Thiel Owners

Hmm the bass is opening up after another 24 hours of run in. Think probably is the cables.😅 

Let me see after a few more days.

FWIW:

I mentioned earlier in the thread that I was trying some Isoacoustic Gaia 2 footers for the Thiel 2.7.

Not sure I followed up, so...

My speakers sit on a shag rug overlaying a wood main floor. The floor clearly vibrates around the speakers and I can feel the sound right through to my legs when they are up on the ottoman and through the listening sofa. Kind of nice actually.

But to experiment, I first tried (quite a while back) the Nobsound spring footers - cheap ones found on Amazon. Those amazed me, completely decoupled the speakers so no floor vibration, tightened up the bass somewhat and made the speakers disappear even more. Downsides were a lack of "room feel" so it became more electrostatic-like in presentation. Also the tone/timbre lightened up a bit too much, slightly thinned out. It was hard to tell how much this was due to the effect of decoupling vs just raising the speakers up an inch or two on the footers.

Later I tried the expensive Townshend Isolation speaker bars, also spring based but much more seriously designed. I liked the fact they didn’t raise the speakers so was hoping to keep the tonality I liked. Well, it did kind of do what I was expecting - again, totally decoupled the speakers so no floor vibration. But it did leave the sound to be a bit richer. But for some reason it didn’t quite gel for me. The sound slightly changed tonality, a bit darker and almost a bit sluggish sounding. It was subtle but I still found I preferred the speakers on the floor, which gave more density and nice timbre to the sound.

I was thinking that maybe what I wanted was something that semi-decoupled from the floor, which would tighten the bass, but also leave a bit of feel for the music. Along those lines I tried a Primacoustic Recoil Stabilizer unit under the speakers.

Unfortunately I didn’t find that did anything at all to better the sound. Didn’t really seem to tighten up the bass much and the speakers sounded more "together" and right just on the floor again.

My last ditch effort for this stuff were the Isoacoustic Gaias. Again, I was hoping for a sort of in-between of the spring based footers and the sound of the speakers on the floor.

I was quite impressed with the Gaias once they were installed! The bass did tighten up, speakers disappeared more, a bit more clarity, and yes a bit of tonal change but not off-putting, at least at first. And there was still some more "bass feel" that I didn’t get so much with the other spring based footers. So I’d been living with those for the last couple weeks. I’ve quite enjoyed the way the Thiels disappear even more.

But over time I found the tonal change not quite to my liking. It had lightened the tone a bit too much, just a bit too blanched and lean. I had a feeling that this tonal change may not have been due to the Gaia isolating the speakers so much as raising the height more (I had used the isoacoustic carpet spikes too, which raised the speakers even more).

Now, supposedly it really helps to have the carpet spikes with a carpet, so the Gaias can be more secured to the floor beneath. But to experiment and hopefully lower the speakers a bit, I took off the carpet spikes. And...voila! That did indeed bring back some richness to the tone! They still seemed to be working enough to keep the bass pretty tight - not quite as tight and precise, but still very good - but I definitely preferred the sound over all. So at least for now (unless I notice something over time) I’ve got as close to what I was looking for as I have found.

@prof very interesting feedback, is your carpet thick or not ? you don't have stability problems without the carpet disks ?

I should get my Gaia 2s with the carpet disks next week, will try with and without the carpet disks.

@thieliste 

The shag carpet combined with underpad is pretty thick.

No I'm not having stability problems without the carpet spikes.  You can wiggle the speakers a big if you grab them, but they feel solid and not easy to push over.

I never actually tried the official Thiel spikes under these speakers.  My previous Thiel 3.7s didn't come with spikes, but the 2.7s came with the outrigger and spikes.

I hadn't bothered trying them and I included that stuff with the 3.7s when I sold those.  I think I didn't do the outriggers because I liked to experiment with different speaker positions and it was much easier without spikes.  I also used Herbie's slider footers underneath for a while, which didn't raise the speakers much.

Every time I've raised them I didn't care for the tone as much, so I wonder if this has something to do with a tonal change due to changing the bass reflection boundary when raising the speakers.