Thiel Owners

There is a method of material coupling where the collection of resonant energy is transferred to a large disc of the same material effectively increasing the surface area many times. And if you have 3 or 4 these devices then you effectively have the same shelf or floor surface under each and every component set up this way including the speakers. It works. TomD

FWIW, I would place outboard crossovers on shelves in the rack.

Unsound - that's a complication I hadn't anticipated. Wire is highly reactive and susceptible to noise from multiple causes. Having long runs between the XO and speaker would require specific engineering to maintain target performance.

I've become a big fan of shortest practical speaker cable runs via a pair of amps part-way between the centered source rack and speakers, with XOs part-way again. I've been presuming 1/2 meter umbilicals. Could be a meter.

@tomthiel, your point is well taken. In my case I could possibly accommodate 1 meter runs, but something like 1.5 meters would probably be preferable. 

unsound - thanks for the input. What may not be self-evident is that changes such as these wire lengths require system tweaking. I had presumed that the system would be optimized around some fairly short umbilical length, but am open to reconsidering: perhaps a short and long version such as 1/2 and 1-1/2 meters.

Of general interest may be how Thiel approached this tweaking problem. We assumed user preference for amps and cables. Voicing and final adjustments consumed months of iterative listening tests. The (sometimes maddeningly) long delays between projected new product introductions and actual roll-out included this micro-voicing to levels considerably beyond measurement. Add to that the unannounced XO revisions during a product's life for further refinements. These micro-voicings take internal wire lengths into consideration along with the myriad other variables and interactions.Outboard XOs extend the complex cable contributions from a few feet to many feet. An additional system variable.

I'm glad you brought up this issue - I'll add it to the list of considerations.