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!
In my previous post, when I compared different filter order, I didn't mean to say that higher order is bad and first order is good. I think each filter order has its own strength and weakness. High order filter objective gives you more "clarity" but I also think high order subtracts the "musical" part of the music. Higher order tends to give you a more "pin point" image production vs. first order. Listening to the CS2.4, although it has a lot of see through clarity of the soundstage, I think I've have heard better image see through with other speakers, but the CS2.4 is just more musically satisfy. I guess my English is not good enough so I want to quote a Stereophile review of the CS3.7 review when he compared the sound of the CS3.7 vs. the Wilson Audio WATT/Puppy 8:
"While the Wilsons did give Francois Couturier's piano in Brahem's "Vague/E la nave va" a slightly more vivid presence, I felt the Thiels did a better job of seeing into the heart of the music. What does that mean? It wasn't a matter of soundstaging or holographic imaging—both speakers were champs at that—but the Thiels had a quality I can describe only as grace. Grace is like a soap bubble: Try to dissect it and it's gone. Perhaps a better way of putting it would be that the Thiels got out of their own way, which is what a high-end speaker is supposed to do."
That is how I felt about first order filter. It communicates the heart and emotion of the music better. To me, first order is like tube amplifier which may not be as clear or have the impact of solid state, but it is just more musically satisfying.
When I design my speaker, using the same cabinet and drivers, if I design the cross over network using higher order filter, it was more or less an academic exercise. But when I tried to design using first order, it took me a long time to get right but it's absolutely worth it. As a matter of fact, it is easy to make your speakers sound "right" using high order filter, and it's a lot easier to mess up the sound using first order filter.
The one major disadvantage of first order, time coherent speaker is that it really restricts your options as far as driver configuration. That is why almost all time coherent speakers are essentially three way. All Thiel speakers and Vandersteen are essentially three way. Vandersteen has a couple of 4-way but the fourth driver essentially acts as a subwoofer crossing over at very low frequency so it's not a problem. If you want to use multiple bass drivers then it's probably not possible since it would be very difficult to integrate the sound coming from different drivers with first order filter. Also if you want to build large speaker with multiple midrange drivers, multiple bass drivers, I would think you have to use higher order filter.
andy - thank you for your contributions. Indeed you are on it with "first order filter. It communicates the heart and emotion of the music better."
This communication is not some magic of technical accomplishment, and in fact it is one side of the coin of accuracy. This subtlety of communication is primarily a psycho-acoustic effect. That is not saying it is somehow fakery. On the contrary, we hear by synthesizing auditory experiences via very minimal sonic inputs which elicit associations, memories, conjectures and so forth. Then the auditory brain forwards those synthesized packets for storage and assembly into longer, more complex composites such as a musical or verbal phrase, etc. Our research at Thiel led us to commit to first-order slopes because they are the only solution to preserve the phase-time information that the ear-brain uses to believe the input is real. We really believe what we are hearing when the phase information is intact, rather than cognitively conjecturing what we hear when the phase information is scrambled, as it is with higher order filters. Much more can be said about this process, but put it on the shelf for now.
Side 2 of the coin is the technical execution. No doubt, hands down, higher order slopes are FAR more executable for exact frequency domain accuracy. In fact, first order slopes are generally considered non-executable because the drivers must have such a wide range of linear response. Higher order slopes attenuate the out-of-bandpass signal at double, triple or quadruple rates compared to first order. The ubiquitous 4th order slopes attenuate at 24dB / octave rather than our 6dB. So all the grief that the driver goes through at its frequency extremes just goes away with higher order filters, making much cleaner, more controllable frequency domain smoothness.
So, the double-whammy is that the frequency extreme grief of the first order slope is also more objectionable because the ear-brain is trying to process it as real music and not a music-like artifact as it does with higher order slopes. Both sides of the difficult coin gang up against first order slopes. Thiel decided the result of reality was worth the huge grief of execution.
