Thiel Owners

Most of you have identified phase coherence as a necessary ingredient for "reality music", rather than the hi fi approximation. As far as I know, Vandersteen is the only maker other than Thiel who produces actual minimum phase speakers. Their bias is towards "easier", less "incisive", but they are very good. Please advise of any of these other makers are phase coherent transducers.

Dan - the eventual list includes the x.7s. But they are so much more current that I feel obligated to take on older models first.

I have commented previously on listening position. I understand that any particular room and preferences may dictate many different positions. Crossover frequencies x propagation lobing patterns require those distances for proper integration. Anything closer or higher or lower may produce pleasant effects, but will trade off against some of the factors of fidelity.From a scientific standpoint, there is one position that replicates the design goal of minimum phase and flat tonal balance with optimum transient response. That position is minimum 2.5 meters (100"), with 3 meters (10') being a little better with an ear height of 3'±2". The more the distance, the less critical is ear height as well as toe-in.

The coincident upper driver of the x.7s greatly reduce the distance requirement.

Tom

Dunlavy, Duntech, Green Moutain, Meadowlark, Quad 63’s +>, jump to mind.

Dan:  I certainly understand about your speakers starting to morph.   mine were actually pretty bad the first night i heard them but now they are fantastically good.
Jeff Joseph speakers are great and I am adding Magico because I liked what I heard with their new baby speaker, but not enough to want to not keep the 3.7's. O course being a PS Audio guy,   their new AN speakers are sure to be great.  

Dan,
You’re gonna get us kicked off this thread ;-)

I’ve got another long thread going detailing my auditions of many speakers, often comparing against my Thiels. Most don’t fully hold up.I even preferred my Thiels to the latest Magical A3 speaker.

I am however smitten by Joseph Audio Perspective speakers (incredible purity of tone) and Devore Fidelity Orangutan speakers (they sound very organic, richer than most speakers, yet do rhythm/drums etc in a super compelling manner).


Other speakers I really like are ones I own: Waveform (very neutral yet warm tone, image like crazy, very palpable), my MBL 121 omnis (incredible tone, peerless 3 dimensional imaging), and my small little Spendor S3/5 (which are so smooth, open, rich and engaging they always have me wondering at first "Maybe this is all I need!" until I put on content that really needs some bass foundation).  And my Hales Transcendence 1 speakers (which do HT duty, but I often hook them up to my two channel system for a change.  Incredible timbral beauty, rich, spacious, though missing the palpability factor of the Thiels)   All spend some time in my system at one point.

The thing I come back to with the Thiels is the coherence, lack of speaker/box artifacts, tone and density/palpability of the sound.