Thiel Owners

Andy - the term of art: Phase Coherence is used in various ways by various people for various purposes. Thiel was a pioneer in Coherence along with Richard Vandersteen and John Dunlavy. We all use the term to mean Phase Coherent and Time Coincident. In other words all the elements of the signal launch and add together to produce the step response of the input signal with no negative pre-shoot at any frequency. Very simple and very difficult!

Phase Coherence is used in various ways by various people for various purposes.

I understand.  I am personally got lost with all the different terminologies. 

Very simple and very difficult!

Being working on DIY, it usually takes me much more time than a typical high order speaker.  But still, I hope more speaker manufacturers will do it.  It may be very difficult but not impossible.  
I think it's just an "excuse" that most people won't try it. 

I was thinking about how our hearing may not be so sensitive to high frequencies and the high freq. phase shift.  In our normal environment, high freq. is very reflective and when sound reflects, its phase will get change as well.  Also diffraction will cause delay in high freq. and phase shift as well.  If human is sensitive to these, it would drive us crazy. 
That's why our hearing is only sensitive to long delay, not short delay, and the long delay we hear is what we call "echo".  Imagine if we listen to high order speaker and we hear all "echo", I guess that would not be very good :-)

But having said all that, I still think time-phase coherent could make a difference, and if I could, my speaker would be all time coherent.

Since the issue of tubes driving Thiels has come up, I want to add a bit of experience.  When I first bought my 3.5's, I used an Audio Research D90, and volume was never a problem.  Later, in a much larger listening space, I used VTL ST-85s, and again volume was not a problem.  I must caution, however, that when I say "not a problem" I am talking about jazz, chamber music, 60's-70's singer-songwriter, etc.  I do not generally listen to hard rock, and while I play fully symphony orchestras I tend to keep the playback at comfortable levels.

I also will relate that when I obtained my 2 2's, for about a year I drove them with a Fisher 202 integrated tube amp putting out 35wpc.  Again in an average size condo living room and at reasonable levels.  (This combo sounded fantastic, btw).

Take this for what it is worth.  But I guess it puts me in the camp of Thiels are okay with tubes.

andy2
Nice! work describing phase coherence, time coherence.  Cool diagrams as well.  Happy Listening!

harrylavo
Good to see you again. Thiel speakers are sonic matches for ARC, CJ, PS Audio, VAC and VTL (short-list).  Over on Audio Asylum, owners enjoy Aesthetix, Octave and Rogue Audio w/ Thiel loudspeakers. The Tube camp is well represented.
Happy Listening!