Thiel Owners

Andy2, curious to know what you see on that board. How did you surmise an all-pass filter? An all-pass filter suppresses no frequencies, right? Seems like such a "filter" would invariably allow the driver to excite its resonant modes.

It's partly based on an opinion of someone who is fairly experienced in xover design.  Also, based on my experience, it seems to me the only way to align the mid to the tweeter phase is to use an all-pass filter otherwise you have to invert the polarity (but I could be wrong).

I have tried the all-pass filter in my own xover design and it takes away the transient speed and ultimately reduce the transparency.

catalysis

Good to see you again. Great things are on the horizon for you 3.5 owners. Stay tuned.  Happy Listening!

andy2

Thank You for posting the CS6 XO pic for Tom's perusal. Hope you are well today and enjoying the music from your CS 2.4 loudspeakers.

Happy Listening!

beetlemania

As always, Thank You for the opinion regarding Tom's query about XO networks.  You guys definitely have your finger(s) on the pulse of this matter.  Happy Listening!

I interpreted "all pass" as any filter that is not causing a rolloff. As I used the term, there are multiple all pass elements in all of Jim's crossovers. They include various shaping and resonant circuits which are directly opposed to specific resonances in drivers such that the circuit cancels the amplitude, phase and transient problems of the driver resonance. It actually fixes the driver misbehavior. The fixed driver is therefore prepped to roll in or out at its prescribed slope - high or low pass filter. 

These shaping circuits always result in better measurements than the uncorrected driver in all domains. The down sides include cost and whatever electronic veil comes with the extra circuitry. A good listener can hear the effects of the components. Thiel's budgets necessitated mid-level components with mid level artifacts, with the exception of coils. We splurged for 4-9s wire in well made coils. Of course there is room for more improvement there. I am now experimenting with 6-9s foil coils, which are glorious at twice the cost or 4-9s and 6+x the cost of normal production 3-9s ETP copper.