Thiel Owners

duramax747

Thank you, this is very informative. 

I’ve been searching for speakers for over a year at this point. I narrowed it down to CS 5i and Infinity IRS Beta, and maybe Revel Salon 2. I say "maybe" because on principle I’d rather stay away from ported enclosures, but they got much praise that I would still like to seriously audition them.

I set up searches for all three, but the CS 5i and the Beta are rare as hen’s teeth here in the Pacific Northwest; and those outside the region are usually for local pickup only.

I would love to hear the CS 5i but unfortunately I won’t be able to take you up on your kind offer due to distance 🙂

devinplombier

You are correct the CS5i is sealed and CS 7.2 passive radiator. When I mentined sealed speaker I was referrring to the CS5i.

As Tom mentioned all the upgrades will be implemented across Thiel product line. 

I've listened to the CS 5i and CS 7.2 the past 8 months or so. 

In new room they are both dialed in and its a roller coaster ride of emotion. 

The CS 5i takes massive power for her to clear her throat and really sing. You havn't heard a botton end until you hear the CS 5i. When it hits it hits hard, fast,and with authority. 

Going to the CS 7.2 it takes time to acclimate as it cannot match the slam of the CS5i. The CS 7.2 has better tonal balanced though.

With the deep dive Tom has taken with extensive upgrades, these two models will rival speakers north of 50k very easily. 

Regarding using  silver cables  I have found that soft annealed silver is what you need. It has a very distinct characteristic. Fast, clarity, heightened soundstage and a natural decay so notes dont linger longer than what is natural. 

Any members here in N. Carolina are welcome to come on by for a listen and compare copper vs silver.

When you see a man tapping his foot with a smile on his face you know you arrived at the right place. 

Unsound - I agree with you. The equalizer does everything right sonically. The bass extension rolls off at the bottom at 12dB/ octave like real unamplified output. The upper frequency electronic ’tizz’ is solved with the new unit.

Our problem, especially in the early days, was under-pricing what we were delivering, and therefore living under very strict budget limitations. Note Dunlavy’s price multiple vs a similarly-reviewed Thiel. I did some cabinet consultation for Dunlavy. Behind their curtain, Thiel’s component quality and overall performance / cost and was far higher. The Audio Upgrades re-design of Jim’s EQ is significantly better, but would have come in at about double the cost of Jim’s design.

As you know, our plans include reintroduction of retro-fittable midrange and tweeter to remove the obsolete product concern, and then offer this new EQ as an upgrade for your upgraded model 3 equalized models. There were 10,000 pair of model 3s with that equalizer (combined 03a, CS3 and CS3.5). Quite a few of those are still in use.

As background, I advocated for a higher performance line of our speakers which would have allowed greater budgets. Think Lexus / Toyota. That idea didn’t fly primarily because they felt it would cheapen the perception of our stock products. Marketing would have been more dimensional, but I think we would have shone brightly in that arena. I would have preferred that business model vs diving into Home Theater for survival as value-priced 2 channel faded against emergent HT.

@tomthiel, of course you would know better than me. But, aside from being able to make the under hung motors more available across the various models , which  is somewhat negated by the lowered price point models using different woofers anyway, I think the sealed boxes were the better choice. Other manufacturers such as Dunlavy with similar performance goals were able to do it. Though to be fair the Dunlavy’s used more drivers in bigger boxes or used acoustic floor volume reinforcement. All of which created a different set of concerns. I’m not sure all would agree, but I for one think those, and the previous use of eq were worth it.

In the early years, Thiel considered reflex bass as a necessary cost-compromise only for entry level products ie home theater and models 1 and 2. When it came time to replace the CS3.5 with the 3.6, I resisted going to reflex bass in the 3, which had always embodied our highest aspirations. The equalizer needed improvements which were judged too expensive for the target price. Fair enough. I lobbied (unsuccessfully) for a modified CS5 style bass with overall system impedance high enough such that the falling bass impedance could stay above 4 ohms. The prevailing argument was that ports (a performance step down from our passive radiators) were ubiquitous, even in speakers selling in $6 figures.

Nonetheless, our foundational commitment to time-alignment was compromised. Reflex puts the deepest fundamentals a full cycle behind the action. As duramax has said " the bass player is out in the parking lot". Thiel’s reflex bass is implemented as well as I’ve seen at any price, but it does unavoidably delay the deep bass.

So you know, we have prototyped an equalizer using Jim’s excellent topology but adding regulation and more beef to the power supply,  higher grade caps and metal film resistors - while still remaining affordable.

