Thiel Owners

Yes, unsound, I agree that when Dunlavy were around their speakers tended to share the general characteristics I hear in Thiels. 

OK Thanks Tom. I have a pair of Naim NBLs in another system and they have a specified tightening torque of 3.6Nm for the mid range drivers (but just a warning not to mess with the bass) possibly a bit tight for the Theals, which do have metal to metal threads, it feelt tight to me anyway. I didn't tighten the Theil's bolts as tight as that.

Happy Friday - All.

pwhinson
I am looking forward in reading about your impressions, thoughts on the Pass Labs amp.  I have only auditioned the XP-10 which is a very fine preamp indeed.   Happy Listening!

Regarding "other similar speakers" - they are very few indeed. The rigors are far greater and the results far more perilous than ordinary solutions. A company seeking to "make it" financially would not go there - to phase and time coherence.

Vandersteen and Thiel started at the same time in different places but with synonymous goals, the truthful and complete replication of the musical experience. The details of startup were different, but both founders were self-educated, and used live and directly recorded music as well as thorough measurement as core tools. Both addressed diffraction from the beginning because diffraction and other errors are glaringly obvious in coherent systems. Thiel developed engineered curves to reduce diffraction effects whereas Vandersteen used minimum sized baffles for similar results. There were far more similarities than differences. And you may notice that there is surprisingly little direct comparison between the brands over the years. I attribute that separateness to market politics more than product vision and performance.

The invisible player is the retailer. The displaying retailer played a very significant role in presenting, selling and servicing new, upcoming brands like V and T. I call those dealers pioneers. Only an avid, informed and competent dealer could pull it off against well-funded advertising and promotion from the big brands. There weren't enough great retailers to support both brands. Thiel was sanguine about sharing turf with any competitor, but Vandersteen was not willing to share turf with Thiel, under threat of losing the line. We quickly learned to not approach V dealers. The exception I remember best was Dick Hardesty of the California retailer Havens and Hardesty. Dick was a consumate audiophile / educator who went on to extensively write and edit in the field.

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/richard-dick-hardesty-19442014/
https://www.vandersteen.com/audio-perfectionist-journal

In product terms, Thiel developed many more products at a faster rate than Vandersteen. In market terms, Vandersteen out-sold Thiel by some significant multiple. One huge cause was cabinetry. Vandersteen had in my opinion a brilliant solution: staple particle board into functional modules and dress it in a sock. I say brilliant because their cost of enclosure was a small fraction of Thiels, which left budgets for sonic-only aspects. Thiel's early growth was production-limited due primarily to cabinet-making process development. In many ways the V speakers of the day were musically more refined than Thiel counterparts - V had the luxury of focusing more on sonics without the cabinetmaking burden. When folks visited the Thiel factory they were blown away by the scope and finesse of Thiel's cabinetmaking. Many manufacturers would plausibly claim an order of magnitude greater cost of cabinets. They were also blown away by the internal development machine with its measurements, iterative samples and records and the listening room. Thiel was extremely vertically integrated as was Vandersteen. But V didn't have to lavish attention on furniture until much later, then in products with big prices and much simpler cabinets than entry-level Thiel.

The third horse is a little different. John Dunlavy built Duntech, a successful speaker company in Australia, largely with taxpayer support. John's inventive expertise was antenna theory and implementation. With a patent attorney for a partner, he developed much of what became wireless power transmission - the cell phone network. He moved to Colorado in the 1990s applying his funds and knowledge to building the Dunlavy brand. I saw in his work much careful attention to radiation interference and wave propagation analysis - of course. He had big computers and multiple anechoic chambers. The speaker-making was streamlined by Thiel standards: buy stuff and wire it up in a good box made elsewhere. The target is the same as T and V: cover all bases including time and phase.

The three companies didn't really pay much attention to each other. We were very busy doing out own thing.

Beyond those 3 brands, I noticed that the serious 6-figure brands, mostly in Europe, pay at least lip service to phase-time. There are some including PS and Wilson among others who give a nod to the importance of phase, but their crossovers are second order which requires each adjacent driver to be polarity reversed for smooth summersaults through the spectrum. The Thiel 02 was second order which we abandoned as "not quite real".

I hear that there were a couple of other first-order companies who came and went between 1995 and 2015 while I was away. I can see why they failed; it is very difficult. I can say without reservation that the engineering required to create a truly phase-time coherent speaker with correct tonal balance and dynamic range is a mountain of an undertaking compared to a little rough ground for higher order solutions.