Thiel Owners

I'm curious about the ultimate performance speaker box.  There's no way I'd ever spend 50k or more on a pair of speakers but I wonder if there are other, far cheaper ways to build the ultimate box out of readily available materials.  There was a company that made their boxes out of layers stacked on top of each other with gaskets in between.  The material used was some sort of epoxy I think.  There were rods that ran from top to bottom that held it together and were screwed tight.  It seems like something along those lines could be made fairly easily and the pieces could be made as thick as necessary to control vibrations.  Heck, you could build the baffle and then make the rest of the box out of bricks.  Put a platform with wheels on the floor and hire a mason to build the rest to spec.  It could be curved or whatever shape you want.  There'd certainly be no low frequency vibration there and higher frequencies could be managed fairly easily I'd think.  Might end up looking really cool too.  It wouldn't be very portable but might very well achieve ultimate performance.  I have too much stuff floating around in my head and not enough time to play.

Removing portability opens many options. There's a whole world to explore. Study before you play. Don't be fooled by heavy and hard. Concrete can ring like a bell. Etc. Etc. Etc.

In the metals I would look at magnesium. Similar mass to stiffness as aluminum but higher damping - and much more expensive, of course. I really like the hydrostone / fiber thing I developed and was used on some Hales models. Tension skins on a different & multi) core has lots to recommend it.  Remember that the air (acoustic) resonances are only part of the cabinet vibration problem. The drivers must mechanically couple to the shell for rigid launch. They bounce and propagate energy into the shell. Excellent idea is to oppose each driver with an identical one across the cabinet (as in front and back). Bummer is that you then have a bi-pole radiator instead of a point source, which rules out time & phase alignment. So I am opposing the drivers against a rigid vertical spine up the cabinet back. In a new design, that might be quite large. In extant Thiels it will be 1"x 1" and connected to every brace shelf and the cabinet back to damp it. A rod-strut connects each driver magnet to the rod for cooling and mechanical rigidity.

I am exploring an outer shell for extant cabinets. Take a Thiel cabinet, add a few strategic braces if necessary, set the spine, screed non-hardening Permatex type 2 goo, add wood exterior to taste (3/8 x t&g strips). Viola!  Inner structure keeps high integrity driver mount x acoustically stiff enclosure volume, and outer shell decouples surface resonances for less sound transmission into the room.

No magic bullet. Plenty of room to play. Let us know your success!

I looked into the Thiel subwoofer and was reminded by Rob that he can't service them if there ever is a problem. Fyi

As I mentioned, I am searching for a repair solution. A schematic would help greatly if anyone has one.

Noticed that the 3.5 has no internal braces like many of the newer models. Is that an issue?