Thiel Owners

Wow!  Terrific information Tom!  Thanks so much.

As I've written, when I hear so many other speakers they still haven't seem to have caught up to what Jim achieved.  And it's wonderful that Rob's service will be available to us Thiel owners.  Now you have me pondering upgrading parts!

I understand if you don't have the time to answer any more questions, but just in case you do:

1.  As far as setting up the speakers to preserve the benefits of the time/phase coherence, as I understand it the coaxial driver design essentially solved the issue of listener distance, orientation; the coaxial signal will remain time/phase coherent if you are six feet or 12 feet away, slightly lower or higher than that driver in seating position.

The issue left would be the coherence with the other drivers, e.g. the woofer.  If one wants to preserve the time/phase coherence of all the drivers, it's the mix with the coax and woofer signal that suggests more care in listener orientation.  Would that be right?

I'm about 6  1/2 feet from my Thiel 2.7s and they certainly "sound like Thiel" from this distance, and as far as I can tell from stereophile measurements, I should also be realising coherence with the woofer as well, with my ears just below the coax.  Does this make sense?

2.  Subwoofer integration.  Some of us trying to integrate subwoofers worry that doing so takes apart some of the time/phase coherence of the system, insofar as a sub can't be placed right next to the main speakers and will therefore have a delay.  Phase can be achieved with the Thiel speaker, but the sub would be around a cycle behind in terms of time arrival.  I'm wondering about the likely effects of this on the time/phase coherence.  It seems to me one would at least be still getting the coherence in the midrange on up.  And if one were using, say, an 80 or 60Hz crossover point, the Thiel's woofer will still be playing part of the signal in time/phase.  I just wonder how much a subwoofer could cover this up, and whether that recommends a lower than usual crossover point for sub integration?

Thanks for joining this thread, Tom! My apologies for my role in incorrect speculation.

Thiel was always about finding the optimum point on the cost-performance slope so that real music lovers could afford our products.

I certainly appreciate this attitude. Thiel's top models were out of my budget, so I was glad to afford CS1.6 and, now, a used pair of CS2.4SE. Still, and I intend no offense, I've never had the impression that the CS3.7 and CS7.2 were a full-out attempt to deliver the ultimate in SQ. And, IMO, the area where these came up just a bit short was in the passive parts. As I've written elsewhere, it's also my opinion that your brother engineered some of the best drivers around. I suspect a tweaked CS3.7 or CS7,2 would sound pretty much as good as anything available.

I am stoked to read that Rob is planning upgrade service! Please make him aware of this thread. Thanks for taking the time to post.

I apologize in advance for what might be spotty participation. I travel and am highly involved in multiple projects.  But on the other hand, I do appreciate this forum and the enthusiastic involvement you folks have in the sport.

Regarding phase / time integration: An optimum axis exists where the drivers' acoustic centers are equidistant from the ear. Thiel designs for a 38" ear height as a seated average. Since the objective is a point source, the coaxial / coincident upper range driver obviates time arrival problems there. But the woofer is distant in order to place it on the sloped baffle at the proper distance from the average-height ear. The closer you get, distance error becomes more likely, but not necessarily so. (a three or more element system would have only one solution, but this 3-way with the coincident mid-tweeter makes it a 2-element system with multiple solutions.)  A measurement from your ear to the tweeter and the dust-cap of the woofer should be identical. If not, adjust your ear height  or speaker tilt accordingly. Pink noise is also a helpful tool in finding the sweet spot.

Subwoofer placement presents many problems; room mode minimization competes with other listening factors. A previous question about the "below 80Hz" crossover frequency is germane. The lower the frequency, the less the ear-brain specifies position. Bass waves are long, so bass is everywhere. However, the real-world crossover slope allows the subwoofer to contribute into the mid and upper bass where the ear-brain does specify position. I like Thiel's augment mode where the crossover to the woofer is first order and only the subwoofer is higher order. By the way, that is tuned as a 4th order Linkwitz-Riley. (Note: this stuff is from long-ago memory and I am not fact-checking as I write.)  I use a stereo pair of Thiel SmartSubs and place them at the proper ear distance for best integration and use the room-boundary controls to adjust for early wall reflections. I find the system amazingly accurate and effective and the result surpasses any other system of which I am aware. Keep in mind that when conventional subwoofer integration is employed, the frequency response at the listener position is optimized at the expense of all other positions in the room. Therefore the average power response in the room is wrong and the resultant sound is artificial. Remember that the ear-brain is synthetic, we create or fabricate the sound we are hearing and when the sound doesn't match the room, that is unsettling. Bass is especially subject to needing "psychoacoustic rightness" in order to be emotionally gratifying. Note, I realize I am skating into my personal research and conclusions with insufficient contextualization, but I want to get the concepts on the table for your edification.

Bottom line: I think that bass-generation position is very important and I position my subwoofers where they are distance-correct and let any room problems be addressed via Thiel's sophisticated distance controls or room treatment. Remember the magic of corner-positioned bass dumps. Pressure develops at the (normal) 8 corners of the room. Make holes / dumps there and room problems are drastically reduced. (Open a door or window, install a vent, and so forth.)

Regarding music: I was a singer-songwriter and recordist, which partially led to the formation of Thiel Audio. I prefer acoustic, authentic, ethnic-folk music with stellar production values. I appreciate all forms of music. I like live or live in the studio recordings and find the current multi-miced and processed amalgums to be generally uninvolving and unsatisfactory, no matter how well done. Our early research that led to our phase coherent products was validated by the high level of emotional connection to the music when played via a coherent solution as opposed to the normal, hi-fi, higher-order crossover solutions. Long story, short answer: Coherent Sources are perceived as real.

I presently design and build acoustic guitars with related research, teaching and mentoring. Tonewood creation and sales are also part of my offering. I am presently creating a high-resolution record-playback system to record and store sound samples of guitars under development for direct A-B comparison via selective playback exactly where recorded. Earthworks mics and preamps, yet unchosen ADA conversion, REAPER DAW on Mac, Classé DR-6 pre and pair of DR-9 power amps (hot-rodded) with Sennheiser HD800S open and Beyerdynamic 770 closed headphones, all six 9s solid wire configured in house. The recording rig will be used mobile and in this multi-purpose studio. We build guitars in the recording-listening space.

That's about all for now. Back to work.