As you eluded earlier, phase coherence without time coherence is not meaningful. The audio brain can only buy in if all the elements of the signal are correct. I believe, and Thiel's position is the distinct minority, that the phase-time aspect of the signal is more critical than the frequency domain aspect. In other words, it is not upsetting if a reproduced trumpet sounds slightly like a different trumpet (frequency-spectral differences), but it is upsetting if a trumpet's harmonics reach the ear at different times and in different phase relationships than real, non-reproduced music (time-phase differences).
An interesting phenomenon is that once a listener (or recording pro) has identified the importance of time-phase, there is no real going back. The artificiality of non-coherent wave-forms is unsettling, even if the frontal lobes convince us that that sound must be a trumpet. As I said before, this discussion encompasses a serious body of study; I hope this response covers the high spots.
Regarding more than 3 drivers in a phase-coherent system, I'll comment on that later. Think CS5, 6 and 7.
Thank you Tom. I appreciate your opinions very much. I can’t wait for your response with respect to time-coherent in a speaker using multiple bass drivers.
Wow, I continue to be blown away by the level of discourse on this thread. tomthiel, are there references you can share re the serious body of study - is there anything publicly available? And how do you test an amp for 2 ohm performance? My best guess is listen to them through Thiels, but I imagine there is a technical/engineering way to do this, or does maybe this requires high dollar equipment that I could just spend on an amp? catalysis - are those amps 150wpc mono-blocks? Again, thanks all for this discussion!
Thank You for your points of view as it pertains to loudspeaker design, implementation. I look forward in reading more about you and your musical tastes. Happy Listening!
Thank You for sharing your perspective on McCormack power amps. With the specs listed, no doubt, that this is a sonic match for Thiel speakers. Added to the list.
Regarding amp testing: the manufacturer knows good and well how their amp works into a 2 ohm load. In the days of brick and mortar dealers, the dealer would know or could easily find out. John Atkinson's Stereophile and other technical lab tests are very
instructive. Look at the curves for performance deterioration at 4 ohms
vs 8 ohms. If that deterioration is great, the amp is generally not
specified to 2 ohms. Read between the lines, that amp would possibly fall apart
at 2 ohms.
Often you can read for meaning for phrases such as "stable into instantaneous (or peak) 2-ohm load. Which means it cannot sustain continuous 2 ohm output and therefore not suitable for Thiel. In today's world you might put out a call on amp forums for a full lab test of an amp of interest. Or if you can get to an old-fashioned bench repair shop, they could power test an amp under load and read the waveforms on their oscilloscope for you to see, even if not to print and distribute. Jim's first job was as such a technician, repairing everything from amps to radios to TVs and sophisticated specialty circuitry. (Our first business plan was to produce amps, not speakers, but didn't see a promising niche. That was before the days of amp proliferation. Jim had equipment and knowledge and we vetted amps in-house to choose those that performed properly, not just ones we liked, which is a trap because your speaker may turn out far from neutral and therefore less universal.
Regarding McCormack: Steve's values, knowledge and perspective are right-on and I would expect his equipment to perform well for all the right reasons. However, I have no direct experience beyond hearing at shows, which was always good.
Regarding the neurology of psychoacoustics and so forth. Yes, there is lots of serious information, but it is pretty obscure. My PhD studies included epistomology (how we know), ontology (the nature of being) and the neurology of creativity. I was also a practicing musician and acutely interested in musical communication. So I studied and absorbed this stuff. No I didn't finish the PhD; I jumped the academic ship to establish my own design studio where I made musical instruments, studio furniture and other artifacts. Conceptions Studio incubated and then became Thiel Audio. If you come across model O1s or O2s, the back panel will say Thiel - manufactured by Conceptions Electronics. Of course all these inquiries into how we hear, learn and know served as the foundation of Thiel Audio.
But there is nowhere I can send you except to suggest Google. Happy reading.
