Thiel Owners
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. |
Right On! Tom, Good to see you today. While we are mentioning names, Audio Video Excellence in Raleigh NC had Thiel Audio. I was impressed with Ryan Deans at the helm whom is / was adamant about his loudspeakers. This is the Audio shop where I spent several months with the CS 2.4SE, CS 2.7 and CS 3.7 models in audition. It was a fun experience and experiment sifting through those models in an attempt to find the one for me.I chose the CS 2.4SE as the best performer to my ears. My listening room is not large enough to accommodate the CS 3.7 loudspeaker properly.Ryan's fave was the CS 2.4SE as well. He would not sell his pair to me- smart on his behalf. This was back in the Fall of 2014. It would take searching weekly to find another pair of this model until January of 2016.I acted quickly and made the trek to Austin TX, without reservation, to purchase. Turned out to be a slam dunk, double reverse. Now, to decide on the rest of my gear... Happy Listening! |
Good dealers are a treasure! That world is generally fading in the rear-view mirror of Crutchfield, Amazon, ebay and so forth. I bet you will love the 2.4SS (just playing-whatever it will be called). Now, back to amps. As you know, my reference amps are old classic Classe. Fine amps, hotrodded, drive the Thiels fine, especially a pair of them. Etc. But I need a second amp for proof of upgrade work; I have special considerations beyond my own enjoyment. Jim judged that the amp's limitations are the amp-maker's problems. Logical enough - except for the consumer who had to spend 5x his speaker price for the right amps, which bucks pretty much . . . everything. As you would expect, I have been surveying the amp world for some solution for driving Thiel speakers with even higher resolution than the originals. That's a double-edged sword . . . wonderful when the signal is great, and even more revealing of trouble when less than great. I have appreciated your amp leads. I have also investigated the PS Audio BHK-300s, Ayre and other heavy hitters. I don't want to fall into Jim's trap of designing with the stellar amps, which leaves most listeners with less than best or even objectionable performance. What to do? I would like the group's feedback on the following possibility. Benchmark straddles the fence between pro and audiophile. Their stuff is very clean, neutral, transparent and relatively affordable for its performance level. They now have a power amp, the AHB-2, a hybrid AB amp powered by a class H power supply and class A feed-forward error correction amp. Intriguing concept. The high end pros rave about it. Its measurements are stellar. I am inclined to try it for several reasons, one of which is that it is a marginal player facing the new world with a different vision. Flashing forward 20 years, I want the Thiel HotRods to be sonically viable without requiring Krell, Levinson or similar heavy iron. The AHB-2 breaks my double-down rule, but only a little and on technicalities. Class H is a switching power supply (which break down when past their current limit). At 100 watts / channel - 8 ohms, it is only marginally adequate. It is precisely that marginality which attracts me. I want to explore that limit of great performance with shallow pockets. Benchmark engineering is analyzing the Thiel loads to make a technical assessment. I admire their approach and there are Thiel fans at Benchmark. Their vision reads like Thiel promotion of my dreams. (I feel that Thiel never promoted itself very effectively.) I am specifically investigating stereo-amp, monobloc-strapped, and vertical bi-amp configurations. The latter would assign one channel of a stereo amp to the bass and the other to everything else. So much to learn. Anyhow, do any of you have experience with this amp? Or do any of you have thoughts or opinions about my ideas? I would appreciate your feedback. |
