Happy Friday- All.
Thiel Owners
Guys-
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!
Keep me posted & Happy Listening!
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!
Keep me posted & Happy Listening!
13,807 responses Add your response
andy2 - perhaps cable conductive stabilization is beyond the scope of this forum. But I would nonetheless like to post how such considerations entered the awareness in the development of Thiel Audio's peculiar relationship to the role of the loudspeaker as a precision playback device. Discomfort is a requirement for growth. I may have mentioned cousin Teddy awhile back, but to recap: he helped us appreciate the much larger world of science beyond armchair comfort with known basic concepts. Our cousin Ted Lyon was a senior theoretical physicist at General Electric Jet Engines in Cincinnati. Teddy was smart. Teddy also took an early interest in what we were doing with speakers. He first came to visit in the throes of prototyping the O3 to be phase coherent or not. (. . . to be, that is the question - sorry, I'm involved with a mentoring Shakespeare Company and couldn't help myself.) Our problem was that myriad sonic problems beyond our understanding invaded the sound-scape when phase coherent (first order) and vanished when not phase coherent (3rd order). We knew we had a tiger by the tail because musical nuance would also be higher as a result of such functioning when phase coherent. Teddy listened intently and nudged our conversation ever more far-fetched and speculative, far beyond what we as 20 somethings could comprehend. But Teddy was a patient teacher. After many hours and near exasperation he simply began to talk - for perhaps a half-hour. We learned that NASA had faced such exasperation in its long-field (millions of miles) aerospace avionics - instrumentation / transceiver communication. The communication and especially navigation-positional protocols depended on transient waveform integrity. He said he was hearing artifacts in our phase coherent prototype similar to what he heard in his avionics prototyping work. He offered 3 avenues for our exploration. Replace steel driver baskets with non-magnetic alloys to reduce eddy currents, upgrade the copper wire, and never evaluate "young" components. It bears noting that Jon Dahlquist of DQ-10 fame came from aerospace and that he used 18ga twisted pair solid copper in teflon when the rest of the industry used ordinary stranded wire. Hmmm. My summer of 1977 revolved around identifying and sourcing wire and other components that ended up being 99.9999% pure, long crystal, low oxygen, etc. in teflon or varnish from ITT, developed for NASA. As far as I know, we introduced "wire" to the audio industry, or at least we didn't hear about "wire" from anyone else beyond noting Dahlquist's unusual choice. Let's proceed to "never evaluate young components", which included wire, caps, resistors - everything. Teddy said that the grain boundaries in metals conducted non-linearly with frequency, current, voltage, temperature and so forth. Boundary effect phase discrepancies were certainly measurable and in fact the subject of considerable engineering effort - thus the ITT wire. Furthermore, those grain boundaries could (speculatively at that time) exhibit migratory properties, since ionic flow tends to push and form metallic micro-structures, which are somewhat mobile. Our breakthrough involved learning how many things that we did not understand could have effects on what we were hearing. So I suspend my own tyranny of intellect when relating to sonic phenomena. The gig goes: hear it, label some aspects in non-value terms (never use better or worse), isolate some aspect, address that aspect from different angles, note the outcomes. Choose a couple to measure, find or develop some meaningful measurement criteria, decide which path to pursue. Nowhere in this decision tree must we prove to anyone the validity of our reasoning or selection. The decisions must lead toward improvement by our own criteria and that of our customers, including reviewers and peers. It would take lifetimes to explicate and/or prove such matters, which would not promote designing speakers or building a company. So, I claim no proof for much of anything. I am merely stating my bias toward creative intuitive action. Here is a link to an abstract chosen off the web. It represents the kind of stuff I read that summer and informed my conversations with Teddy. I doubt that we would have jumped into the deep end without Teddy's input. Jim was thoroughly committed to the scientific method with a deep dose of skepticism. Teddy was a serious PhD who encouraged and insisted on exploring beyond the limits of understanding. He gave me significant encouragement and Jim the basic permission he needed to trust his ears. https://www-pub.iaea.org/mtcd/meetings/PDFplus/fus Enjoy. Tom |