If you come across model O1s or O2s, the back panel will say Thiel - manufactured by Conceptions Electronics.
I just checked my Thiel 02s. Looks like Thiel outsourced to more than one company as mine (in Canada) say Manufactured by:
Heinl Electronics in Canada.
They are still one of my favourite all time speakers. They were my girlfriend's (now wife) and they re-introduced me to the virtues of clarity and neutrality after a number of years buying big, honking speakers that were good for shaking the walls.
Regarding higher driver-count coherent sources . . . it is indeed a very complex problem. The way Thiel approached phase coherence was for each driver to execute its design-ultimate slope such that when summed with the other interacting drivers, the net resultant curves mathematically summed correctly. This approach is first-principle-purist-physics driven rather than the euphonic design approach of messing with it till you like it. A surprisingly obscure tenet of the purist approach is that the net first-order slope for an individual driver slope is actually quite complex rather than simply 6dB / octave.
Let's jump right to a germane example: The woofer crossing to the midrange. Each driver roll-out assumes a 6dB slope - but that slope must be the net resultant slope, so in fact, the driver's actual behavior in that cabinet, electromagnetic environment etc. must be corrected by shaping networks such that it behaves properly, and the two drivers add properly. I have not yet addressed the meat of andy's question of more than 3-way or multiple bass drivers. I'm getting there, but before we go there, we should digest further complexities beyond this simple woofer-midrange interaction.
In a valid minimum phase array (as Thiel attempted), the woofer is not only interacting with the midrange, but the tweeter is in fact still contributing down (through the midrange's lower roll-out and) to the woofer's upper roll-out. So there is in effect a tweeter x woofer crossover at a lower signal level, since they both must be attenuated at this secondary cross-point. At that crosspoint each relevant driver must assume a 12dB /octave slope in order to add correctly in the whole system. Here we have opened Pandora's box. Every small change to any driver slope must be complementarily compensated in not one, but multiple other coexisting driver slopes. Such considerations include passive radiators and cabinet bracing and other factors which influence the roll-out behavior of any and all drivers, electrical or mechanical.
So, now let's expand to andy's questions regarding more than 3 drivers. I have already mentioned that the passive radiator counts, so the CS2 and 3 series are 4-ways in crossover considerations, although the passive radiators and mechanical coax (2.4, etc.) don't actually accumulate the expense of electrical crossover components - but the crossover must nonetheless consider their contributions.
Let's jump to the bass alignment of the CS5. The bass picks up from the lower midrange at 400. There are 3 bass drivers representing 2 alignments which all cross over to the lower 5" midrange, the upper 2" midrange and the 1" tweeter. Only the sub-bass driver pair with a 40Hz crosspoint is exempt from only the upper midrange and tweeter. The rest of the drivers interact and each interaction introduces an additional 6dB pole to its required roll-out. The required mental gymnastics is considerable. Generally, even with world-class brands and development labs, the approach is to ignore any interaction greater than -10dB or possibly as much as -20dB. We proved to ourselves that -40dB could be "sensed" as anomalous = Not Right. So we endeavored to keep it all straight in the design phase; then in production engineering, we had to determine how much mattered how much and how much we could afford to spend on any of dozens of decision points. That process generally took months to work through and hinged on value judgements of what our customers would be likely to spend on approaching "perfection". In hind sight, we missed the mark there. A product such as the CS5 could have been executed at various levels into $6 figures. In fact I conceived it as being a $15K product whereas Jim and Kathy drew a firm bold like at $10K, and we fit the final product into that frame. NB that Thiel's Cost of Goods Sold was far higher than anyone else in the business. We we wanted to be nirvana for everyman. But that price aversion kept us out of the developing ultimate-performance marketplace.
