Thiel Owners

tomthiel

Thank you for the update. I did not know if Bill provided a turn-around timeline for the SCD-1.

Happy Listening!

@thoft, O.K., an older DR 25 with an updated newer faceplate. I thought you bought 2 and were running them as monos. With the 3.6’s 2.3 Ohm minimum impedance you’re better off with one stereo amp that is not bridged. You should have plenty of available power with one stereo unit, especially in a smaller room. Classe’ is a nice match for Thiel’s. Congratulations, enjoy.

Hi Thiel mates
I was wondering if beetlemania or any others could tell me which xo boards I have and what would be the best to updated on them. They are green circuit boards. They have black MPT capacitors, white ceramic about 3" long, I guess resistors, and bare white plastic wire tied coils. On the board on the floor in addition to the black caps and ceramic things and coils there are 2 green caps in parallel with 100mfd 100v + - 5% on them. I will try to get it on my system page. Might take me a day to do that. Thanks for any help.

It’s a dr-25 by interior design. But with a model 25 faceplate. And I’m running one unit in stereo

@thoft Are you running one stereo unit or two mono units?
What do you mean by “unlabeled’?

Adcom 5800 replaced by the unlabeled dr-25

The bearings should not be to small because that will limit air space as well as limit motion. 
Motion is needed to dissapate resonant energy in the cable jacket or maybe in the wooden box you describe...there is such a thing as to much mass. We need to find a balance between mass damping and resonance control. Sand sucks and lead sucks the life and air away no matter where they are used. My material choices start with a table listing velocity of shear. Being a member of the Starsound panel we select brass and have those parts machined to our geometric designs snd applications. Geometry can be used to gather, steer and direct resonant energy out of a speaker and component. The larger and heavier the component is..the greater the energy level stored.
Tom

Adcom 5800 to
1 bridged Classe’ DR 25
&
1 bridged Classe’ 25

So you can over damp virtually anything. The bearings are available in many od's the ones I use are 7 million per pound or just slightly less than a million per pound. Application dependent. The finished product is stiff..I dont bi wire. You can use Bondo type fiberglass to fill any hole which is stronger than the typical wooden box Tom

Please remind me which Class´e amps replaced which Adcom amps.

How such a sweet sound this is holy moly. 

So the sound of the 3.6 on the classe vs the adcom is so much better. Detailed and airy highs, bass is subterranean, and midrange is soooo much smoother. It no longer sounds harsh and congested. In comparison to the adcom.

To expand on my statement of interesting and dangerous ,
I had expereimented with steel ballbearings after reading a short article in The Absolute Sound using steel shot in a box placed on a DAC .
So using boxes out of wood I tried it on my Carver amp and heard an improvement , I also tried it on my CD palyer and it showed that placement was improtant as  that over the power supply it showed a little but anywhere else created a slight degradation in sound .
I tried using the boxes on my McCormack amp and heard neither improvment or degradation .
So using wiring that incorporates steel balls might be an improvement or an expensive  disaster IMO .

theaudiotweak

I had experimanted with parallel wires outside and inside of the speaker,
I then went back and twisted the wires .
To me the parrallel wires externally were a little better sounding ,
but internally I found the twisted wires to be smoother sounding .
I had first twisted just the woofers wiring which increased the definition 
of the lower frequencies , then I went back in and twisted the mid and
tweeter wiring which smoothed the topend harsness/grain .

The Sonoran Plateau wire looks very interesting and expensive .
Also the claim that when using their wire you should remove the insulation material sounds very unique . Plus drilling 4 large holes into the sealed upper chamber seems dangerous . 
 
Rob 

JA - it's still in the queue. Either a long queue or slow going.

tomthiel

Have you received an update from Bill Thalmann?

Happy Listening!

jazzman7

Nice catch! Hopefully those 3.6 speakers can find the next good home.

Happy Listening!

@theaudiotweak , I don't know if anything is added to the fluid, or if the fluid is used in conjunction with other techniques to deal with the myriad of concerns cable designers face. I wonder if the fluid has thermodynamic properties?

