Unsound - thanks for your response. Keep it coming. First, please let me explain my choice of words. By ’more accurate’ I mean adhering to a flat frequency and phase response curve. By ’more mature’ I mean embodying next-level technologies such as more sophisticated driver motors and diaphragms. I assume that I have considerably less actual experience with these models than you do, and that my opinion is therefore of limited scope and depth. In my present work, each model sample that I get, I measure and photograph and document and audition. For the 3.6 that means I have spent about one day with them. Period. Their introduction came near the end of my time at Thiel Audio and, frankly, I never found a subsequent opportunity to hear them. I concur with your disappointment - my opinion based not on performance (of which I am quite naive), but on philosophy. I don’t think ’rushed to market’ quite captures their introduction because Jim was always technically thorough in his development process. (often to the consternation of marketing director Kathy Gornik.) I think ’compromised’ might better capture it for me. My (ineffective) resistance of reflex bass revolved around trueness to our central principle of phase coherence. Jim and I shared the opinion that the bass establishes the musical foundation on which all else builds and that reflex bass is a compromise (permissible for budget.) But the model 3 was all about performance. Kathy felt that such details must be subservient to the demands of the marketplace (as you posit.)
Let’s shift gears to your ghost of a 4-way CS4 - exactly right in my view. Here’s what happened. It’s hard to understate the role that market demand places on a small growth company. Capitalization plays a big role also. Thiel was always undercapitalized - we pulled everything out of our collective hats, barely paid ourselves, rarely carried any debt and sunk our thin margins into self-bootstrapped growth. Enter the gravy years of the mid 80s. Affluence abounded. Many companies introduced their mega-priced statement products. Thiel was comparatively plodding along its incremental learning/growth curve. It may not be obvious, but Thiel succeeded better in foreign markets than here at home; we competed better in export markets at 2-3 times US retail prices. We were a big hit in Japan which at the time defined and led the pan Asian market. Japan demanded a Statement Thiel product. Jim floated some concept sketches with our Japanese distributor. Jim wanted to make your CS4. It made sense from everybody’s vantage point (from mine in Spades), except our Japanese distributor, who wanted what became the CS5. This next part is almost embarrassing, but what’s a little embarrassment among friends. Let’s talk culture. Our success in Japan was unusual, practically unprecedented, due in great part to our distributor. Kathy was adept at choosing optimal allies. Japan is a power-based culture and the contenders were brokering power arrangements where we held the weaker hand. A new distributor emerged with a Japanese-American principal, who understood both cultures and could navigate many pitfalls. He helped us navigate the weirdness of the number ’4’ in the orient. It symbolizes cosmic unluckiness, curse, death - bad suss. A CS4 would fail regardless of its merit. Kathy deferred to his guidance, but Jim would not put a CS5 moniker on a CS4 chassis. So he engineered the CS5, which in practical terms was beyond our company’s 1988 capacity to develop and produce. Tons of internal stress. The CS5 needed a longer incubation and internal design and engineering resources than the market demands allowed. It consumed the oxygen in our ecosystem which set the stage for scaling back the vision for the 3.6.
Now, that’s a lot of words for an internet forum. But you guys are my audience for these vanishing quirks of history.
The Thiel story contains lots of such workings behind the curtain, as do most human enterprises. It may interest you that the abandonment of the CS4 that you cite stands as a major element of my departure from the company I had co-founded and dedicated two decades to developing. In the early 90s, Thiel, like everyone else, faced an existential decision of how to survive in a market where multi-channel / home-theater was taking over. Thiel took that route. Imagine an alternative reality with a CS4 and a CS3.6 with a bass more true to its model 3 beginnings. Just thinking.
Cheers.