Let's focus on multiple low-frequency drivers. The CS5 is unique and effective. Let's examine the 3 bass drivers. Assume a pair of sub-woofers operating from 10 to 40Hz and a single upper woofer operating from 40 to 400 Hz. Since our baffle is sloped (to best fit) for the purpose of time alignment, we assign a group time signature to the upper (mid-high frequency) 3-driver array (lab work). The proper placement of the upper woofer turned out to be right in the "wrong" place near the floor where the lower woofers needed to be. The Aha! moment came on an overnight flight to England when Jim and I
were wrestling with how to achieve proper physical time alignment of the
bass with the upper drivers. We put the upper woofer THERE BETWEEN the subwoofers with its own tunnel-tube to a sub-enclosure in the back of the cabinet so that the two sub-woofers could see the larger remaining enclosure. The subwoofers flanked the upper woofer (above and below), creating a larger integrated waveform supported by the floor. At the 40Hz crosspoint, those waveforms are large enough that their physical center could be coincident with the mid woofer for simplification of time alignment of the whole-woofer-array with the multiple upper array drivers above it. The square wave / impulse response verified the success of the idea. It works.
Now, back to crossovers. We have fixed the time alignment of the bass array as a single entity in space, but the two slopes are different due to their differing crosspoints. In fact the upper-mid and tweeter are out of the subwoofer equation, but all except the tweeter are in the upper woofer equation. We accomplished much of the roll out work via mass loading the sub woofers for a mechanical upper roll-out and lower fundamental resonance. It took months of iterations including driver and enclosure tweaks to fine tune each of the crossovers with their compound and corrected slopes to achieve both phase coherence, time alignment and smooth frequency response. This work was supported by pretty serious test equipment which Jim conceived, developed and built in-house.
History shows the CS5 design to be technically tour de force, but commercially short-lived. The Achilles Heal is that amplification was not available and/or identified that would drive the cruel load of about 1 ohm at 40 Hz and deliver clean power to the upper frequencies. I believe that product might have succeeded if a bi-amplification scenario were implemented. Indeed if I hot-rod a pair my first move would be to separate the bass from the rest. The mid-high frequency load is pretty sweet. The low frequency demands could be addressed with the right amp and any deficiencies would be sequestered in the bass where our ear is far more forgiving. A further tweak would be to remove the mass loading from the sub-woofers and equalize the bass amp for electronic rather than physical shaping, earning significantly higher bass impedance for, I believe, potentially world-class bass.
At this point in my life, this the stuff of pipe dreams. But if granted the time, such dreams may turn to real stuff. I am healthy at 70 and gradually making room in my life for addressing this business from long ago.
If you come across model O1s or O2s, the back panel will say Thiel - manufactured by Conceptions Electronics.
I just checked my pair of 02s and it looks like Thiel outsourced to more than one manufacturer. Mine say on the back, manufactured by:
Heinl Electronics...in Canada.
They remain one of my all time favourite speakers. They were owned by my girlfriend (now wife) and re-introduced me to the virtues of clarity and neutrality, after a number of years of buying big honking speakers suitable for shaking the walls.
prof - there's always more. Our early years needed more rapid growth than we could produce. Our Canadian solution came with Russ Heinl, a Canadian distributor with good connections, knowledge and support. Canada had introduced tariffs for US goods, creating a cost opportunity for Canadian manufacture. Plus we were already supplementing our O-series cabinet supply from Soundwood in Toronto. I set up production in Canada for Canada with Soundwood cabinets and Heinl-produced crossovers with the same Solen-Canada caps and identical drivers that we were using. It all added up to a viable solution and the Canadian-made product sold in Canada is virtually identical to the Lexington-made product sold elsewhere. However, as our products became more sophisticated the outsource solution became unfeasible. We capped our year on year growth to 30% and brought all manufacturing in-house for the CS series.
A most excellent discussion between andy2, prof and yourself. Thank You for more backstory and historical markers that made Thiel Audio a reckoning force. Happy Listening!
