Thiel Owners

tomthiel

I am very excited you added that "sway effects" (your words) influence imaging of the higher frequencies. This makes so much sense that, in the words of a Thiel -- the ultimate name for speaker phase and time coherence and their effect on "image specificity" -- the speaker swaying from "equal-and-opposite motion from woofer motion" (my words), would have primarily this effect. Most speakers don't have a Thiel's capability for this level of imaging, whether they are swaying or not. So for most speakers, a flabby bass is the most obvious effect of not providing stable spikes to stabilize them.

I AM having fun, just reading and writing about Thiels, almost as much fun as listening to them!

--Warren (aka Sandy)

Sandy - I'm having fun sharing this stuff with you all. You're on it - most speakers scramble time / phase, sometimes by many hundreds of degrees. The ear-brain does a commendable job of reconstructing those wave-forms into intelligible music or sound. But in Thiel, Vandy, etc. which keep the time/phase intact, those sway effects are certainly audible. I notice that I listen at lower level (-2dB) with the spikes in place, probably because the transient detail is satisfying without needing extra volume.

FYI: I am working on a whole package of mechanical stuff in the 2.2s. When all added together, I expect the mechanical upgrades to make an appreciable improvement.

Just as I got my reconfigured system where I wanted it, I made a mistake and blew one of my two 3.5's with good tweeters (two others already have blown or scraping tweeters and have been out of the system.)  So I am finally going to have to locate replacement tweeters.  My search has narrowed to two:

*  Scanspeak Classic D2905 9700 tweeter (1" cloth dome, 104mm 4-hole, 89.5 db, 400hz -3db low end, 6 ohm.  This is the closest match so far as I can speculate based on the discussions here.

*  David Louis Audio private-labeled Chinese imported tweeter (1" fabric dome, 104mm 4-hole, 92db, 800hz -3db low end, 6 ohm) which he compares to the ScanSpeak 9500 (better) and 9900.(almost as good).  He claims these tweeters are made by the same factory that originally produced the ScanSpeak Thiel tweeter.

Has anybody here had experience with either of these two tweeters as replacements in Thiel 3.5's?  Tom? Beatlemania?  And if so, how do they sound/measure?  Any special installation issues?  Any help you can give would be appreciated.

tomthiel
Thank You for the CS 2.2 update. Those owners are going to be quite pleased once the mechanical package is ready for roll-out.
Happy Listening!