Thiel Owners

@vair68robert 
Thanks for the update regarding wool batting.
My SEs had rectangular fiberglass batts (no paper backing) stuffed into the passive radiator chamber. My new boards have much more volume so I peeled off some of the batt volume in attempt to end up with similar residual fill.  

beetlemania
Thank You for the DIY update.  How is the presentation and sound affected by peeling off the batt volume?

Happy Listening!

@jafant I made no comparison. Just assumed that the previous volume was “optimized”, a dubious assumption given that the volume can easily be modified by compression, ie, there is no one OEM volume that can be discerned. I merely made it as close as possible to how it was when I first removed the radiator to view to boards.

beetlemania

Thank You for the confirmation.

Happy Listening!

For the record, wool acts quite differently than fiberglas, as does polyester fiberfill or spun mineral wool, especially in transition to the deep bass. Final placement and voicing of damping was always made by results. Listen to it, and if you have the means, measure the output smoothness. Insulation schemes will unload at various frequencies due to complex resonant behavior, especially in reflex systems. Fiberglas behaves more simply and predictably than any other scheme we found.

In my time, and possibly onward, the first reflection of the midrange driver off its rear enclosure wall was absorbed with dense pure wool felt - it worked the best for that purpose and its considerable expense was worthwhile. Our evaluation of wool batting for absorption was not as good as fiberglas.