FWIW: That's real Brazilian Rosewood.

In case anyone is interested, the folks over at TMR have listed a walnut pair of Thiel CS 3.6 for  $1,330.45 + $399 for shipping.
Condition listed as 7 out of 10.  Serial#s  3725, 3726

https://tmraudio.com/speakers/floorstanding-speakers/theil-cs3-6-floorstanding-speakers-cs-3-6-walnu...

I forgot about those cables.
Liquid of some type would absorb or limit vibration transmission but probably not limit RFI reception  like the use of micro bearings. Tom

Purist has been making albeit expensive liquid insulated cables that certainly have their admirers for some time now.

I remember here awhile back that some of us messed with parallel feeds, like you are describing. Seems all agreed it sounded somehow "nicer" and "more alluring". Seems that at least 2" and preferably more separation is needed to minimize capacative coupling. Such a jungle!

In a speaker box all the wires +and- are separate from each other and run in tubes as are the wires that run from the amp to the speaker their paths never cross. Every polarity runs mono in a tube.Tom

The conductor and all its surrounding and wrappings are placed in a clear tube which is then filled with micro bearing steel and sealed at each end except for the required length for proper termination to a terminal lug. The size of the bearing matters because you can over damp the cable if it is run externally ..I know I can hear that..but taking the speaker apart several times to listen and compare bearing size over again that is a real drag but I bet their is a difference there also. I learned much from the video and now I wish I could go back in time because he raised a whole lot of ??s in my brain.

Tom

And thinking about what Galen has designed...
Maybe he could take what he has derived from his studies and apply the 
appropriate set of rules to the winding of audio inductors and transformers. I need some new inductors for my new speaker layout and watching his video has helped in the aide of my selection for the two values needed. Tom

Tom - can you tell us more about your Sonoran Plateau wire?
For the record, in his final products, Jim threaded the driver lead wires through silicon tubes suspended between the braces. Can anyone tell me if those tubes are affixed to the cabinet walls, or are they stretched in space? My proposed wire augments Jim's 18-2 solid in hard teflon twisted pair with an additional pair of 18-2 stranded in foamed teflon. The 4-wire bundle adds both mechanical and electrical damping for a cleaner signal at the driver. I'm still invistigating flat wire and other ideas. Again Tom, can you talk about Sonoran?

Anyone who watched the cable video from Galen Garies..
Does Galen ever mention what happens to the signal in wire when it’s beaten up under the constant pounding and pressure inside a speaker box? The Sonoran Plateau wire I use in my cabinets is the only wire I have seen in a box that makes an attempt to cancel or reduce vibration that attacks the wire while under duress. I would love to hear Galen’s take on signal transfer in such an environment and how it may alter the electro magnetic wave thru the wire. Tom

@tomthiel Alpha-Core on some of their products lays down ribbons of copper and/or silver flat, then puts flat thin ribbons of polyester terephthalate between other flat layers ribbons of copper and/or silver on top of those layers, then twists the assembly and then encases the twisted assembly in a thick wrapping of polyester terephthalate. This keeps one side of the ribbons in constant contact rather than rotated intermittent contact as happens in braiding. Though this purled (twisted) process should have some advantages, many believe that the non-twisted completely flat versions sound better. It has been suggested that this might be due to the thinner outer casing of the flat series. The twisted "purled" versions are said to be much more durable though. I believe Thiel Audio used the "purled" versions for the added durability. The beefier flat MI 2 & 3 and AG 2 & 3 speaker cable versions are separated by Teflon rather than polyester terephthalate.