dsper I'd like to thank you for your response about your experience with tubes . You got me thinking about trying older tubes , so after finding and reading about different EF86s I decided to try a pair of 1972 NOS Tesla EF806s , the performance version of the EF68 . I still will not take another chance with used tubes and can not begin to afford the $300 per tube for NOS Genalex Gold Lions . They sound FANTASTIC , I am now looking into finding 3 x 5751tubes since new production is very limited . You asked how the sound is from a passive pre-amp compares to powered ones . Pure , Clean , un-Colored Silvanik another McCormack owner with a pair of CS3.6s made his own passive pre-amp and loves it . oblgny ( page 80 ) was disappointed with a passive pre-amp . I believe ( totally a personal opinion ) that using a passive pre-amp allows the input to your amp to be the purest sound , if you don't like the sound then your input equipment should be looked at or thought about , not your amps like oblgny was thinking . Like the Thiel speakers that play the music put into them without any coloring , that is how I feel about a passive pre-amp. Happy Friday Rob |
tomthiel......I am increasingly fascinated by your story around the world of Thiel Audio, keep telling please. I would have been happy to meet you in Milan and maybe to share some good glasses of italian red wine....but you know it's never too late, in case you plan tourist trip in Italy let me know, i'll be glad to take care of you as my special guest. Silvano |
Just ordered a set (one tweeter, one mid and a pair of woofer) as spare drivers for my CS 3.6 from Rob Gillum at Coherent Source Service. Actually them are sounding fine and not in the need for any drivers replacement but I saw that they are becoming increasingly difficult to find and due to my intention to keep this speakers forever wanted put myself on the safe side.....just in case, to not risk to transform my Thiels in a sort of expensive paperweight :-) |
The never ending hunt for continuous improvement goes on... I'm thinking that I may want to change my amps (currently Bel Canto REF500M, which are REALLY nice amps) and I may want to try tubes again. Can you reliably drive a pair of CS2.4's with tube amps? I'm using an Integrator and cutting at 50Hz before feeding the amps. Should make the speakers slightly easier to drive... A SS2 takes over below 50Hz. |
Jan - I'm very interested in what you learn. You might consider a higher cut-off frequency. 50Hz is right at the impedance x phase reversal. See the Stereophile review. If you have stereo subwoofers for good signal directionality and can get to 70-80 Hz where the load becomes quite resistive, you would stress the amp less. I am speaking hypothetically, having never experimented myself. I hope some folks in this community can shed some light. |
Tom, thanks for your input (always appreciate your insight!). It's easy enough for me to test with the Integrator. Just raise the crossover point. Unfortunately, I only have one SS2 (which is PLENTY for the room), but it's worth experimenting. I'll let you know what I find with the current amps and then I might go ahead and try to borrow a tube amp from friends. |
So I had to test it right away... :-) The good news is crossed at 70Hz, I still can't locate the SS2, it's just perfectly blended without leaving a trace of it's location. Interesting unintended benefit is that the speakers opened up even more! Guess releasing the amps from the difficult load allows them to really make the CS2.4's sing. :-) Next step is to find a suitable tube amp to test out. I have a friend with a Audio Research Ref75, just need to convince him to disconnect it and bring it over (usually doesn't take much...). :-) |
Thanks for the info audiojan. I've had my JL Audio subwoofers for a looong time but still haven't got around to really giving a good try to integrate them with my 2.7s, even though I also bought the JL Audio CR-1 crossover, and an anti-node processor (if I need it). This subwoofer stuff is just such an involved hassle, I never find myself with the free time to put in to doing it. Some day, hopefully. |
