tomthiel
Responses from tomthiel
| Thiel Owners Rory at Benchmark says that many customers have requested such an AHB-3. I tried my hand at it. John is adamant that the AHB-2 has enough power. Engineers can be that way. We wouldn’t be talking about this here if Thiel speakers had 4 ohm minimum ... | |
| Thiel Owners George - I agree that all amps we know, either class A or AB, act worse in many ways when bridged. I recommend you investigate this particular amp, which does indeed act as you say, but its anomalous behavior is limited to its stability into low i... | |
| Thiel Owners Yyz - yes. 3' cables are optimum if your configuration permits it. | |
| Thiel Owners ampers - I’ll chime in here. The Benchmark AHB-2 has been my go-to amp for about 2 years now. It is unique in my experience for simple authenticity. Regarding their feed-forward, John Siau has written a white paper available on the BM website. In ... | |
| Thiel Owners Unsound - As you say, sufficient power is an absolute requirement. I may be naive, but I'm thinking that with good used equipment available at bargain prices, education would be fruitful because many folks could actually afford good to great solut... | |
| Thiel Owners JA - what a trip indeed. Circumstances have prevented progress in ways that many here assumed or wished for. I’m not yet discouraged; and I’m stirring the pot every day. My personal interest drives me to decipher some of the mysteries of Thiel and... | |
| Thiel Owners Thielrules - it all depends. A very big deal is running out of power. The Adcom and Benchmark have overload LEDs. Listening at 95dB peaks at listening position, the Benchmark overloads consistently in stereo with one amp channel driving the woofer... | |
| Thiel Owners Unsound - I agree to wanting 4 ohms minimum which would roughly double the impedance of many Thiel models, making them far easier loads to drive with lower amplifier distortion and fewer cable interactions. Jim committed to underhung voicecoils as... | |
| Thiel Owners unsound & thielrules - about individual amps. I’ve been comparing configurations these past few days and conclude that it’s very murky water. I have matched pairs of Adcom GFA-555 mkII, Classe DR9 and Benchmark AFB-2s. The power is similar, bu... | |
| Thiel Owners Yes, the side and front wall reflections are quite important. Your room is quite narrow, since the polar pattern of the CS3.7 is quite omnidirectional. Can you try putting them on the long wall? | |
| Thiel Owners Yyz - the definitive test is to make a momentary connection from a 6 volt lantern battery (or other 6 volt DC source) to the XO inputs. All drivers should move forward. You can readily see the woofer and midrange move, but may have to feel the twe... | |
| Thiel Owners Keep the time domain in mind, especially for phase coherent speakers. On and off axis radiation patterns are different as the frequency rises. The speaker is balanced into an "average" environment with assumptions made as to where the front and si... | |
| Thiel Owners Unsound & yyz- thanks for the catch. Seems I am confusing my stories. The 'cubed' feedback stands as exceedingly complimentary; but I don't remember from what source. | |
| Thiel Owners As a point of Thiel history, Jim used very good amps to design the speakers. His attitude was that making a good amp was the ampmakers’ business, and making a good speaker was his business. We generally had on hand the best from Levinson, Krell, A... | |
| Thiel Owners I really appreciate amps with clipping indicators, since there are so many variables of room, level and loudness preference - it's hard to predict amplifier power need; except that more is better, but usually at the cost of sonic finesse. Rules - ... |