Thiel Owners

Another thought - does anyone have 3.6's that could run a test for me?  I can send you a song that produces the crackling.  I'm thinking this may have always been there however you don't hear it unless you are really close and off to the side of the tweeter.

I've already tried this on the 2.7's and did not hear the crackling regardless of where I stood or how close I was to the tweeter.

Sounds like a fried tweeter to me. I think what causes it is when the leads break, the strands tend to be touching at low volume but at high excursions they lose contact and then regain it, causing a crackling sound. I recently had this problem with a Thiel Viewpoint I got off of ebay. It was damaged in shipping and I glued the woofer together and got it working. The tweeter was crackling though, I took it apart and saw that strands of the wire leading to the voice coil were broken. I ordered a new tweeter and it had the same problem almost immediately. I took it apart again and the leads were broken just like the other one. I measured the crossover output for the tweeter at 60hz and it was the same as the output for the woofer. The crossover was damaged in such a way that it was frying tweeters.

@ctsooner That is what my hunt has been for. Any speaker can produce sound. A carefully matched system can reproduce music and that is what I’m after as well. Currently my most involving setup is this:

Intel NUC running wtfplay (Synergistic Active USB) or Cal Audio Labs CL-10 (Synergistic X coaxial) --> MSB Analog DAC --> AudioQuest G Snake --> Krell FBI Integrated --> AQ 4 (I think) speaker cables --> Thiel CD2.7

Big wide deep dynamic with what I hear as accurate timbre of instruments.

When I need bass that the 2.7 cannot reproduce I hookup a Definitive SuperCube II to the preamp outs on the Krell.

@jon_5912 Were you able to repair the crossover?

@solobone22 @tomthiel
It’s very hard to compare the PS Audio to the Krell for several reasons. I suspect the Krell has needed service for quite a while, so I’m sure I haven’t heard it at its best for a decade. Other changes I’ve made at the same time: I’m running two matching subs on the left and right corners and I’ve set the crossover at 60 hz instead of 80, which I always used before.

It still worked okay through 3 channels with balanced cables but when I replaced the Onkyo Pre/Pro with a new Denon receiver and had to try RCA inputs, the Krell hummed badly. I looked into getting it serviced, but I can hardly tell if the company still exists. I left a message at a number I found online (that sounded like some dude’s cell phone) and never heard back.
I didn’t have time to do a lot of research, but found the @whitecamaross thread and saw the positive blurb at the top about the BHK 300 and saw the TAS buyer’s guide positively comparing the 250 to the 300. When I saw that PS Audio was made here in Colorado and gave a generous discount for old broken trade-ins, it was a no-brainer for me.
The main thing I can say in comparison is that with the Krell I always felt the treble was too harsh. I may be over sensitive to treble anyway, but I was never 100% able to listen to violins or trumpets until I heard about Audyssey. It was less about room correction and more about rolling off highs, but Audyssey was a game changing technology for me.
With the PS Audio, the 2.3s are still forward if not bright, but although I keep thinking I’m going to get that ringing in my ears I never quite get it. I didn’t need to be in a hurry to run Audyssey at all.  Now that I have run it, I’m running it "Flat".

I listen between 70-75 db on average. Louder than that is still a little too much "in my face". But at that level it really does sound better than ever. Like I said before I no longer need to mess with surround modes to get 3D sound.