Memory is an odd thing . . . often spotty and sometimes inaccurate on details, but very true to the major themes, people and events. I am appreciating the opportunity to re-access these memories from a very difficult and productive period of my life. Thank you.
prof - I just visited a pair of Brazilian Rosewood O2s that I inherited from my dad's estate. When I get them here from Virginia, I'll draw the schematics and conjure an upgrade. The O2 was before we discovered 6-9s wire or film caps. Simple second order 2-way XO that fit in one hand. The cabinet might need some bracing, and the grille frame an inboard bevel wedge - it was a plain square frame . . . perhaps felt on the baffle. No end to the fun. The O2 was designed for the newly emerging audiophile dealer to sell against Polk and Advent. I think those retailed for $150 / pair in 1977, which would be $500 in today's dollars.
I like my 02s so much I’ve been considering having them re-finished (their old finish is a bit blah, faded, and doesn’t match our room at all). I don’t know if it would be possible to actually have a veneer of another wood placed over them, or whether it’s just a case of changing the stain colour.
BTW, as a fellow philosophy nerd (more via self-education and interest over the decades - it wasn’t a major), it’s nice to see you had a background in philosophy. Epistemology, ontology...I’ve been in the debate trenches with those subjects many times. Tough nuts to crack!
It’s both my practical, and philosophical side that leads me to defend certain empirical virtues that often don’t seem too welcome in the world of audiophiles. (And I certainly count myself as an audiophile).
prof - your philosophical base leaks through. Isn't it a joy to pursue things as far back to first principles as we can? Kierkegaard - Heidegger were my focus.
Reveneering with any clamping method would bow the panels inward and not work well. But you could use pressure sensitive adhesive backed veneer. A more likely solution would be to strip the finish (Lex is nitrocellulose lacquer, I believe Heinl is also) with citrus stripper and then scrape, sand and refinish to order. The veneer started out at 0.025" thick minus production sanding of about half that thickness. So be careful.
And keep up the good work. You might expound those emperical virtues you referenced.
Yes, I love digging down in to assumptions, axioms. It's become a reflexive habit for me when proposing any claim or argument that I first check myself for special pleading and consistency, seeing as far as I can in many directions whether the argument upsets any apple carts in my own philosophical structure. I may be wrong...but after many years I'm pretty confident in being consistent . :-) . Unfortunately I find attempts at arguments that are nuanced in the way philosophy often demands, often fall on deaf ears, and one faces a lot of straw-manning of one's position. When you even question someone's firm belief in a phenomenon, they seem to presume an opposite position of firmness to you. Hence any nuanced case for a skeptical - but not decided! - position is just ignored and doubt is characterized as dogmatism. Makes conversation about assumptions pretty tough. (But then, that's the nature of challenging assumptions in the first place).
Anyway,
Thanks very much for the info on altering the Thiel 02s. I'm not handy at all with such things and would have a professional furniture refinisher I've used before. If I go ahead, I'll keep the info and suggestions you've given as a helpful note.
prof - the whole bit of identifying and challenging assumptions is at the core of progress. In a scientific / research based proposition like Thiel Audio, we did it every day to ascertain that we were true to our vision, rather than believing accepted orthadoxy. It was so painfully interesting to see the new owners do the opposite, to mine any perceived values for assumed advantage. Their first sales manager, Steve DeFuria, an industry friend and long-time Thiel dealer, tried to include me in the realignment / assessment discussions. But ownership was not interested in "the past", which is of course a mis-assumption of what I would bring to the table. They got it wrong at every turn. We'll see if we can collectively keep an ember alive and build some joy around the campfire.
