Thiel Owners

Prof - thank you for your thorough comparisons and commentary.I have read Stereophile's reviews of the Joseph Perspectives and admire the outcome. I am a big fan of magnesium as  a driver material - the SEAS Graphene material seems great to me. Thiel products never got to that level of refinement with their associated costs. But in my fantasies, I would develop a tweeter with such a diaphragm to take the breakup above 40K Hz without electronic intervention. My experience with microphones says that magic would flow.

For the record, we can improve the 3.7 performance with passive component upgrades (like Beetlemania's 2.4s) and a little baffle treatment. Don't sell them yet.

tomthiel,
My post was also meant to justify my interest in whatever possible upgrades show up for the 2.7s.  It would be intriguing if a bit more of that "sonic purity" I hear in the Josephs could be introduced in to the 2.7s.(Even *some* movement in that direction would be intriguing).

Prof - there is some low-hanging fruit for the 2.7 upgrade. A 400uF electrolytic midrange series feed cap (although well bypassed) is certainly limiting the clarity-directness. Other XO tweaks too. The 2.7 baffle is nicely optimized, but I bet we'll gain some harmonic delicacy with treatment.

Yes, I’ve also wondered before about what might happen if the 2.7 baffle were further re-enforced. Though not being a speaker designer, I wouldn’t know the trade-offs. I’d imagine that if, say, you tried to re-enforce it from within, adding thickness with some material behind the baffle, you start intruding on inner cabinet volume, which could screw up some other parameters of the design?

BTW, I’ve now heard the much lauded Kii Three speakers twice, which use DSP to correct both for frequency response and time/phase coherence.

Maybe I still haven’t had a good demo of those speakers, but in neither set up did they sound as timbrally natural to my ears as my Thiels, nor did they image with the specificity and density of the Thiels.

JA - circling back to 1.6 and 1.7 sales: Rob says approximately 2500 pairs of 1.6 and 1000 pair of 1.7 were sold. The preponderance of evidence suggests the 1.7 has 4th order Butterworth XO slopes for time coincidence, but not phase coherence.