Thiel Owners

tomthiel - there is a pair of CS2 available locally and I was wondering if is it worthwhile to consider getting them. The owner sold all his equipment so I will have to bring in my amps and cd player just to demo. 

On the pictures, I can see both speaker's tweeter and mid range dust covers are totally pushed in (like you are looking it backward). They don't look good but does it effect the sound or is there a way to pop it back out? I saw some reviews mentioned that the spike feets are essential for the CS2 for good sound quality, but is missing for this pair. Is replacement still available?

Also, some people describe the CS2's HF is hash, do you agree? I am wondering if my vintage gears will be a good match with the speaker; Mark Levinson ML-11 (50w into 8 ohms 100w into 4 ohms), ML-12, AudioQuest Indigo Blue speaker cable. My room in the basement is 19.5' x 11.5' with a 7' drop ceiling. 

Thanks.

hifi28 - good speaker, more on that later.

Tweeters are Dynaudio D28 soft domes. Great at the time, nothing special now. The domes can be sucked out through a paper towel core. Creases will remain, but sound is not much affected.

Spikes can be any 1/4" dowel, metal or wood (with care). Or 3 pennies to provide a flat plane. Pointed spikes best on carpet.

Grille boards are part of the system and must be used - fabric is part of the design response. Later version had rubber goo-tape for firmer connection to baffle.

I'll talk about the CS2 later this weekend. In my opinion, you could build a first-rate system around your gear with upgraded CS2s.

hifi28 - Your room proportions aren't bad, and if you can get some insulation above your drop ceiling, it could be fairly good. Biggest limitation is the 11.5' dimension.

CS2s are wide-dispersion transducers, so your best bet is to put the speakers on the long wall. You also need them about 3' from the wall behind them, which puts your listening seat against the other long wall. That can be OK IF you can get a sonic hole behind your head, such as replacing drywall with acoustic tile to allow the back-wave to continue through the wall rather than reflect from it.

Can your room accommodate that?

The other option is short wall speaker placement which would require significant absorption / diffusion at the side-wall first reflection points. That could work.

tomthiel - Thank you for the quick respond. Unfortunately all four walls are drywalled already, I would have to put them on the short wall. Actually, behind the speakers (on the short wall), there will be two cabinets from floor to ceiling 4 feet wide on both corners, a window in the middle and the equipment rack under the window. The upper part of the cabinets are fill wtih yinyl records (some absorption). So the long wall is more like 18'. If I place the speaks on the short wall what do you recomand the distant from the side wall, the seat and how much toe in or none? What kind of upgrades are you refering to? 

The collective experience of many old-timers is that the room is far more important than is generally acknowledged and that effort spent there is worth some multiple of effort and expense for gear. Keep that in mind.

The CS2 is old, designed in 1984 and released in 1985. There are qualitatively better caps and resistors that can upgrade your sound. Your tweeter is obsolete; we are working on a replacement. Your midrange has a drop-in replacement / upgrade available through Coherent Source Service or directly from Madisound, the importing distributor. There is a long history on this thread of the flow and intent of an ongoing upgrade project.

I'll try to talk about the CS2 in particular soon - it hasn't yet been addressed.