tomthiel
Responses from tomthiel
| Thiel Owners The designer's job becomes extremely easier by using 4th order Linkwitz Reilly crossovers which give you everything except phase coherence at the XO point. They introduce 360° / 1 full cycle, which is considered by some, including someone recently... | |
| Thiel Owners Harry, the CS3.5 was introduced in 1988, but its lineage goes straight back to the O3 in 1978, updated to the O3a (equalized) in 1979, O3b and then CS3 in 1983 and the 3.5 in 1988, numbered such as the 5th incarnation of the fundamental "3" design... | |
| Thiel Owners Rob, the passive parts quality will leap-frog present Thiel crossovers, plus we'll address other subtle issues. Thielrules, since you have gear, give it a try. You can see the boost curve in John Atkinson's Stereophile review. That boost is design... | |
| Thiel Owners Unsound et al, Thiel's electronics were all developed and built in-house. Jim was a circuit guy before we took up loudspeakers. His first patent was a sweet phono head amp circuit which we built and shipped for Monster Cable to market. The various... | |
| Thiel Owners As alluded to above via driver size, air-coupling is a factor in the experience of bass authority. The 3.7 10" woofer has 50% greater area to drive its wave-front, reducing compressive non-linearities of air. Bigger makes cleaner. The 3.7 cabinet ... | |
| Thiel Owners I can offer a general answer. For perspective, the difference between 33 and 35 Hz is barely academic, virtually identical. Thinking in half-octaves (15 Hz at 30 Hz) is more germane to performance class than is a few cycles. Low E1 on a bass is 4... | |
| Thiel Owners Beetle, I haven't yet looked at the 3.5, but will look into it. The equalizer could indeed be ignored in an upgrade. The 3.5 has 6-nines coils and hookup wire and custom 1uF styrene bypasses. We could renew the 'lytics with best of class 'lytics, ... | |
| Thiel Owners Just for clarity, I think the CS3.5 is in many ways Jim's pure vision, especially the bass equalizer. I believe it to be a strong contender for an update / upgrade and I would be interested in addressing the crossover. However, I lack the chops an... | |
| Thiel Owners The x.7 drivers are indeed breakthrough design. That said, the 2.4 drivers are very mature and made and tested in Lexington with significant, advanced technologies. The 2.7 cabinet is stiffer, but the 2.4 will come close in vibrational performance... | |
| Thiel Owners Fitter and all, the way the upgrade project is shaping up is to target the most mature iterations of separate-driver classic systems first (with exceptions.) There are many thousands of pairs out there approaching eventual electrolytic capacitor p... | |
| Thiel Owners Indeed, the inboard and outboard options are different beasts. Space / layout constrains parts selection inboard. Making progress every day.Regarding spikes . . . my knowledge is rather primitive, since all my work was long ago, before any commerc... | |
| Thiel Owners Prof, I agree with you. The cabinets are extraordinary in both anti-diffraction and inertness. I regard Thiel's cabinet engineering as state of the art. The approach I am taking is to investigate all areas where additional input might make improve... | |
| Thiel Owners Jay, the cabinets are very quiet, but some issues are present. The 3.7 sings a little where the side meets the cap, and so forth. I'm just saying that we can make incremental improvements beyond the original performance parameters. Such on-going i... | |
| Thiel Owners Hi Guys, As Beetle mentioned, I have a system for identifying cabinet misbehavior that permits real-time experimentation and amelioration. I use Chladni Patterns in my acoustic guitar design, I love the method, and will summarize here as applied t... | |
| Thiel Owners Because Thiel speakers present a sub-4ohm across most of their spectrum, dropping to 3-ish over extended ranges, the behavior of the amp from 4 to 2 ohms tells more than 8 to 4 does. |