Another problem with straight bass (non-reflex) is that very large driver excursions are required, which works against our underhung, low distortion motors. My assessment is that if push comes to shove, an overhung woofer motor is far better aligned with Thiel values than is the reflex timing error.

All of the upgrade technologies we are developing in the SCS4 workhorse will be applicable to all Real Thiel speakers. The 7.2s weak link is a 400uF bank of electrolytic caps in a parallel notch filter. Although considered less audible than series-feed circuitry, shunt filters are audible. I have developed two fixes. 4x100uF film caps, which is expensive and large enough to only apply to an outboard crossover. But another fix is to replace the 4 x 100uF electrolytics with 8x50uF higher grade Els in a bundled layout concentric around a new Golden Cascade 1uF bypass with its coaxial sections decreasing to 0.015uF. That’s the minimus value we landed on and used in the CS3, 3.5, 2, 1 and 1.2. The cost and footprint of this fix is accessible for an inboard crossover. Lovely improvement.

Regarding duramax’s silver cabling. I have also found silver to be magnificent and free of any excess brightness - depending on design - many elements are in play in cables. I have some custom silver plated copper wire that plugs right into my BiFlow topology. The extra cost of silver is significant, but my geometry has cost-effective manufacturability. So a silver option is on the radar. 

Our behind-the-scenes rate of progress has been called ’glacial’. It’s really slow, but also quite large.

Happy Friday! All

“Listening to a sealed speaker you hear the bass in real time and it’s difficult to go back.” I very much agree!

duramax747

Agreed re sealed speakers.

I am curious about your listening impressions of the CS 5i v the CS 7.2? My understanding is that the former is a true sealed enclosure, whereas the latter have passive radiators (correct me if I’m wrong :)

Thanks!

prof,

I agree on your assessment of the CS 7.2. 

My viewpoint is the 3.7 has better drivers and the 7.2 impliments their drivers better. 

The upgrade path for the CS 7.2 is pretty exciting. 

Utilizing Tom's Bi-Flow wire technology with proprietary Golden caps will be ground breaking for sure. Eliminating the 100uf electrolytic caps with film will no doubt put more meat on the bone in lower Midrange. 

There are other upgrades as well,  which is really exciting since it's current performance level is as you say "memorable". 

I run large Class A amps, which really does the big Thiel justice mixed with a 300B pre. That combo is intoxicating. 

Currently I use cabling contradictory of moost Thiel users. I use some silver cabling. I have no brightness. I like music fast like live music and silver in my application achieves this. Bottom end is very tight with plenty of weight.

I'll be getting a pair of 3.7 so I can spend time with them. I try to rotate speakers around as I had the CS 5i in previously. Listening to a sealed speaker you hear the bass in real time and it is difficult to go back.

By the way, I just stumbled on this old video on YouTube:  Thiel’s Kathy Gornik talking about the virtues of free trade.  It’s a section from a larger interview with her.

It sure seems to be relevant again in the current world situation:

https://youtu.be/MWEDjdzhbFk?si=1tbNvFp39ZvZGOnW

I had some interactions with Kathy  back in the day and she was always so gracious.

@ig316b 
Wow, those Thiel cs6 were quite a find! 

Congratulations !

I had the  cs6 in my home for quite a while when they came out and they were incredible.  The best loudspeaker I’ve ever had in my room up to that point and still one of the best I’ve had.

I’m a fanboy too, had the 3.7s, model 2, and I still on the 2.7s.

I can understand the appeal of the 7.2s.  They provided one of the most memorable listening experiences I’ve had when I heard them at a shop.  The sensation of solid live instruments in front of me was amazing.

I would say that the final coaxial  driver design Jim came up with bettered what you will find in the 7.2.  But of course you’re not going to get the same frequency range and authority as you would get with the 7.2s

I think they were one of the great speakers ever made.  If I had the room, maybe I would own them too.

Memorial Day - Lest We Forget

ig316b

Welcome! Good to see you here this weekend. Never apologize for writing an insightful post!  Thank You for citing your System(s). McCormack is a sonic match for Thiel loudspeakers are you are finding out. Equally good to read that Stealth Audio cabling is a sonic match as well. I look forward in reading more about your Musical tastes.

Happy Listening!

Hello everyone I’m a long time stalker, first time squawker here, well to this thread anyway and not really a squawker either it just sounded good. I am a recovering Vanderholic and have come here seeking your help and knowledge. 

Memorial Day Weekend - ALL

Correction - the CS1.7 is the CS1.6 next-generation tweeter (not coax.)

Thanks for the info Tom! 

