Thiel Owners

@thosb they did not have the PS Audio speaker prototypes and I definitely asked. It sounds like they are keeping those a secret until Axpona. I did get to see the Arnie Nudell prototype speakers(I think they were prototype speakers) that they were using as their reference speakers when designing the PS Audio speakers. 

pwhinson

When I was seeking a possible replacement for my Thiel 3.7s (only due to the size/depth of the 3.7s causing me a little ergonomic problem in my room) I auditioned the Magico A3 at length.   I wrote about my impressions in another thread, but in a nutshell I found them highly transparent and detailed, not bright but a tad bit fatiquing over time.  I found the bass to be not as precise and controlled as the Thiels, and even though powered by a decent solid state amp, I found them dynamically a bit limp compared to my Thiels.  I also preferred the timbral quality of voices and instruments through the  Thiels.

For me the Magico A3 were very impressive on a number of audiophile score-card characteristics, but they ultimately failed to really engage me.

I have very limited experience with any other Magicos. I heard larger Magicos for a couple of test tracks a while back and they were very impressive, but didn't have time to gauge the "emotional involvement" factor - they were way beyond my price bracket in any case.

For me the Magico A3 were very impressive on a number of audiophile score-card characteristics, but they ultimately failed to really engage me.

I was wondering if this has to do with Thiel usage of first order design.  I mean if you're already bought in Thiel first order philosophy, any other speakers with higher order filters will fail you in term of "emotional engagement".  

Personally I already made my own conclusion based on my own designs that first order results in the most musical reproduction of music, so I am sort of in the same camp as well.

andy2,

In my personal experience, my emotional engagement with a speaker is not based on whether it's first order or not.   I have several speakers using high order topologies that I find very emotionally engaging.  (In fact, I was partially driven back in to high end audio by how smitten I was with my old pair of Thiel 02s, which are not time/phase coherent).

I was listening to my Waveform Mach MC monitors over the last week.  Waveform, when in business, made a pretty explicit rejection of the case for time/phase coherence claiming even frequency response/even power/dispersion and other characteristics were more important for accuracy and believability.   Just as I find the Thiels make a good case for the Thiel approach, I find the Waveforms make a good case for that approach.  The Waveforms sound to my ears warm, open, extremely natural in instrumental timbre, and particularly uncolored and "alive" sounding.   I almost bought a pair of the larger Mach Solos that were for sale recently and I'm kicking myself that I didn't as they are super rare and gone now.  (I would not sell my Thiels to buy them, though).

I would go back and forth between the Waveform and the Thiels.  The Waveforms are imaging monsters, and the Thiels are great too.  In some ways I found the Waveforms a bit more neutral than my 2.7s, and a bit more revealing of exact differences between instruments, and more revealing of dynamics to a degree.  So they really communicated a "live" sense of musicians playing instruments, with amazing imaging.

On the other hand:  The Thiel 2.7s - certainly having an advantage of being more full range and not just monitors like the Mach Mcs - had that special Thiel thing of organizing the sound even more precisely so instruments and voices have a depth, dimension, solidity and body that the Waveforms did not have.  There were more subtle advantages the Thiels gave in the richness - so a flute would have more body and airy texture vs a clarinet, where on the Waveforms both those instruments had a more similar "hardened" quality.

But my point is, I found that the two design philosophies were fairly neck-in-neck in terms of pleasing and impressive results.  Which is why I love having different speakers.

The impact of phase coherence is hard to communicate and harder to prove. In fact, the industry at large has proven to its satisfaction that it doesn't matter. I have spoken here about the personal experience and psychoacoustic study surrounding why I judge it to matter deeply.

The odd jujitsu is that the human auditory brain is so good at assembling-synthesizing known tonal sounds from the transient impulse data stream . . . that in an intellectual way, we enjoy the decoding process which we call hearing.
For myself, and the small minority of those who 'get it', there is a direct path to the core being when that sonic analysis-reassembly is not necessary, when the unadulterated musical signal arrives as natural sound. As Andy says, and as the physics supports, and psychoacoustics agrees, there is only one way to accomplish that direct stream in a multiple driver system: first order crossover slopes.

Now, the cat's meow would be to have drivers with broad enough range of resonance-free operation that the phase coherent wave-front could be coupled with a ripple-free frequency domain response. By the way, a larger budget would permit additional driver resonance control and more fine-tuned frequency response to get the best of both worlds. I believe that Jim's 0.7 drivers have that potential - the midrange goes beyond 20K without breakup and so forth and so on. It would take a visionary designer with youth on his side to continue Jim's work to get those results.
Magico and others at the expensive high end get various aspects very right. But as you say, for those who have tuned in to the joys of phase coherence, there is always still something missing in non-coherent designs.