Thiel Owners
learn the 2 ohm behavior Hi Tom, Stereophile has measured both Ayre models i have owned. Soundstage might have also measured the AX-5 but maybe it was the amp rather than integrated. Charles Hansen was not a fan of power ratings for amps. Here are some of his thoughts. Also, here Edit - looks like my links don’t work. The short of it is he said you can’t predict how an amp will sound from its measurements. |
silvanik - fantastic indeed and we are most interested in your results. Sonic Craft has New Old Stock Mills MRAs. FYI: all the copper in your 3.6s is 4-9s or better. Your solder is silver x tin, so it needs high temperature. The yellow bypasses are best of form styrene x tin foil. A further thought for your consideration: While replacing the Electrolytic 3x100uF mid shunts plus the 1x100uF woofer shunt, you might play some swap. Your Audyns are probably better than the 2x 100uF PolyPropylene mid feeds. You might spend 2 of your Audyns there and move the original PPs to the woofer shunt and one of the mid shunts, placing your Audyns for maximum benefit in the mid feed. A further upgrade target is the 8.2uF PP in the tweeter feed. In addition to the 66uF shunt you are replacing, that 8.2 is the weak link in the tweeter circuit. Similarly the 9.1uF PP in the midrange shunt is a candidate. I mention these caps because their small values make them low-hanging fruit. My 3.6 project is on the back burner, but I have been scheming for awhile. Please share your progress and what you learn. |
My impression of the Thiel CS2.4 My first impression when I unpack them is that they seem a bit bigger than I remember. The craftmanship is impecable. Something like this today would probably cost $20K. And they are heavy!!! My only disappointment visually is that the bass driver is advertised as 8in but I think the drivers are more like large 7in. I have a pair of ScanSpeak 8in driver they they look quite bigger than the CS2.4 "8in." Anyway, I build my own speakers so I usually don't buy commercial speakers, but I have to have these and I am glad I did. These are probably one of the very few that can do a perfect step response. John Atkinson said that may be less than 10 speakers in the world that can do this. Owning the CS2.4 is like owning a piece of history. I think they will be a future classic. I remember the first time I listened to them at an audio shop a long time ago just after the speakers were introduced to the market, and the first thing I said to the owner was that "They don't sound bright at all". Every single review I've read always said something to the effect that they are a bit bright and so on which is odd. In my set up, they sound natural and the treble is very sweet and not harsh or bright at all. But I think they are very transparent, so I suppose if your electronics are bright, it's possible that they will sound bright. I have two setups in my house. One is Arcam CD23, Conrad Johnson 17LS, and Simaudio Moon W3. In this system, they sound very natural and neutral but very good. My other setup is Ayre QB9 DSD, Pass Lab XP10, and Simaudio W7 amp and in this system they actually sound a bit warm (I though I was listening to a pair of Sonus Faber :-)) So I guess I couldn't make them sound bright :-). Anyway, I am not going to repeat all the accolades they received from professional magazines. But instead I am going talk about first order filter which is used in the CS2.4. Actually they are not only first order, they are also time coherent. You can use first order in your design, but it does not automatically mean time coherent. I have built speakers using various filter order such as 4th order (24db roll off), 2nd order (12db roll off), and first order (6db roll off), and without any doubt any my mind, first order has the most natural and musical sound. As you go to higher order, the sound does sound a bit "clearer" but less and less natural. But I think higher order tend to spot light the instruments but I don't think it's natural. The Thiel sounds unmistakenly as a first order. I design my speakers using first order so I know how first order sounds like. Interestingly, something that I didn't expect, the CS2.4 has a very similar soundstage as mine I guess because mine speaker also use first order filter. I would like to describe what an first order sounds like. Everything is very coherent, no instrument or aspect of the soundstage is being favored. The sound is spacious, airy, open, liquid, continuos like real life. The treble is very integrated into the entire sound. In some speakers that use higher order filters, the treble sometimes feels like a separate element, like a shin that overlays the sound. If you think about it, treble is part of every sound such as your speech sibilance, the drum hit, and not just from high hat. With first order filter, the treble is just like that as in real life that it is within the sound, over overlaying the sound. I listen to the CS2.4 I feel very at ease, it's like I just sit back and enjoy the sound. I don't recall feeling like that listening to any other commercial speakers. The treble, the bass, the soundstage, everything is just right. The other thing I like to talk about is time coherent. As, I mentioned above, being first order does not automatically mean time coherent. The CS2.4 goes a step further and also is time coherent. The claim is that time coherent makes the sound more natural and has better soundstage. My speakers are first order but not time coherent, and compare mine vs. the CS2.4, I guess the advantage of time coherent is subtle because it's hard for me to tell. Mine and the CS2.4 use completely different drivers so there are just too many variables. But as I said above, even though the CS2.4 and mine use different drives and designed by different persons, there is something about the sound that is very similar that is very characteristic of first order filter. Anyway, if you are looking for a pair of speakers, I highly recommend CS2.4 unfortunately they won't be easy to find. I feel like if Thiel would make these as is today, a lot of people will buy them. I know Tom Thiel participates in this thread so may be we can convince him. I think Thiel products are somewhat different from the past. First order and time coherent are no longer part of their designs. Besides Vandersteen, I don't know of anyone making first order time coherent speakers. I can tell you from experience that it's not easy so maybe that's why no many people do it. |
Good post andy! I don't feel competent to assess the exact contributions of phase/time coherence to what I hear with the Thiels. And speaker designers (and experts on acoustics from what I can tell) still seem to disagree. I can only note that my Thiels (first CS6, then CS3.7 and 2.7) share a quality of precision in imaging, a solidity and density of imaging, and a very believable natural tone for voices and instruments. Also, the 3.7s/2.7s are the most coherent dynamic speakers I've heard. The 3.7s in particular all the way through the bass region. But both designs distinguish themselves in coherence in the mids and highs. There is simply no sense of a "tweeter" in the sound from the mids. Zero. Sounds that traverse the tricky crossover points of the tweeter/mid driver sound perfectly whole and coherent. What gets interesting to me, as a nut about instrumental/vocal timbre, are how different approaches can still seem to do well. I remember the very well regarded speaker designer, Paul Hales, saying that one reason he chose higher order crossovers instead of chasing time/phase coherence is that he felt the benefits of higher order made it easier to achieve timbral precision. And to my ears Hales speakers, the Transcendence line in particular, excelled in exactly that aspect. I remember going to a CES way back and after having been in most rooms over two days I heard what sounded startlingly like a live band coming from one room. It was the Hales room and I'll be darned if the timbre of the horns, saxes and other instruments coming through those speakers wasn't astonishingly rich, accurate and believable. When I ended up with Hales transcendence speakers, this was their prime virtue (though I found ultimately they suffered a bit from a lack of dynamics/palpability, which the Thiels really give me). My current favourite speaker for accurate-sounding timbral quality are the Joseph speakers. I played a great many recordings on those speakers that I've played for years on my Thiel speakers. I love, love, love the sound of the Thiels, but when I played for instance certain piano recordings on the Josephs, there was a hair-raising shock, the sensation of hearing a piano's timbral quality *exactly* as I'm used to when I play one, reproduced right in front of me. So these encounters with auditioning and owning various speakers that at the very least seem to give the Thiels a run for the money in the timbral-accuracy department, make me hesitate to conclude the only way to get such things "right" is time and phase coherence, as intuitive as the case for time/phase coherence may be. (Please don't throw tomatoes at me my Thiel brethren, I'm still one of you!) |
