Thiel Owners

ish_mail,

As I've mentioned somewhere earlier on the thread, I owned the Hales Transcendence 5 speakers, and still own a the Hales Transcendence 1 monitors and center channel, which do duty in my home theater and for occasional music listening.  In fact, I own an extra double of each of those speakers just in case I blow a driver, which tells you I'm quite a fan.

The Hales speakers, to my ears, are excellent for midrange/tweeter coherence, smoothness, timbral warmth and accuracy, with a very low sense of "grain" to the sound, and really spectacular soundstaging.

What they miss for me is the density and solidity of the Thiel sound and imaging, and the sense of texture I hear from the Thiels.  (Hales sounding just a tad smoothed over).

But I absolutely adore the Hales in home theater duty because they combined clarity, timbral warmth and transient precision, with a very relaxed presentation.  Good for me since I often come to movie viewing in my home theater after a long day of doing sound effects, so I don't really want to be beaten around by an aggressively dynamic sound. 

Just an FYI:
3.5 Electronic Bass Equalizer listed on Goodwill auction site, current price $16

https://www.shopgoodwill.com/Item/59297127

iambenbryant
Nice catch! Good to see you again. How are you enjoying your CS 2.7 loudspeakers?  Happy Listening!

samzx12
Nice score! The CS 2.7 is a fine speaker indeed. Keep me posted as you massage them with the Mark Levinson or B.A.T. power amp. Happy Listening!

Thank you. I am excited.  Curious to find out which amp will work best. As far as overall sound quality I'd be willing to bet the BAT VK55.  

Hi Tom,

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.

That is very interesting. Seas and Vifa were some of the very best at the time indeed. I have no doubt at all that is not easy, but I just thought if someone like Seas or ScanSpeak (since Vifa was taken over by SS) were serious enough about it, maybe they could make some very good concentric drivers. The challenge is in the motor design as well as doppler affect of each driver modulating each other. Based on what I read online and what are available off the shelf parts, it seems like the speaker design industry more or less has given up on time-coherent design. With exception for some very few drivers, most drivers has to be designed with at least 12db roll off. For example, Accuton is a very reputable driver makers, but if you use their drivers, you almost have to go with 12db or 24 db roll off. As for Seas and ScanSpeak, with their portfolio of products, only a few drivers can be implemented with first order.

Another things I found interesting is that almost all of Thiel designs use aluminum drivers. To the best of my knowledge, there is no off the shelf aluminum drivers on the market today can be implemented using first order filter because of their inherent break up at high frequency. So you pretty much have to use higher order filter to suppress the break up. So how Thiel did it with first order using their aluminum drivers must require some unique engineering. I think the "wavy mid range" driver of the CS2.7 is one way to minimize the break up. As for the CS2.4, I am just guessing but the mechanical of the rubber surround was meant to solve the break up problem, and whatever it is, it really works.

Hm..., this whole big planet that there is nothing like Thiel? To borrow a phrase from the movie "Contact" which was based on Carl Sagan book, "this whole big universe and our planet is the only source of life?  What a waste of space."