Prof - Gary can handle all your needs. He was a rising star at Thiel and after resigning in the early New Thiel era he became Bryston's USA sales manager and then worldwide Marantz brand manager for Sound United. When that company became turbulent, he was convinced to pick up the reins as CSS, my first-choice outcome for our beloved brand.

When at Thiel Gary was the out-facing technical service rep / the other half of Rob's repair department. They worked together. Since this past January Rob and Gary have worked together to increase Gary's fluency with hands-on techniques. Rob will also remain on call as needed. No worries. Gary was also Jim's lab assistant and the lead man for the development of the CS2.7 after Jim's death as well as the CS1.7 with its next-generation RadialWave coax and StarPlane woofer. He knows his stuff.

To your question, all Thiel speakers can be serviced in the field. Some mechanics may not be obvious; but once exposed to the solution you will be able to do what's required. Again, no worries.

@tomthiel 

Thanks for the notice about the change at CSS.

And it reminds me that I meant to ask Rob for something and never got around to it.

Not long after I  purchased the 2.7s I purchased backup drivers from Rob - the coaxial, woofer and passive radiator.  Just in case I ever have a driver failure or accident in the future.

I meant to ask Rob for some detailed instructions as to how to replace those drivers if it ever became necessary. 

Is this something Gary could answer for me?

I don’t know if this is this type of thing that I could actually do or whether it would be necessary to call some professional who works with speakers if it ever came to that. 

Happy Friday! All

Thank you.

tomthiel

over on U.S. Audiomart there is a lot of Vifa D19 TD tweeters for sale. I thought that this could be of interest to you.

Happy Listening!

Great!  Thanks Tom.

Our plan is to have it available for a long, long while. There's plenty happening behind the curtain, but for now keep calling CSS as you have been for the past 7 years.

What does is it mean for CSS?  Will it be viable for a long while?

Happy Friday! All

tomthiel

Thank You for announcing Gary Dayton purchasing CSS. This is indeed Oustanding! Give our best to Mr. Rob Gillum for his legendary Thiel Audio service. He will be missed.

Happy Listening!

Hello Folks,

For those of you who don't know, Gary Dayton has bought CSS from Rob Gillum who has retired for family needs. The transition has been January through May.

Gary has made a formal announcement and provided more detail on the Thiel Audio Legacy facebook page being run by Micah Sheveloff, Thiel's long-time publicity and PR agent.

lars888888

Good to see you here again. What other gear is in your current System?

Happy Listening!

andy2, I own the 2.4 and I know what you mean. In my experience, that behavior is a little bit amp dependent. I used to own locally manufactured class a/b monoblocks with which the stage hight sounded fine, and sometimes even a little bit on the overly large side. Since I switched to Bel Canto ref1000's (class D), the image seems on the small side.

andy2 - Up and down is a weak point of minimum phase, multi-driver transducers. The coax is much better than discrete drivers, but coax to woofer geometry still comes into play. Right-left-depth is their strong suit. The up-down problem is exacerbated when the speaker’s aiming is marginal. You want its propagation axis pointing at your ear-plane such that you are at the center-sweet spot of its vertical propagation field.

The design axis assumes an ear position of 3’ off the floor and at least 2.5M - 8+’ away. You can mount a builder’s square, laser, etc. on the speaker at 36" up and parallel to the floor. Sight along that line. Adjust speaker tilt such that it sights to  your ear height.

Now it gets trickier. The effective set-back of the drivers changes relative to how much the speakers are toed in, which is dictated primarily by your room’s side walls. If the sight line points at your ear when the speaker is aimed directly at you, it will act lower if pointed more perpendicular to the front wall. (Visualize looking at the side of the speaker rather than the baffle. There will be zero driver setback in that case vs 6° (depending on your model) when looking at the baffle.

Explained another way, if you use setup software, the proper height and tilt is the one that produces the best square wave, step response, etc. at your listening position. That optimized geometry will put your ear at the mid-point of the vertical wave propagation arc. Your soundstage height will be at its best, as well as frequency response and everything else.

Happy May Friday! All

andy2

No. Not at all.

Happy Listening!

For CS 2.4 owners, do you notice the soundstage lacking a bit of image height?

mchan888

New PM sent.

Happy Listening!

tomthiel

Excellent! I believe that the Star-Plane Woofer is the most redeeming factor in CS 1.7, setting it apart and better than CS 1.5/CS 1.6 speakers. Very cool planning a recreation of Jim's CS 1.7 model in 2025.  I cannot think of a better offering to kick off Thiel Renaissance.

Happy Listening!

I ask because the 1.7 is in a 1.6 enclosure. The chief differences are an additional bucking magnet on the tweeter, and the star-plane woofer. I hope to find a 1.7 to dissect, listen to and measure.

