Anyone seen or heard new Thiel CS3.7

Unsound: I like the appearance of the signature sloped baffles (as have other manufacturers who've copied Thiel's look to one degree or another), and understand why they're necessary in JT's design philosophy, but believe they might contribute to the slightly downward-looking soundstage perspective I perceive in Thiels. The baffle slope, which tilts the driver axes upward, is why Thiels seem to have comparitively low-placed drivers. Even with the tilt, the optimum listening axis with many of their floorstanders is still fairly low in absolute terms unless you can sit pretty far away. The other contributor to this effect is that to prevent the slope from needing to be too steep and the tilt too great, the deep-basketed LF driver is placed far apart down near the floor. But in a first-order 3-way system, that driver still is making a healthy output well up into the midrange, where the ear can localize its unaturally low -- and distant in relation to the M/T -- position. Stepped baffles have their own difficulties though.

A better solution may be to eliminate the traditional baffle as such altogether. Vandersteen claim to do this, but really their product uses a width-minimized stepped baffle. Dunlavy used a stepped baffle in combination with non-reflective surface treatment. Something like the B&W Nautilus series comes closer, but these haven't aimed at being time-and-phase-coincident designs. GMA made a true baffleless time-coincident design that could be adjusted to fire at any listening axis, but not with acceptable aesthetics.

A triaxial coincident driver could cover the entire range outside of the low bass and finesse the problem away. Cabasse's "eyeball" is the only expample I know of, but again it's not a time-and-phase-coincident design, and higher-order slopes with non-planar-coincident voice-coils may have been necessary to even make it possible. I used to think Thiel would logically head the triaxial direction eventually, but now with the new compound driver in the 3.7 I think it's less likely. Reading the 6moons link above tells you why. The flat-diaphragm configuration JT has worked toward dictates such a large voice-coil for the first ring out from the tweeter, there's no way to build yet another ring farther out from that to make a 3-way.

There is a way potential way around this, which I hypothosized about in the other thread, before I knew for sure that the mid-ring of the 3.7 used a center-driven diaphragm with its own independent voice-coil. That is to make the central mid/tweet as a continuous shallow dome rather than a dome within a cone (perhaps utilizing corrugations on the outer diaphragm?), using Thiel's shared voice-coil "mechanical crossover" topology, and surround it with a flat corrugated ring using a separate voice-coil as developed for the 3.7. This could enable the triaxial configuration while keeping eveything compact enough to allow for planar-coincident voice-coil placement, and still avoid horn-loading effects on the dome tweeter. But given that the 3.7's mid-ring is apparently capable of extending so high in frequency by itself, the only reason for pursuing what I've described is if a similar ring could be made to go much lower into the upper-bass instead (with power handling).

All in all, something like this doesn't seem to be in the cards right now to judge from the 3.7 design. And depending on where the lower crossover point on the 3.7 winds up being located (look at how far down the ring driver appears to extend without specifying limits or power, according to Thiel's graph), it may not even be needed except for freeing up the LF driver to be larger. But I think this contingency almost certainly will be dealt with in the near future by simply adding a separate conventional mid-bass/lower-midrange driver to models larger than the 3.7 and keeping the compound driver a 2-way.

Zaikesman, I too like the look of the sloped baffle. It gives a sense of balance and makes the cabinet visually less obtrusive. I thought that the use of digital cross-overs and amplifcation might negate the need. The drivers could be timed delayed as needed in the digital domain. I suspect this would further help negate the effects of early reflections off the baffle itself. It might also reduce the cost of cabinet manufacture. As we have discussed many moons ago, I believe the sense of a lower soundstage is more of a room phenomenon. Since I moved from a room with 8' ceilings to one starting at 10' and peaking at 14' I have gone from a soundstage as you have described, listening from the balcony looking down, to one where I'm down below slightly looking up at the performers. I wonder if using a wider bafle might atually help on the smaller less expensive models. If one could control the reflections with predicitibily one could augment the bass from smaller drivers with room reinforcement. I suspect that room size may contribute as much as budget, when purchasing speakers. Placing a speaker 3' out from the rear wall (even if it has larger foot print) in a large room is not too inconvient, but in a small room it can become an obstacle. Personally I'd give up some imaging for a more balanced sound with a bit more bottom if I had to sacrafice something.

Model CS 3.7 is an incredible loudspeaker. Only caveat- it requires a very large space to open up and breathe (20x20, 25x25 or 30x30) .

Oh, do not forget a very high powered/high current power amp on this one!

^When possible it is best to avoid identical room dimensions. Typically when one is discussing room size it is done with total volume cubed, though for our purposes there can be draw backs that too. 

^FYI, with their  33Hz +/- 2 dB bass response they don't really need too big a room, unless used with a sub, which is probably a good idea.