I've been struggling along trying to absorb as much as I can from the great discussion thus far, and the campfire is indeed blazing! I'm remembering my first Thiel, which was an 03A. I bought them along with a PS Audio Elite, both of which I kept for many years and lots of moves. Having sold all my HT and 2 channel stuff, I'm starting over in a new smaller place. However, I seem to have a good sized listening room, but with a towering cathedral ceiling. I've been counseled in this forum to abandon thoughts of a 1.5 or 1.6, so was about to settle on a pair of 3.5's with the equalizer. But wait-there suddenly appears on the horizon a pair of CS 7's. For a very good price. And he'll even ship them! Please tell me they are too big. The only Thiels I have not owned are the 7 series and the 1 series. The price is less than a 2.4 and close to the last pair of 2.3's I saw listed. ...
Oh man, I was just reading an old review of the Thiel 3.7s, naturally a rave, and had this tinge of regret creeping over me. I had those speakers! They were incredible!
But then I remember why I had to sell them. Yes, I HAD to sell them! (Must keep telling myself that...)
prof I was able to audition both the 3.7s and the 2.7s, with my own classical CDs, in the same location on the same day. Loved both; with the only difference being the falloff in the bottom octave. However, size decided in favor of the 2.7s. Later added an SS2.2 sub, and am still very, very happy.
The ongoing mystery has always been if the site is one big troll (not implausible given that seems to be Kait's modus operandi), vs anything serious. I think the site is mostly a troll, like many of Kait's comments here, though I think he's sometimes serious in his comments on this forum. He says enough wacky things though, with apparent sincerity, that the line between fiction and honesty with him is hard to discern.
I'm listening to Bill Evans Piano Player after having listened to CD10 of the Bach Recordings box set I got last year. There's certainly an ember alive here. I think of high end audio as a sort of musical tourism. We can hear an incredible variety of music reproduced fantastically well without going anywhere. It's a luxury that most people don't appreciate. Based on what I've read, I believe Thiel intended to give people of modest means the ability to experience this. I appreciate it and enjoy it immensely.
tomthiel..... I would spend so long time reading and knowing more and more about Thiel Audio history, you , Jim and all others actors of this fascinating monument to the music that you was/are, all this being said I try to launch a rock in the water: Tom, why do not write down a book on Thiel Audio..... I would pay any amount for it right now. I firmly think that you are the best candidate to do this and pretty sure many other fellows here are agree with me.
michael - regarding the CS7, which was the flagship model with plenty of greatness; and sell cheaply on the used market. 1995 was the time of rapid development of fully in-house drivers. Between the CS6, 7, 3.6 and especially the CS2.3 coax, so much was learned to improve the drivers, that Jim redesigned the 7 with all new in-house drivers and, of course, redesigned crossovers to support the changes. Broad opinion says the upgrade 7.2 was spectacular. 7s are fully retrofittable to 7.2s - the cabinets are identical and the crossovers are modifiable. If you buy 7s inexpensively, you may have the option to fully upgrade, if Rob at Coherent Source Service still has 7.2 drivers. My wish-list includes hot-rodding the 7.2 - there is room for improvement. I have mentioned here before that just because the 3.7 obsoleted the 6 and 7.2, that was for logistics of simplified manufacture pending Jim's death, and not because the 3.7 is superior to the 6 and 7.2.
Sorry to bear the sad news, but the 7 is a qualitatively better speaker than the 3.5, especially in a large room. In many ways the 7.2 is the pinnacle of Jim's life work and a 7.3 was in development when his health failed. If you can afford them, I suspect you will never regret getting them. Consider the amplifier caveats, the 7 is far harder to drive. We can circumvent a big part of the amp problem via dividing the inputs into bass and upper ranges for separate amplification, which would require 2 amps. Jim's objection to bi-amping / bi-wiring revolved around various mis-use issues, not fundamental principles. But we can keep that straight with amp and cable choices that consider those signal integration problems carefully.
silvanik - in Slovenian your name means forest dweller. Are you a tree hugger? I am. Anyhow, yes a book . . . This forum is the first try I have made to unleash some of these thoughts. I am rearranging my life for the possibility of writing such a book along with the related audio work. The story offers considerable fascination as something based in a particular time and place in history, with considerable detail that is obscure and far richer and potentially meaningful than the standard story you have read. These forum posts are sketches for that book. Thank you for your encouragement.
