Thiel Owners

As someone who went from the B&W 800 series to Thiel about 10 years ago I will be the first one to tell you that you're making a bad decision.  I found the Thiels to be better in every area I cared about.  The B&Ws will play louder and have more (lower quality) bass.  The Thiels have more defined bass, clearer, more intelligible midrange, less peaky tweeter, better imaging, more realistic soundstage, better transients, and a difficult to describe relaxing quality that may be due to their better phase behavior.  

justinjwilliams

Welcome! Good to see you here. I can understand the appeal of B&W 800 series speakers. For a few years, I enjoyed the 805 monitor.
Are you looking to build a complete system around the 800 loudspeakers?

Regarding selling your current gear- check out U.S. Audiomart. The fee for selling over there is much less than here or eBay. Something to consider.

Happy Listening!

jon_5912

Excellent descriptors for Thiel Audio loudspeakers in general.

Happy Listening!

Hello Tom Thiel,

I want to ask you about the shim or shims you added to the driver to aid in alignment. Was there a number such as .125 or .250 shim thickness added singularly or in addition to arrive at your final destination? Is there a minimum fractional distance that the brain can determine as a skewed time offset? Personally I think it is as small as 1/8 of an inch.
Thanks for your insights. Tom

I’m not sure about your shim question. I have added shims to both drivers to optimize how the Ultrasuede on 1/8" felt works. Those shims are about 2mm = 1/10" thick. But they are under all drivers, so they don’t change relative driver arrival times.
Thiel’s driver arrivals are baked into the design, and they are virtually dead nuts IF your ear height is as designed = 3’ up x 8’ or more distance. If you have access to a step function generator, and you put your mic at your listening ear position, you can see that the arrival times from the drivers superimposes onto an ideal, single curve. Your ear hears that uniform arrival time as clarity, definition, integrity. Some people can hear deviations in the micro-second range. Some seem not to notice full cycle or more deviations of a millisecond or so.

My present 02 project involves converting its stock conventional flat-baffle launch to a geometry where the woofer is brought forward enough for accurate time alignment. The offset required is 36mm because the woofer is rather deep. A final product might hope to use a shallower woofer for less offset and therefore fewer reflection and diffraction artifacts from the stand-off. That 36mm was estimated by reading the arrival time discontinuity, then prototyping and tweaking until the waveforms of the two drivers look like a single trace.

Have I answered your question?