosity to me, much like transmission lines, but would require advanced work to learn the ropes and execute with success.
unsound - I don't know how leaky / resistive enclosures would affect time response. My hunch is that the 2nd order closed box response would hold true while acting like a larger enclosure which of course throws off all the Thiele/Small paramater matching analysis. We treated leaks as a serious error to be fixed and never explored the realm. However, an aperiodic vent would be predictable and therefore could match different T/S paramaters for a different result. I don't know enough to comment further.
Thanks for your reply. Not many speakers claim to be aperiodic.. Dynaco A series were all of such design. I maybe sold a hundred of these back in the 70's. I new they had great bass for their size but didn't know why then but do now and I am trying to learn more.
@tomthiel, I think with the advancements in digital technology many might soon find traditional preamps superfluous. Wouldn’t such “leaky” cabinets compromise time integrity?
audiotweak - no we didn’t explore resistively vented enclosures. However, we did notice that leaky cabinets altered the bass response, acting like larger cabinets, and did muse how wonderful it would be to get a larger-acting enclosure via leaking.
Presently I am reading about aperiodic venting with an eye to combining it with equalization for a low-order bass rolloff that reaches deep with possibly less reactivity while requiring less EQ than a sealed box.
unsound - indeed an equalizer opens myriad possibilities. Bill would have the knowledge to orchestrate an attenuation scheme; he would also have the chops to orchestrate alternative power for the EQ. A large part of the cost and limitation of any active device is centered on its AC power supply. What if we borrowed DC from the preamp, perhaps via post-installed 40 volt phantom power (ubiquitous in the pro world for microphones, etc.) to power the EQ from the preamp’s power supply. And so forth and so on.
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