Does anyone have a comment on the CS6 vs the CS 2.4, both available nearish to me, the CS6 seems older and much larger, but from the comments goes much deeper. I am just curious what some other members think of the upper range I have the cs 1.6 and want to get more bottom end without using a sub but dont want to loose the non-fatiguing presentation of the 1.6
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I would love to get the 2.7 or 3.7 model in the future. The other Theils I have demoed are the 3.5 and 3.6, which were nice in their own ways, the 3.5 was maybe too flat sounding, not in a bad way but more like gigantic studio monitors. I liked the 1.6 a lot in the store, when i got it home it sounded Musical Fidelity amp the sound was really not even close. Many amps later I ended up with a coda amp which was like lifting a veil form the 1.6 where the is tons of clean bass and mids . I think the 2.4 should work well with this amp which is part of why I want to upgrade. I have been wanting to see what the next step up in the lineup would be like. I find the 1.6 to be very amazing on the highs, but the mids and lows seem to be slightly less full sounding in comparison to how the treble range feels so palpable. |
jafant,
I am using a Coda amplifier with an Ayre preamplifier and for sources I have a Meridian CD Player and Pro-ject Turntable, most of my music is on CD. Together it all sounds very nice, with tons of detail and sound-stage. I have a dynaudio active studio system that is very different and I like having the less forward presentation from the Thiels for listening. The only thing that seems like it would be a significant upgrade is going from the cs 1.6 to a larger speaker where I am looking for more "presence" in the mids and low end. I have decided on the 2.4 and will post some comments in the near future, hopefully the amp matching will be successful and I don't feel the need to go back down that road again.
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Well, I got the 2.4s, it was a whole day a driving to get them. Hooked them up and one speaker had one tweeter/mid unit not functioning. I auditioned these in a odd shaped untreated room, so It wasn't obvious to me one driver was broken. Kind of disappointing, but my fault for not being more careful; I did pay $1k so even considering having to repair them I still think am happy with them, the low price should have been an indicator something was fishy. I already contacted Rob Gillum and will be having the broken driver sorted, his quote for the rebuild of the driver seemed really fair and he got back to me immediately. I will be testing with a multimeter and hopefully its just the driver. The speakers cabinets are in pretty good shape, probably would rate the cabinets at 8/10. Based on a short audition, I noticed a few things. The amp was BAT vk-300x integrated and sounded very under-powered. The 2.4 sounded exactly like my 1.6 when they under powered. The overall sound was kind of hollow. The bass was there but there was no weight to it. The soundstage is there but not locked in solid. Not a good amp for the 2.4. Listening at home, with Coda amplifier these 2.4 speakers totally sang!!! They are so much more full and weighty compared to the 1.6, even with one tweeter not working the sound stage was huge and the treble was even smoother than the 1.6, maybe not quite as sweet but there was just more information coming through that sounded purer. I will update when everything is working fully, but I am already really loving these speakers. I really wish Thiel was still in buisness, they made some very special products. |
oblgny - there is a set of CS3.5 with the eq at College Hifi in Chattanooga. I listened to them last week with a Mac amp, the eq was not hooked up but I will try go try to hear them again with the eq just out of curiosity. They sounded great, very neutral and clean across the entire sound spectrum.
Jazzman7 - I am using the Legacy Audio High Current Amplifier by Coda. It is 220wpc @ 8ohm and 380 wpc @ 4ohm. Coda branded amps don't show up very often and are pricey. They show up on ebay sometimes for $800-900. Other amps I tried with the 1.6 were the bryston 4b, butler, classe dr-9, musical fidelity a3cr, jaton operetta and conrad johnson mf2300A. The conrad and coda were my favorites. Here is an interior shot of the coda https://imgur.com/B1gj0LTl.jpg
I opened up the 2.4 speaker to remove the tweeter/midrange which I though was broken. It turns out the white lead was disconnected. I tested with a multimeter across the terminals and it got a 2.8-3 ohm reading, which seemed good so I resoldered it and also used a q-tip to push out a divot in in the tweeter dome. The speaker sounds great now, I am pretty exited and I will post some more comments this evening, I did notice you can tell when one speaker has the grill on and the other doesn’t.
I was reading through the tread and there are a lot of posts on upgraded crossovers, is there any particular post which has a summary of which parts need to be upgraded due to age and which parts are the best for sq? Are there completed crossovers or kits that can be purchased?