What is on my radar is to recreate Jim's CS1.7, which exists in prototype form. New Thiel modified the crossovers somewhat away from Jim's intent and I wonder what a Jim Thiel 1.7 would sound like. Gary Dayton says Jim's was better to his ear.

There's always something.

Tom

2nd Note

The CS 1.7 also presents a deeper and wider Soundstage in comparison to models CS 1.5/CS 1.6 I hope this helps -Tom.

Happy Listening!

tomthiel

I found the CS 1.7 a measure better in clarity and focus in the High(s) and Mid(s).

Bass tighter as well.  This particluar model is smaller footprint of loudspeakers CS 2.7 and CS 3.7 A perfect match for an Integrated Amp.

Happy Listening!

JA - awhile back you commented on the sonic improvements from the CS1.5 to 1.6 and larger improvement to the CS1.7. I would love to hear your particulars about the 1.7 and how it seems better to you.

Hey gang, just wanted to wish everyone a happy Friday as I finish up work from my (home) office listening to a great pair of Thiel PCS belt out some tunes :)

Happy Friday! All

roxy54

Good Catch! I hope those 3.5 speakers find the next home.

Happy Listening!

Here's a good one...

Thiel CS3.5 Loud speaker with bass equalizer & high end cables For Sale - US Audio Mart

Andy - you’re on it, and the CS5 is the best example of thoroughness competing with directness. There are multiple reasons for that ’reticence’. A big one that Atkinson and Archibald underestimated is amplification. The amps they used were current starved, delivering more anemic sound than best of form. The underlying root cause there is the excessively low impedance. I think Jim could have done better there - for another discussion. But to your point there are lots of components. My count from the schematic is 106 including 16 that are 1uF bypass caps. Note, we developed that 1uF (yellow) bypass with a European aerospace supplier as state of the art Styrene film x tin foil. Note also that Jim was fundamentally an electronic circuit guy. He worked as if the well executed electronic circuit did the job as well as could be done. That is debatable.

Of those 106 components, 32 of them are in the conventional signal path. Not particularly over-excessive for a 5-way design.

42 are in resonance (shaping shunted to common) circuits. Quite a lot.

And 32 are in analog bucket brigade time delay circuits in the  upper and lower midrange. This is a big deal where some history might shine some light.

We had gotten Japanese representation in the mid 80s which opened up the Asian market to us - quite rare for an upstart American company. Those importers pushed us for a ’statement’ product in a time where many such products were coming to market. Our best product was the CS3.5 at $ 2450/pair with EQ @ US retail. They wanted something at 10X that price, and we had 150 pairs pre-sold regardless of price. Jim was very cautious and less than wholly confident at that time that we could deliver high value in that class. In fact he didn’t want to make the leap and Kathy eased him into it over many months time. My (over-ridden) opinion was that this product-under-development had a ’natural’ retail price of $15K, but it was introduced at $9300. The other huge deal was time-line. The market wanted it now, and its natural development cycle was at least a year out. All that is to say there were significant stresses in the cycle, and stresses show in product strains.

Our signature straight-plane x tilted baffle format accommodated up to 3 driver set- backs by adjusting tilt and driver to driver distance. The CS5 had 6 drivers. It wanted a concave curved baffle for properly time-aligned driver to listener ear geometry. We solved the bass by placing the woofer between the two subwoofers (fore and aft the woofer launch plane) for a net single-point launch. The tweeter was time-aligned at the top of the stack. The upper and lower midrange had to be recessed about 5/8” and 1/2” respectively. The direct way to do that is geometrically. That would have required a thicker and more complex baffle, which could have all been accomplished with additional lead time, which the market wouldn’t grant. So Jim provided the electronic answer with analog delay, which he considered more elegant. This baffle fit our signature tilted flat plane. This long tale is to provide background behind how such products come to day.

I always pre-visualized new products as we developed our factory.  A CS5.2 could use a shallow cone upper midrange instead of the 2” dome to solve much of the timing issue, and applying our patent-pending double cones to the midrange drivers would increase basket depth options. The more complex 3D baffle shaping was feasible if Jim and Kathy could be swayed. I wanted to compete in the more expensive arena; whereas Jim and Kathy were not enthusiastic. Home Theater was rearing its head and Jim wanted foremost an arena to invent new products. HT became that arena.

