Thiel Owners

jon - regarding bright 2 2s. You are correct that there is a slight propensity toward warmth. The mid-bass centered at 100Hz is almost full when the speaker is optimized 5' from walls. When moved closer to walls, that zone and below gets stronger. There is also some roughness in the low treble, from 5 to 10K which can be problematic.

A huge source of the "bright" complaint is that most recordings are made to emphasize the brightness range for air-play appeal. Also, that range is where microphones and recording gear are likely to misbehave and recording effects such as the Aphex Oral Exciter do their job of adding tooth and sizzle to recordings. And playback systems also contribute anomalies, and all signal including compromises is under a microscope with a coherent transducer. A big part of the problem is cat and mouse and whom to blame.

It is impolite for a manufacturer to point fingers elsewhere, but those times are past with us here. You all have done the homework to find good associated gear and choose well-made recordings. You are in the 1%. In my 2 2 upgrade work I am looking at tweaking the series resistor feeding the midrange to add up to a half dB between the woofer and tweeter. Too early to know how it will work out, I'm still developing my measurement tools.

tomthiel
Outstanding! insight on the factors and forms that make Thiel Audio head-and-shoulders above the competition. Your memory and recollection is impeccable. You are spot on, in that, most of the population are not forward thinkers. Moreover, the same population cannot think outside of the box neither. This is a very good thing for those of us that can do, succeed at it.
Happy Listening!

unsound - you are right. Measurement distance of 50" and closer earlier in time, does not allow the proper triangulation for the drivers' travel path. 8' was Thiel's stated minimum. The limit was Stereophile's set up, but the results looks like speaker design failures. The closer the drivers to each other and the lower the crosspoints, the less the incorrect distance matters. But it does mislead the reading public. Andy makes a proper point that lower crosspoints give the upper driver a much harder time, requiring long excursions and sophisticated cooling.
To the point of Seas, Vifa etc. could do "it". We tried for years without success working with the best. It's not so easy as it might appear. And if someone did, the wire routing factors, etc. are so precise that high failure rates can occur and then who points fingers at whom. Taking it in-house was a huge challenge for us, but it was the only way we could get what we decided we needed.

Coincident drivers solve the lobing problem between the upper concentric drivers and the woofer crossover is at such long wavelengths that its lobing is not very consequental. Sit with your ears at 3' and back at least 8' and you are in the design target.

This discussion makes me feel nostalgic of the younger years.  Oh well time has to move on.  

@tomthiel Thanks for the counter narrative on the TAD reference speakers. Very interesting.

The Hales line was perhaps(?) another example of a faux coherent speaker line. Their cabinets featured concrete baffles that were sloped similarly to Thiel's. I auditioned a pair at the other audiophile store in town before deciding to buy my 2.2s. When I told the salesman I was impressed with Thiel speakers, he brought out the Hales, pointed out the sloped design, and told me they were like Thiel speakers except the concrete baffles made them better. They completely lacked the realism that sold me on the 2.2s, so I moved on.

Maybe it was the salesman more than Hales that misrepresented them as being similar to Thiels –– I never bothered to look at the Hales sales literature. Apparently, Hales used a sealed cabinet for tighter bass and touted flat frequency response as their main selling point. They used fourth-order Linkwitz-Riley crossover networks.

There's a (mostly) enthusiastic thread on Hales speakers here: https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/hales-design-group-speakers-how-good-were-they. But it's much shorter than this thread; so there!