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Jafant - yes I am in Chattanooga, if you are nearby you are welcome to come hear my setup
oblgny - the setup you have now seems like it should be pretty fun, i see why you are not in a hurry to upgrade, i used to use a rel storm III with the cs1.6 it was awesome sub for its time, they got really nice. My first encounter with big bass was a REL stadium, it literally made the couch I was sitting on vibrate enough to move, It made me laugh at loud at the sheer amount of bass energy it put into the room. Maggies with one of those and a belles amp seems like it would be a fun match, I think you could probably try a cs1.6 with that amp and sub and have a really interesting alternate setup, if the Belles is running the maggies well it can certainly put out the power for the cs1.6 also. The liberty DAC looks super awesome, definitely a piece I would like to try |
Hi all. I was looking into upgrading my crossover. I opened up one of my speakers #294. And found this inside. Not sure how to proceed, I was just going to upgrade 3 caps in the tweeter/mid section, but it looks like there are several cap upgrade, bypasses and the coils do not look factory either. The woofer board has the same coils and some mods also. I could try to rebuild these or possibly just build new ones.
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Jafant, the previous owner did not mention any modding. It looks like one resistors leads is touching the larger coil in the high mid crossover in speaker 294, I feel like I should be able to notice it, music sounds very even between both speakers, I am wondering if I should do some frequency sweeps with them and record how the are performing. I would like to hear another set of 2.4s so I could compare them. Part of me feels like selling them; I don’t how much would someone pay for them knowing they are modded. They do sound very nice compared to my cs1.6, and have already won me over with the full sound and extra bass. I am wondering if some of the sweetness and extension I noticed in the 1.6 was due these 2.4 being modded or the perhaps it just how the different drivers sound. I was already planning to do something like the SE upgrades so part of me wants to just build new crossovers, I am a novice at soldering so these will be a challenge, not sure if the coils can be pulled off since they look glued or if many of the other parts are in good enough shape to reuse, it seems like it could get pricey |
Whoa Tom, you are a huge fountain of knowledge, thank you for sharing that information!!! Its very cool to know these are the older crossovers from the factory. I guess I should have trusted my ears over my eyes for these.I saw all the various bypass and parallels and made the assumption these were modded, there is a noticeable difference in crossover build quality from one speaker to the next. I will see if I can shift things around in the one crossover to clean things up. I am going to read the thread starting where Jafant linked to catch up to what has been posted, hopefully that will help me decide what path to take with these, the board in one speaker looks like it will be tough to upgrade with very tight fit and some funky wire routing in some areas, sort of leaning towards new boards so I can just keep these as they are and also to retain some history a bit. I dunno, what do you all think? Thanks all for your help! |
There is a set of new 2.3 coax drivers on ebay if anyone is looking
Tom, jafant and beetle thanks for the input, you all have been super helpful. After all this input I feel like the best option would be to take my time on any upgrades, the speakers work really well and I love what they do with well recorded albums. My reference album lately has been Goldfrapp - Felt Mountain, I would recommend anyone pick this album up up to hear what these speakers can do, I have both the vinyl and CD both are very well done. It is a very revealing album. Probably one of the best female vocalist albums of the early 2000s. It's haunting mix of real and electronic sounds really allows these speakers to make some magic happen. If anyone is a fan of portishead this would be a really good addition to your collection. With the factory crossovers I am tempted to just replace the resistors, but I think I will slowly build some completely new boards so I can more easily accommodate the larger size of upgraded caps and not have to worry about cramming everything on to the factory boards. I dont want to get into the factory boards and mess them up. |
Does anyone mind commenting on speaker cables that match with thiel and big amps, I am using a high current solid state amplifier, so far I have tried
1.a cheap set of 14awg multi-stranded planet waves cables that seems to be very balanced over all but not as detailed, this is what I was initially using, very decent 2. analysis plus - oval 9 - sounded really off with my system, not sure if i waited long enough for them to break in or even if break in is real, but the sound stage was odd tall but not expanding past the speakers horizontally, and there was an spotlight affect where upper mid range seemed emphasized 3. the music cable TMC -multi-strand solid core - very smooth, decent balance, somewhat rolled in the highs, which seems to make the mid more emphasized, these were probably the most easy going cables that are 4. anti-cables - solid core single wire- smooth smooth vocals, but over all not sounding very balanced, seems like the highs were rolled off, the vocals were really pleasing on these, notably smoother than all the others
5. kimber 8pr - multistranded cores - super clear, very bassy, somewhat bright. These are pretty decent. The clarity compared to the previous cables is very evident. Analytic is a good descriptor. These are slightly bright which make them less musical in some way.But i am currently still using them because they are the most revealing cables so far.
Are these cables with that mix the smoothness of the anitcables/solid core but with more detail and extension as the kimber, I want to try something with multiple solid cores, semi-tempted to try making some cables out of cat6a just to see how it would sound
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Jafant, Thanks for the suggestions, the Kimber 8pr is almost there, they are good, but after hearing how smooth vocals can be and how well cymbals are reproduced on some of the other cables, I think i can find something that works even better, the factory wire in the thiels is solid core which has been influencing me towards that end, I read Jim Thiels comments, i think on positive feedback where he says the solid core designs including litz were best for sound |
