Thiel Owners

If a crossover is mounted to the floor base of the cabinet it will be closer to mechanical ground and then resonace will be more easily drained. Plus the mounting of the crossover to the backwall is like a backboard on a basketball goal. Bouncey bounce. TomD

The mechanical issues are real and worth improving upon.

However, I believe the far larger issue is the interaction of the crossover components with the fields emanating from the driver(s), especially the woofer. These interactions and their sonic effects are not subtle. I had previously noted here that the CS2.2 qualities of 'hoodedness' and bass-transient overload (which sounded like a hard, mechanical splat) went away when taking the XO out of the cabinet and spreading out its components.

The present experiments on the SCS4 move the XO network from a densely packed panel on the back, behind the coax (in a high EMF bath) to either A: outboard with same layout, for testing, or B: split into separate woofer and tweeter boards, mounted on edge with shock-mounts on the cabinet bottom. EMF is more than an order of magnitude lower in the new location, plus mechanical vibration is reduced to near nil - and throw in qualitatively better thermal management for kix.

I took my Dunlavy SC 4s outboard 20 yrs ago as is my current build. Crossovers also sound better when mounted on brass Audiopoints this can be done in the cabinet or outside . Noticeable ..TomD

vair68robert

Nice catch! I have never seen that "unique" Woofer image. I enjoyed the article via smileypete.com

Happy Listening!

I've been informed that the 'teardrop cone' woofer was indeed a development prototype. It seems that a calendar year elapsed between that prototype shown at the January 2006 CES press conference, and the actual shipment of the finished 'star-plane' product in early 2007. It seems reasonable that much of that time was consumed by iterating the flat star-plane version of the concept along with its necessary crossover implementation, which would include midrange and possibly tweeter XO changes because the woofer acoustic hole went away. I bet the final XO was simpler.

I presume that the acoustic launch plane of the star plane would be farther forward than the teardrop cone prototype. Time alignment would require a different baffle angle - but the cabinet seems unchanged. There is no analog time delay in the XO (as there was in the CS5.) Much remains mystery to me.