vairobert68... Indeed. Like you stated I assumed a passive preamp would involve the very least possible of any coloration getting in between my power source and my Thiels. My power sources, imho of course, were nothing to sneeze at. If I recall correctly my cables were all Transparent - the entry level series, I forget their exact name. Perhaps another brand of speaker would have benefited from the assumed result, but as I have, and many others here have stated as well, “Thiel reveals.” Purity in purity out - perhaps my ears could not wrap themselves around all that uncluttered, unfiltered sound? I could not imagine any other piece of equipment at the time that could be faulted for my non-appreciation of the passive. Sheesh. I picked up the Placette from a fellow member here who, prior to selling it to me had it fronting a Plinius amp. I believe he moved up the line. He was quite enthused about it, as was I. Becoming a member of this site and being able to procure interesting stuff has ruined me - damn you, Audiogon!!! I would never have discovered Thiel in the first place had I not stumbled upon this site as I searched for some vintage stereo receivers. Now I look back upon my purchase history here and cannot help but be surprised at the $$ spent and the equipment moved in and out. But I digress again. I would not suggest to anyone that a passive pre is not a good match for Thiel. In fact I’d love to be able to put such a setup together again. Time will tell... |
Following this thread with great interest, if not always understanding,. I realized that I still have a Thiel Passive Subwoofer crossover modified for 2.4 mains and mcs1 center. I have sold my thiel speakers, so have no use for it, but maybe somebody would. I wonder if Rob modifies these at his new company. |
michael - Rob sets up PXOs for any classic Thiel back to perhaps 3.6s (mid 90s) for a reasonable fee. guys - regarding passive preamps, there is another un-named factor. The principal load being driven by the source is the connecting cables to the next device. Some cables have high capacitive and/or inductive reactances. Some sources are not capable of driving those loads well, and their outputs become distressed, much like the power amp problem. I would only attempt a passive preamp with short, electrically neutral interconnects between the source and passive pre and pre to power amp, since the passive pre does not buffer or isolate the source from the pre to poweramp run. |
oblgny In my attempt to advise or help another music lover Thiel owner who is thinking about using a passive pre-amp I have offended you , I truly apologize , that was defiantly not my intention . Please forgive me. Mr. Thiel Thank you for the additional information about interconnects , I have always tried to keep my interconnects as short as possible, maybe that is one reason why a passive pre-amp works in my system, and/or maybe it's because Cardas cables have a low capacitive and inductive resistances . Rob |
Same in my system, I made the interconnects very short, 50cm from source to pre-amp and 90cm from pre-amp to amp, it works fine to me.I also own a McCormack TLC-1 passive/buffered pre-amp but after many comparison I ended preferring my crafted one with only one IN/OUT line, no source selector in the between,thus the signal path is the shorther as possible. If you wish it's visible in my Vritual System I published yesterday. |
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I've tried passive pre-amps before, as well as running my Benchmark DAC with it's own volume control directly in to my amps. The results have always been the same. At first I'm captivated by sense of transparency and zero haze, grain, etc. It really does sound more like the "straight wire with gain." But every time I end up noticing it's almost "too transparent." That is, sonic images seem to be almost see-through, lacking the palbability, density, body and dynamics I get with a good pre-amp. I also find tonality a bit more believable with a good pre-amp. I certainly haven't tried every passive option out there, but it seems many other audiophiles have had similar experience trying to go passive. |
Audiojan. There is a demo/used Audio Reseach 75 SE for sale at music lovers San Francisco check there web site. I’ll check it out for if you want. It is a good retailer here in San Francisco. i just sold my CS3.7 with the SS2.2vwith calibrated crossover to a long time lover of Thiel. Hope he enjoys it. |
andy2 Cabling talk, is most certainly welcomed here, as it is, my favorite aspect of our hobby. Pertinent to any system and critical for true synergy. As we build a preferred Amplifier list, it would not be a bad idea to build a cabling list as well. We all hear differently and have different tastes / brands of cables/power cords endorsed. Happy Listening! |
https://www-pub.iaea.org/mtcd/meetings/PDFplus/fus Hi Tom, I tried to click on the link but apparently I do not have permission to view the document. Thanks, -Andy |
Andy, the link doesn't open for me either. Try pasting the link directly into your browser or googling the topic we were discussing and see what you find. The abstract was merely a type sample of the level of investigation being carried out in advanced circles and doesn't necessarily address the mechanisms of how wire might transform in response to use. |