jon - you hit it on the head. As an enterprise that grew out of an intentional community (commune) in the 1970s, we all felt in our core being that music showed the way to growth in uncharted territory. Everything was changing, youth (yes, we were young once) hoped to invent a new world grounded in peace, love and music as everyman's key. Thiel Audio was how we chose to spread the joy. Our first motto was "For the Love of Music". We thought that through ingenuity and hard work, we could create something more true to the heart and soul of music and make it affordable for the many. Our enterprise succeeded in some small ways . . . It gives me great pleasure that you appreciate that core truth of the undertaking. Plenty of sacrifice went into doing what little we were able to do.
The ongoing mystery has always been if the site is one big troll (not implausible given that seems to be Kait's modus operandi), vs anything serious. I think the site is mostly a troll, like many of Kait's comments here, though I think he's sometimes serious in his comments on this forum. He says enough wacky things though, with apparent sincerity, that the line between fiction and honesty with him is hard to discern.
More fake news from the professor. He’s just mad because I see through his so called philosophical jibber jabber. 😛
CS7.2 (and 3.7) is just behind the very best speakers I’ve heard, and at a fraction of the price. I suspect Tom Thiel’s XO mods will narrow that gap. I’m itching to finish my 2.4 upgrade. I suspect I’d have to get something like a Vandy 5 carbon to demonstratively beat it, and that’s a speaker well out of my financial wherewithal.
Geoff Kait is on the bleeding edge of tweakery but I don’t think he’s trolling or bilking anyone. There are many things in audio that can be heard but not explained. The human ear/mind is not the same as an oscilloscope or any other measuring device. Measurements are good to have but they cannot fully inform what we experience when listening to music (and not even partially inform the emotional part of our experience). Mr. Kait’s tweaks may be controversial but I would not dismiss them out of hand.
...on the other hand I come and live in a peaceful place here in Tuscany, in the center of Italy and close to the sea, so could I not be? I try to encourage you a bit more telling here how I ended getting, only few months ago, my since long time wanted pair of CS 3.6. It was around 1995, I was young (now fifty five) already in love with the Hi-Fi but with much less money in my pocket, I already had a modest system in my room but was permanently on the search for better sound, so my main hobby was going around to attend to all the best hi-fi show that I could (obviously in Italy), my enjoyment was to listen to the best that the glorious brands had to offer, not depending by the cost, I clearly remember when jumping from so many rooms (it was in Milan) I remained shocked by a performance that sounded to me like a live execution more than any other, not so loud but so true: they were a pair of loudspeaker of which I didn't know the brand: the Thiel CS 3.6s. I fixed that sound in my mind and never forgot it and I started to say to myself, maybe one day I will be able to own a pair. Many years have passed since, with some terrible things occurred to my life in the between but few months ago, after a long and deep search, I succeeded finding a pair in perfect cosmetically and sounding condition, this is unbelievable being them twenty years old but it is. Now I'm happy like a child and I'm sure that never and for any reason I'll let them go. I'm well aware that Thiel speakers mean more, much more of a nice box, good drivers, well working XO and great manifacture, I mean, the Invaluable value behind them as the Coherent Source concept, the custom drivers, the extreme high level in assembling and finishing...and the soul of all Thiel's workers. All this is Thiel to me and I think that no other speaker manufacturer did or is doing the same.
Tom, are these reasons enough good to you to seriously think to a book?
