Thiel Owners

I investigated the Vivid speakers. They are seriously competent. But I can't find anything about their filter alignments; I strongly suspect they are higher order, whereby they can more easily solve all the other design aspects and produce convincing music.

If I had deep pockets, Vivids would surely be on my audition short list. But until then, I'm plenty happy with my 2.4s and anticipate being even happier soon!

My short list of best-ever speakers includes those with and without first-order filters, so uncertain how important that feature is to my ears. But I notice that since I moved up from mid-fi to hi-fi that I've only owned either Thiel or Vandersteen. Hmmm.

To be fair, domestic production and affordability were also factors in my decisions but I did prefer the sonics of the CS1.6 to the widely acclaimed Revel M20s, among other contenders. FWIW

@tomthiel Happy Birthday! All the best to you - have fun! Thanks for sharing Thiel history here and encouraging our XO mods.

@tomthiel - happy birthday.  I'm certainly happy you're here.  There aren't a lot of places for audio enthusiasts to get knowledgeable opinions from someone who doesn't need to be biased because their livelihood is wrapped up in selling something.  

@beetle - I'm not sure if the phase coherence is the difference either.  I've wondered if the biggest difference isn't that designers who believe that everything makes a difference are forever listening for changes in sound due to small changes in materials or design.  Even if they were wrong about some factor making a difference their belief could lead to them developing a better ear and being very careful about a wider variety of factors.  I'd expect that to ultimately lead to better products.  I know Charles Hansen of Ayre was like that.  He believed that everything made a difference.  I don't really believe it's possible that everything he believed was true but I'd guess that his beliefs led him to be a more careful and open minded designer.  Regardless of the minute details of what does and doesn't make a difference in amp design, it seems everyone agrees the end products were great.

One speaker that is readily available and is most likely much more phase correct than average is Martin Logan electrostats.  I don't know if anyone has mentioned them but the panel typically only has a single crossover point to the woofers and that is at a fairly low frequency.  I doubt the crossover is first order but everything above that point would be coherent.  They're available at a lot of Best Buys, they're probably among the most available brands out there.  

Hey, Tom, 

Happy Birthday!

You're still a Spring Chicken!

George

Happy Birthday, Tom.
It's a pleasure!
Todd