(There is a glitch on this website, please click on "specifications" on the interconnects page to see specs of the purled speaker cables here): High Performance Interconnects by Bridgeport Magnetics Group
goertz alpha-core purled - Bing images

The flat untwisted versions:
MI/AG Speaker Cables by Bridgeport Magnetics Group

Straightwire has been using CCT (Compressed Conductor Technology) since 2001 and multi-tubular cores since 2006 and combinations therein since 2011

STRAIGHT WIRE - HISTORY & FIRSTS: Audio cables, video cables, connectors, HDMI, Home theater cable

Wireworld claims their ribbons lay flat but the images suggests this might only be partly the case.

wireworld - Bing images

...And foamed teflon had been introduced sometime ago.

thieliste

The Audio Journey is worth the effort. Have fun!

Happy Listening!

@jafant and @unsound  thanks guys it took me many years of patience to put this system together but i finally did it, i cannot be happier!I'm also in the process of buying a new house for october so will have a bigger room for my system and will do some room treatment then.Cheers

theaudiotweak

I am loving all of this Cable talk!  Keep up the good work.

Happy Listening!

thieliste

A beautiful room and system. Enjoy the Music.

Happy Listening!

Happy 4th of July - ALL

I think of the room and all its contents as passive radiators.
I also consider a speaker cabinet as a passive radiator. Remember you and I talked of how to remove a source of a fuzzzz tone near the top of a speaker enclosure..I think you said you could detect with the use of a stethoscope..

The room and all its contents have different shear velocities and shapes that collide with other shapes creating new angles and speeds. As Galen said about wire you want to control or maintain those velocities in the most linear fashion. Active laminar flow can help overcome obstructive devices in the active line of radiation. Wherever you sit.

Starsound has a room called an Energy Room. Easy descriptive term is the whole room is mechanically grounded the ceiling and walls roll energy from their surfaces like water from a water fall. With such a system, treatment is not needed nor are dynamics lost. We feel we are using only 1 time signature instead of a few or more. Furniture and soffits and such alter some of this but the majority come from the room structure whats left can be dealt with by an increase in laminar flow.
Tom

Tom - I prefer to consider the room as a separate entity due mostly to how our aural neurology manages the inputs. Signals less than 5 to 10 milliseconds are conflated into a single onset transient. The longer that initial signal emanates, the more slurred the transient sounds. Longer delays are clearly understood as reflections and the geometry and contents of the room are associated with those reflections and carry relatively low weight in synthesizing the sonic event.

Rooms contribute much more than most people give credit. Room acoustics and treatment brings far more value than most folks think. But, the speaker-maker must draw his line somewhere. In the early days, we spent lots of effort deciding between directional, omni, bi or di pole radiation, etc. We landed on a broad polar pattern that mimics (fairly well) how a real singer or acoustic instrument radiates into the room. Thiel's relatively omni-directionality makes nearby room objects more important than many other polar patterns. But we believe it produces the most natural presentation. YMMV. So, for Thiel, the first side-wall or ceiling/floor reflection is more important than with a pro speaker that limits dispersion to 120°. Beyond that, I have found that diffusion techniques solve lots of problems without the down-sides of absorption.

I don't know how much laminar flow would help the room because of the low energy of each of the wavefronts that meet room objects. At the speaker, especially at the driver / source, the wavefront energy approaches the sheer strength of air - so propagation management matters a lot there, but less-so the farther it gets from the source. At least that's my layman's understanding of the territory.

Unsound - I don't know much about particular products. What little I do know says that for braided wire to work as designed, it must stay extremely quiet internally, and that's no small task. Straightwire's Bflat (I believe) preceded Wireworld's entry and was abandoned due to those difficulties (near impossibilities) of keeping flexible strands functionally rigid. Kimber filled the gaps with silicone which had to be applied to each strand and then rolled to form a filled web with no thick or thin spots. Sounds tedious.
I know that Jim ended up with Goertz flat wire (late 2000s) as his best, affordable and reliable solution. Please tell me more about Alpha-Core's approach.

