Thiel Owners

I would spend more time on target impulse response and driver breakup and then the cabinet... then low frequency interactions with room, then high passing the mid bass on up ... and then worrying that last db here or there in frequency response....

my buck fifty, which is $.02 adjusted for inflation 

now to Eric’s credit, while his opinion of Thiel high frequency performance is dated, he does have IMO an acute and appropriate focus on room treatments:-)

best

jim

..... but in the end, it matters - the Vandersteen Carbon drivers are matched to .5 db or better in the chamber

Erik - what is your target frequency response, either outdoors / anechoic, or in a room?

Thanks for asking, @tomthiel , honestly I’m a little chagrined sharing what I do with some one who actually has been so successful in the industry.

I should explain that the last time I heard a Thiel speaker was before I returned to my electronics background. Mid 1990s perhaps? I wasn’t really measuring anything then, so I have no way of knowing what I was hearing or what struck me then.

Long after I decided to take some of what I stole from Dr. Leach at Georgia Tech together with modern inexpensive tools and get into speaker design, so I don’t want to say anything as being definitive of how I would hear things now, or what I might be able to ascribe to what I heard in the 90s.

But to answer your question, my target ends up being the old B&K curve at 1 M, but, measured in-room.  Of course, these are cheats I can only get away with for a 2-way speaker. However I recently took in-room at listening location measurements and posted here:

https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-snr-1-room-response-and-roon.html

The mic was at couch seat level, so probably much closer to mid-woofer axis.

now to Eric’s credit, while his opinion of Thiel high frequency performance is dated

Extremely dated, I wish people would remember that caveat when they post about my comments.

he does have IMO an acute and appropriate focus on room treatments:-)

Ty for the kind words, @tomic601 , but for me it is necessity. I am unusually susceptible to room acoustics, and wish I was not. I run into so many audiophiles at shows who can shrug it off. Wish I was more like that.

tomic601

try - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E69dKx8uAXY

Happy Listening!

As above, those Vandersteen carbon drivers are incredible.
If Jim were alive today, I suspect, he would have beaten Richard to this incredible, modern, loudspeaker technology.

Happy Listening!