Indeed we each experience heard input individually. However, I / we noted a broad correlation between what individuals reported and what our lab / theoretical models supported. Agreed, the controversial part is the hearability. Generally speaking the "scientific" camp asserts that a large portion of the authentic audio signal is undetectable by the "naked" ear. That assertion is upheld by blind A/B tests with statistical modeling. They are unarguably correct on their terms. Many also require an analytical structure to verify what they hear and absent that, are unwilling to commit to the legitimacy of an experienced phenomenon (what they heard). On the other hand, a small set of top end recordists and self-identified audiophiles can and do hear much of what the "scientists" deem unhearable, sometimes requiring significant elapsed time to understand and believe what they are hearing. They often don't care what the statistical models say is valid; they believe their ears and may or may not care to argue, justify or prove their opinion. The science guys think they are making it up. I think they are believing their senses. A seminal, foundational understanding that allowed Thiel Audio to be, grow and succeed on its own terms, was that we agreed to disassociate from not only the established "truths", but also what other designer / manufacturers were doing and.or claiming to do. By focusing on our own work and believing where it led us, we were able to establish our own truth, which was always correlatable with measurements, but not driven by them. Of course that process might have been better informed or more enlightened or perhaps greater resources (staff and funds) may have produced more elegant work . . . but we did manage to create a body of work with internal integrity which brought joy to scores of thousands of customers and the acclimation of many dozens of design and engineering awards. In my own work I call my process "contemplative understanding and design". That calls on intuition and insight in addition to analytical cognition and includes leaps of imagination in its process. |
I continue to find this thread a most enjoyable addiction simply because the technical and emotional aspects being bandied back forth appeal to either camp in ways that neither can fully reason. To have gained the in-depth background that Tom has supplied on Thiel is to admire even more the man and the brand. Though most of what Tom has explained within this forum goes way over my head, it all turns out to be in pursuit of the emotional - which is why I joined the dialogue here in the first place. Thiel was not the first speaker that “wowed” me. In my wayward youth, saving up for my first stereo system, I was impressed by most of the popular brands at the time, Advent, Acoustic Research, etc. However, Thiel was the first speaker to show me that my ears weren’t necessarily paying close attention to much back in them days. When I got my first pair of Thiel speakers, CS2.2, I hooked ‘em up, flipped on the integrated, tossed in a cd, and as I walked back to sit down I literally stopped dead in my tracks. I was hearing something I never truly heard before even though I had listened to that record a hundred times before. What I had enjoyed before was now being presented in an entirely different manner. The sound was organic, void of coloration. The influence they had upon what was a pretty meager low-fi arrangement was immediate and tangible. It wasn’t just one part of the spectrum that had improved, it was the entire spectrum, the whole Megillah...For lack of a better description my stereo found something more harmonious, more natural. Things simply synched. Many years ago I was at a party standing next to a fellow guest whom, for no immediately apparent reason, started humming along to some music that was playing in the background. A few more minutes flew by and her humming evolved into singing. As her volume increased I remember FEELING the timbre in her voice, the tension, in my bones. No mic, no amplification, an acoustically unfriendly room stuffed with people and ambient noise, and I was floored. That’s a “wow” moment if ever there was one. Thiel CS2.2 did that to me, too. Thiel makes ANYTHING sound better than it deserves to be. All it takes is your first pair. PS: it’s a slow journey back to my “hifi”. Today I hooked up the new Bluesound Powernode 2i to my Meadowlark Kestrels. The Blue is a streamer/server powered with class d amplification. This is the most modest “system” I’ve had in over a decade - and it IS modest indeed. It is SMALL. My cabinet looks empty - especially after having previously accommodated Pass, BAT, and other dimensionally superior equipment. But ya know what? I am more than a little pleased with how this thing and the Kestrels sound. I discovered a pair of Synergistic Research speaker cables in my snakepit and hooked them up. Overall the sonics are very even keeled - the Kestrels share a good deal of Thiel-like attributes. Expecting a “this will have to do for a while” resignation I found that I have a “this ain’t so shabby at all” thing going on. Now, if only a cheap pair of 2.2 or 2.3’s would become geographically desirable... |