I might have gotten distracted at some points during video. Does he address foils or ribbons? It would seem that such a shape would address many of the concerns mentioned. Is Belsen capable of such a shape on an economical level? Was such a shape disqualified for reasons other than absolute performance? Towards the end, he was quite candid about how the pricing was determined by competition for space and time with other unrelated products. Would a leaner more focused company be able to offer better value? 
 @tomthiel  I think Wireworld’s (w/ former Straightwire designer) more recent products might qualify as braided flat wire designs? Would such a design introduce inconsistent contact and strand jumping? Alpha-Core’s twisted more solid core “purled” approach without the staggered, overlapping of braiding would seem to offer much of the advantages with less of the disadvantages?

That NASA software is most likely beyond my mind and computer..
Will look into it especially for anything concerning boundary layers of solid surfaces and air flow.

After all the listening room is a big speaker cabinet with many objects that create turbulence while at the same time  reducing laminar flow. Tom

Galen is like a perpetual motion machine..there is 0 time delay between his mind and his mouth.
A flow of information.

The video is long but well designed and executed.

Makes me rethink my Coaxial based RG6 cables each a separate single wire of a pair. Each cable surrounded by S70 microbearing shield,  there for a combination of RF and vibration burn off.
Did Galen speak of resonance or mechanical shielding of the wire in acoustic space? What happens under the bombardment inside a speaker box? What change may there be? Tom

Tom - that's the real deal. There's always plenty more to learn than most of us can absorb. That's beyond my scope, but if you dive in, I'd love to hear your summaries as time might allow.
TT

Tom - that guy knows his wire, and consider his background at Belden. I'd love to hear his wire.
He reminds me of my first aha speaker cable experience at CES around 1978. (This post repeats some earlier references, but 200+ pages deep and some new folks might like hearing . . . ) Kimber and Thiel were fairly new companies, before "wire" had become a component. We were using 00 welding cable for speaker wire. A bunch of serious guys had congregated in our CES exhibit room the night before opening. Ray had this braided stuff to submit to critique. Its sell price would be around $1000/pair foot due to all its exoticacies. (in 2021 dollars, about $3700/ pair foot.) Wow! the sonic upgrade was stunning to everyone in the room. We exhibited with it, and took some flack from reviewers and dealers for using $30K speaker cables with our 03 being introduced at around $900/pair. That experience focused our attitude that each upstream component bears its own responsibilities for signal purity. We generally fed our speakers a much more expensive signal than norms would suggest.

Does anyone here use braided flat wire? either Kimber or others? I know it's extremely expensive to make well, and I'd like to hear if anyone is succeeding with it.
TT

Tom,

Free from NASA, fluid dynamics..
See if there are any insights for me 
with this software. Tom

https://software.nasa.gov/software/LAR-16882-1

Thoft, bring it to the attention of the owner of the house. Without ground, your fuses or circuit breakers may not be effective and cause a fire hazard. Don't live with that risk. It should get fixed. 

Very intense and detailed video from someone who knows his design work inside and out. No pauses or hesitation like a brain on a train..with no stops in between. Tom

Thank You Tom

If you thought you know much about wire design and magnetic wave propagation well maybe you don't.  Check this out..Tom

Watch "Galen Gareis, Engineer and Designer of Iconoclast Audios" on YouTube
https://youtu.be/v3nZM2BP9Ew

Unfortunately I don’t own the place I just rent half of the house. So it isn’t my right to fix it all. I’m also on the top floor so I’m not sure how that would work trying to fix the wiring 

Rob - It is likely that the two coils have the same inductance and simply vary in their aspect ratios - a minor difference. Speculation is risky.Using the coil wire (like yours), and not a jumper wire, is best practice.

Tom
You mentioned the coils on the 2.4 not being as tight as original ,
after removing both mid/tweeter crossovers at the same time 
I discovered that one has the original ERSE coil and the other has the newer version ( repair or that's all the new Thiel had on the shelf ? )
which is larger in physical diameter !
Does the larger coiling diameter  offer better cooling ?
Question , both have been unwound about 5 inches to connect to a positive terminal ,  does the unwinding effect the inductor's performance? would it be better to connect a wire from the end of the coil to the positive terminal ?    
Thanks
Rob