Thiel Owners

tomthiel

2nd Note:
Recorded music is more important now than ever.  Have fun!

Happy Listening!

I find it interesting to explore places I used to live or used to spend time at on Google maps.  I figure that old farmhouse must've been real close to here and judging by the look of the houses there now it might still be standing.  Look familiar?

https://www.google.com/maps/place/602+S+Broadway+St,+Georgetown,+KY+40324/@38.2038309,-84.5603159,3a...

Hi @tomthiel

Sounds like you have a lot of work but all of it is engaging and creative so I am sure you are well motivated.

I did some experimenting a while ago with coils and conductors and discovered how easy it was to have a coil couple via capacitance to traces underneath it. Wonder if you are running into that as well.

Best of luck,

Erik

 I disassembled one (original prototype # -0004) cabinet, removed the crossover and wired only the woofer to the input terminal. The other (-0003) was left as a reference with the internal XO and woofer intact, but with the midrange and tweeter disconnected. I built the woofer section for -0004 by the new layout while using all the original parts in the original orientations. No upgrades, changes or replacements to confuse the issues.

. . .

 #-0004 reference "A" exhibited splatting on every bass+drum hit. It would be attributed to amp clipping or passive radiator and/or woofer bottoming - overload / or just plain too loud for the material. But I didn't turn it down. On -0003 external XO "B", those same hits were audible, but not extreme, in fact they played more like "hard punch" than distortion. . . . Of extreme interest is that speaker A sounded like a woofer, somewhat woofy, lacking the detail one would get from the midrange and tweeter. Speaker B sounded like a full-range presentation; subjectively it was satisfying on its own terms. I had to check to make sure I hadn't somehow left the midrange or tweeter connected. I hadn't.

G'morning Tom
Either my coffee hasn't kicked in or your speaker numbering is flipped from one paragraph to the next. Regardless, it sounds like you heard a *massive* improvement "simply" by moving to an external crossover.

Oy! I am supposed to be done with my mods!!!LOL
FWIW, one of my all-time top 4-5 speakers is the Avalon Ascent, possibly the only external XO speaker I've heard.

Beetle - problem is I don’t drink coffee. Proper number is -0003 is the reference A. Good catch. How’s the coffee?
There are plenty of good reasons for an external XO. But it is tweaky, difficult and would put off many people. In the case of the 2.2, there isn’t a good option to squeeze best parts into the interior spaces. And the merits are likely to be substantial.

But to your Oy! issue, this problem might be peculiar to this model. The general opinion seems to be that the 2.2 is more mellow, easy, forgiving, and with a bigger bass than other Thiel speakers. Some people say it’s the only Thiel they can tolerate. I had speculated that we thought our first passive radiator somehow coupled with rooms "better" than anticipated, giving that full-bottom presentation. But it doesn’t measure "full"; it stacks up quite nicely with the 3.5 and 3.6 that I have here - matching the specified target roll off point without any bloat or other measured anomalies.

John Atkinson used the 2.2 for years as his own system reference. He commented in his Stereophile review how the passive radiator produced a "hard bottoming" relative to the CS2 port’s "soft chuffing" at volume. He said he eventually gave them up because they just wouldn’t produce loud enough bass for him. I can’t visualize how the passive would hit hard - it is made of 2 large, soft surrounds on the back and front of a semi-soft foam plug. ??? So maybe this "splatting", "generalized low end" and "easy mellowness" of the 2.2 are all attributable to these layout and overload characteristics which I am addressing with the EXO.

So, just sit tight regarding your potential need to tweak this problem on your 2.4s; by the time I get to working on the 2.4, we’ll know a lot more. I’m looking forward to picking up the pair I scored on Long Island - when it gets safer.