So, Andy, back to your point that more complexity constrains a design. I agree. I also add that working to surpass such constraints is the business of innovation. We worked ahead of the curve, inventing many solutions that gradually became part of the industry playbook. The CS5.2 could have put many of those future innovations, such as motor shunts, rare-earth focusing magnets, formed double cones, etc. to good use. Such a path became reality with coincident / coax upper drivers, reflex bass (which I discouraged in our statement products) and so forth and so on. It’s a long tale of a complex stew with an outcome that the CS5 was never revisited, much to my disappointment.

But, as time went on and lessons were learned, there were never any more time-delay circuits, and metal drivers allowed simpler shaping filters; and the speakers worked toward greater clarity and dynamics – and reticence was reduced.

Thanks for Tom as usual for your insights.

I think the CS5 is an example where time coherent was achieved at the expense of a speaker that sounds a bit reticent.  I've read the Stereophile review that the xover consists of a total of 114 components.  That is just too many in the signal path, and it probably contributes to the "reticent" sounding.

Indeed.

Thiel's requirements of passing a square wave / exhibiting a single, proper step response, etc. increase difficulty so much that most practitioners consider it impractical or even a fool's errand. We went for it despite the difficulties. We were young and idealistic, plus we wanted to make a mark and improve the art. Over the years, we invented improvements that managed the inherent problems. 

The biggest problem/ limitation is dynamic range because each driver covers 7 octaves rather than 2 or 3. A driver acting outside its sweet spot has larger excursions, must dissipate more heat, enters break-up, etc. All those must be counter-acted with considerable difficulties. We began inventing new driver technologies withing the first several years.

It is also much harder to get smooth frequency response in a coherent system. Thiel's elaborate crossovers create complimentary circuits to correct driver anomalies that steeper slope filters would make less obvious. Also, we migrated to stiff diaphragms because their mis-behaviors are simpler, more predictable and therefore more manageable with circuitry. Those components introduce their own sonic degrades and add cost. 

We addressed these issues as cost effectively as possible. Our performance per cost was extremely high. As manufacturing director and later consultant to other manufacturers, I know that our output/cost was a multiple of average and our margins were a fraction of average. We tried harder.

Thiel's results were often less than best in some respects, but generally first-rate if one values over-all high performance on all fronts. Our speakers addressed everything quite thoroughly rather than a few things brilliantly. We believe our products supported a more musically authentic experience than conventional approaches.

I can say that Jim / we might not have gone there if we had known how hard it would be. I suspect that hind-sight and insight would have led us to the later-stage insight that we used in home theater products. We could maintain respectable phase coherence and proper time alignment while considerably reducing difficulty  with the fudge of keeping first order slopes for an octave on each side of the crosspoint and then migrating to second order symmetrical slopes beyond that. Out of band excursion and erratic behavior is greatly minimized while keeping the critical advantages of single step response and coincident time arrival. But you can't solve the puzzle until you know enough to solve it.

Most brands didn't and still don't even try what we we did. I'm glad we did.

I say that neither Jim nor Thiel Audio would espouse valuing ’"time coherence above other aspects of sound reproduction"

I think all speakers design is a compromise.  If one aimed to achieve time coherence design, one compromise other aspects of the sound reproduction.

mchan888

PM received. New message sent.

Happy Listening!

Andy2 and all -

I say that neither Jim nor Thiel Audio would espouse valuing ’"time coherence above other aspects of sound reproduction". Our company was built around addressing and honoring ALL aspects of sonic/signal/musical reproduction as a whole. Most designers - products minimize the importance of the time-phase aspects of fidelity, especially in the day that we did it. Only a handful of brands made time/phase behavior important - including Thiel, Vandersteen and Dunlavy and Quad, and possibly some smaller attempts.

Note our attention to time-phase was not above other aspects, but as one among several necessary ingredients for faithful representation of the musical signal.

Having paid attention to this stuff for half a century, my perspective is that keeping time-phase correct allows the ear-brain to pay attention to the playback signal as though it were real - thereby permitting a more holistic, immersive experience of the music. Although we rarely admit it, we humans do not possess unlimited brain-power. Work is required to reconstruct a musical signal that is missing its time domain content into an interpretation that makes sense. That effort subtracts from the state of consciousness that is possible when experiencing real music, either in its un-recorded state or its time-phase correct played back state.

Among the most frequent comments re Thiel/Van/Dun/Quad, etc. are ’naturalness’ and ’image density’. These are psychoacoustic attributes facilitated by the addition of phase-time correctness to the other realms of dynamic and tonal correctness.

I assess that designing for all of the musical aspects rather than discounting or fudging against the time-phase aspect requires an order of magnitude more effort. Everything becomes extremely more complex and difficult.

I can only afford a summary overview, the details took a career to address, and the work is still not finished.