PS I want apologize with all of you for my not perfect english and hope my words are understandable at least!
silvanik - in a twist of serendipity, I heard the 3.6's at that show in Milan, visiting Enrico Tricarico, Thiel's Italian distributor and prior football star. I think my visit was in 1992, when the 3.6 was first introduced. I spoke some Italian then, not much now, but I can read it a little from knowing Latin, which I do remember fairly well and has served me well in my travels in Latin language countries: Italy, Spain, France, Bolivia and Brazil, although Brazilian Portuguese is a pretty far stretch from the other languages. My understanding was good enough to save my life when lost in backwoods Brazil without my companion. That's another story, related to how I established Pau Ferro as our standard veneer in 1990 / CS2 2. There's no end to fun with wood. Cheers.
I remember my first encounters with the Thiel 3.6 at a local high end store, in the 90's, where I got to play a bunch of my CDs.
I had the distinct impression of "that's exactly what it sounded like" when the music was recorded, both in terms of the character and liveness of the instruments, and exact character of the recording itself, and no obvious character/resonance etc from the speaker.
I think it was one of my first encounters with a really neutral, accurate sounding speaker. I'd had a similar impression listening to Quad ESL 63s, but it was the first time I heard that from a "box" speaker.
Tomthiel, That is exciting about the 7’s and the possible upgrade path. If I hadn’t needed to downsize I would have stopped at the cs6’s. I will take a serious look at the 7’s now on sale. Assuming they are legit, my peculiar room might just be fine for them. Remember the cathedral ceilings of the 80’s? That’s my room.
@Tomthiel, I'm curious about the nature of your commune. I spent much of my childhood in a very religious commune and my parents still live there. From what I've read I think communes were fairly common for a while but I don't have any perspective. Was your commune religious? How long did it last?
Hi all been enjoying your conversation of the larger Thiels and have been eye balling a pair of cs7 available. In great shape from a notable source but certainly not a deal. I have already decided the 2.7 and 3.7 will never leave my home. What are the top sonic diffrences between cs7 and the 3.7? Prof i know love your CJ amps do you know anything about the Conrad Johnson Premier 350 - 350 Watt (8 Ohms) Reference SS AMP? Any one else have any experience, would be for possible cs7 or my 3.7
jon - Our community was not so formal as to have a name or designated ideology. The early 70s were full of societal change and we were part of that. I had been a brother in the Marianist, Catholic teaching order through college engaged in Peace through social justice, ethical war resistance, urban poor empowerment, right technology in the developing world . . . and so forth. I then married and had a child, but wanted to continue a collective enterprise, and opened my doors to a group which included my brother Jim, and a few mutual friends. We bought land on the Cumberland Plateau to form a sustainable living enterprise and needed a shared employment project, which became Thiel Audio. Of course this sketch is the bare bones synopsis.
From the beginning we shared all funds, responsibilities and development of common direction. Religion or traditional belief was not a part of our commune; the experiment was social, not spiritual. Its end was more of a mutation than anything else. By the mid 90s, it was clear that my focus of creating a "good place for good people to earn a good living doing good work for the good of all" was no longer appreciated as a driving force. Rather, the survival needs of the business were what consumed everyone's around the clock attention. It took me 5 years to objectify the manufacturing systems and personnel enough that I could leave without damaging the enterprise. Its growth and development continued. I am proud of that.
There are many things in audio that can be heard but not explained. The
human ear/mind is not the same as an oscilloscope or any other measuring
device. Measurements are good to have but they cannot fully inform what
we experience when listening to music (and not even partially inform
the emotional part of our experience).
Yes, it can be measured but it's not trivial and something as subtle as cable break-in, you need really sensitive equipment and not to mention the knowledge of how to use those equipment. But the principle of cable burn in is well established (look up electro-migration) so there is no point to reinvent the wheel.
As for speaker driver break-in, it has been measured. That is why speaker designers only measure the various speaker driver parameters only when the drivers already well broken-in.
Please andy2, not here with the burn-in cable stuff.
(And a google of electromigration certainly does yield anything that establishes warrant for the cable-burn-in claims made by audiophiles/manufacturers. But best to make your claim in that thread in the other forum dedicated to this debate).
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