On the subject of cable/equipment “burn in”... I’ve been in the wine business for my entire adult life. Some folks consider me an “expert”, most others far more advanced in this profession than I respect my experience and opinion. It continues to impress me how some of my colleagues are able to extract nuances and/or subtleties in a wine that I miss, and vice versa. There are people attuned to things that I am not and it’s a helluva lotta fun to sit around listening to how they arrive at their opinions, and my own as well. Can one hear the changes produced at a cable’s molecular level by running current through it for a while? I have to say yes in all probability because, in my profession I’ve witnessed folks correctly guessing the origin of a wine, it’s vintage, even it’s vineyard location - tasted in a blind setting. That I may not be able to detect any difference doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of it. In fact it serves to magnify it. |
Last Monday I hosted a piano technicians workshop at my Northwind Designworks studio. I had prepared 4 samples of alternatively constructed piano bridge segments (reassessing sonic transmission from string to soundboard - how does that actually work?). One of the attendees tapped each of them and identified the 3 major components of the tonal response. Fundamental, augmented 4th, minor 6th. Next day, I verified the increments in my lab. Hmmm. Could I do that? No. Did it matter to me and the other learners? Yes. He had developed his analytical powers as a precision tool. Over the years I recognized a critical element of understanding and learning. I learned to substitute the pronoun "I" for "you". Rather than saying "you can't hear that", I say "I can't hear that". That shift of the burden of proof makes a world of difference. Rather than challenging the other to believe my assessment, I am admitting my own limitation. The conversation can become quite rich with that change of position. Cheers TT |
This situation is what makes people watching in audio so amusing. There is real ambiguity in that there are differences that can be heard but not easily measured. There are also charlatans taking advantage of this by making BS claims and trying to make money off of them. There is no getting around the fact that in order to possibly perceive new things you risk being fooled, fooling yourself, appearing stupid, etc. It's inherently uncomfortable. Nobody can try everything so you have to make judgement calls based on incomplete and/or false information. It's very messy. |
I don't mean to turn this thread into a "component burn in", but since the topic came up, I would like to at least talk about the science behind the cause of "burn in". We learn a lot through our visual process. We see things as they happen and learn from them. If something we are unable to see, then a lot of times we think that they don't happen or we don't believe that they happen. A good example would be current flowing inside a conductor. We can't see current flowing so a lot of people have a hard time understanding what's going on unless one has the electrical engineering background and experiences. First let's talk about something we see and agree. There are a lot of processes that alter the nature of metal. For example, metal annealing is a process which uses heat to alter the metal crystal structure. Most people would understand this because they can see the actual process with their own eyes. Another example of metal burn in is to literally burn it. If you apply a high enough current to a conductor, it will burn which is a permanent and irreversible process. Most people can easily understand this since he can see it with his own eye. "Copper got burnt" is a layman term, but the scientific term is called metal oxidization. The high current creates heat which enables the copper and oxygen molecules to interact to become copper oxide. Copper oxide turns to black color therefore we can see it with our own eyes so we believe the metal got "burnt". Now if copper oxide has no color, then it would be harder for people to believe it. Now you don't have to run a current through copper to turn copper into copper oxide. You can literally burn it with a fire. So the root cause of copper oxide is heat and it could come from anything that has heat. Heat is also a layman term, but in science heat comes from the speed of the molecule or any particle. If a molecule has a high velocity, it has a high amount of heat (or energy). So the fundamental of heat is particle velocity scientifically. But you also see copper turns into copper oxide without any high current or "heat", but the reality is statistically, at room temperature, there are always some copper molecules that have higher high velocity (or hotter) than the average molecules, so those molecules with higher than average speed will interact with oxygen to become copper oxide. Most people without a scientific background probably don't see this and probably cannot visualize this whole process. The key here is the word "statically". It's similar to water vapor. Most of the water sitting inside your house will not vapor. But there are also some water molecules that will have higher speed than the average water molecules so they can jump into the air. All I said above to show that molecules are not that different from a billiard ball since they move, they get bounced around, push around just like regular objects. Electrons for the most parts behave like billiard ball in the same way they got move around. If you use the equation to describe for example electron mobility, the principals behind them basically come from the equation: F = ma. In layman term, electron mobility is how much it moves in (m/s) when it gets push. But you say "aha, electrons get pushed by electrical field, but things like billiard ball gets pushed differently". But I say "aha back at you, when you push something in the real world, what actually going on at the molecular level is that your molecule electric field pushes at someone else electric field but you just don't see it". Your molecules never actually touch someone else molecules. It's only the field that interacts even in the real world. You see when you see thing at the molecule level, things don't look that much different. Electron motilities are used to calculate resistance. In metal, there are a lot more free electron so electrons are "free er to move", therefore they have higher mobility vs. insulator. When electrons move, they bounce around within the metal structure. The higher the current, the more likely and stronger they bounce and hit other things within the metal structure, in this case other molecules. When it happens, electrons transfer its speed to the molecules which in turn the molecules will have higher speed. High enough current will eventually give higher speed molecule and will heat up the copper conductor. Let's turn to the science behind our layman term "cable burn in". Most people would agree that at high enough current, with enough heat, it can potentially alter the metal structure permanently because we can see them visually with our own eyes so believe it. But the problem is at low current, such as at our audio system level, most people don't believe the current is high enough to alter the crystal structure of the metal. This is where it is harder to explain unless you have a background in electrical engineer. It took me years of going to school and experiences so I guess I can understand most people are skeptical. One has to understand the metal structure is not perfect and ideal. A metal structure also has a lot of impurities such as oxygen molecules. When electrons move, they encounter a lot of obstacles (otherwise there wouldn't be heat). And statistically, some electrons even at low current, will acquire a lot of energy equivalent to that of higher current, it then can impart enough energy to a molecule to permanently dislodge a molecule position permanently or the molecule can acquire enough energy to be oxidized and turned into copper oxide. When the copper becomes oxidized, its electrons will not be conductive (or you can say its electrons now have much lower mobility). That's why audiophile grade cables typically use higher oxygen free conductor. These oxygen molecules can either oxidize copper molecule or they can obstruct the path of the electrons. If you measure resistance at DC, the cables probably are very close, but when you play music, our hearing is sensitive enough to pick up the difference. I guess this is where hearing and measurement start to diverge - very small measurement difference but results in large listening difference. What I said above is to present a case in which how a small current can potentially alter a molecule crystal structure which results in cable break-in. I can explain further but my guess is if you're skeptical, then I don't think what I said would change your mind. |
andy2, It's an interesting topic and it was a fascinating post. Unfortunately, bringing the cable-burn in debate here is like dropping in to the Thiel thread to start a discussion "Are High End Cables Worth The Money?" or "Do AC Cables Really Make A Difference?" Or for that matter "Does God Exist?" We all know what threads look like on those topics and I'm sure I'm not the only Thiel owner who doesn't want this thread to go down that road. |