Thiel - Inventors and Tinkerers All

I just visited Wilson Audio Specialties in Provo a couple of weeks ago. Jerron took me on a tour of the facility and walked me through their speaker manufacturing process. He and the entire staff were very polite and took time to show me many of the details of the building process. Needless to say, I have a new appreciation for their product. Attention to detail is an understatement. These folks are true craftsmen that hand manufacture, build, and finish each speaker cabinet to perfection. Their painting process is comparable to that found on custom or exotic cars. Even the wood crates that they use for shipping are built to tight tolerances. Highly recommended!

The 3.6's are tizzy but will reveal tizzy if you put it in!

OOPS, I mean not tizzy - Thiels have a bad rap for being bright, tizzy, etc... It simply requires careful system matching to optimize a great design.

Kinsekd, you must have visited Thiel shortly before me. We were not lucky enough to get a listening session, but I wholeheartedly agree with you about the hospitable atmosphere and all the friendly folks who took time out of their day to explain things to us (well, I can't really say this one way or the other about the man in charge - JT did pop through a couple of times during the tour to speak with Shari, but I was a little disappointed we didn't get to chat briefly or even greet him, but then he's probably quite busy).

Anyway, about the commonplace 'brightness' charge historically leveled at Thiel speakers, I have always maintained that - at least for their products of the 90's and beyond that I own or have heard - most of that can safely be chalked up to set-up issues, such as listening at a closer distance than they were designed for, or using partnering gear not up to the task. Part of this is just the inevitable result of their flat, extended response and great resolution revealing what is really going on with disks and gear, and possibly also their inherently wide dispersion highlighting sidewall reflections to a greater degree than some speakers having less extended power response curves. But part of it has also been the demanding nature of certain of their models' impedance curves, which can place even quite decent amps and cables at somewhat of a disadvantage. Regarding that last point, Shari conceded that Jim Thiel has generally been coming around lately to placing more emphasis on kinder, gentler speaker loads, which should be good news for all prospective Thiel owners.

In fact, she suggested that in computer modeling for the upcoming 3.7, JT had been strongly considering giving up a couple of Hz worth of low-end extension in favor of making a higher-sensitivity, easier-to-drive design overall, a smart design trade-off in the real world if you ask me, especially in this age of subwoofers and integrated or tubed amplifiers. When I asked her if this new attention to reasonable speaker loads may have been primarily inspired by the HT world, where one multi-channel amp may be called upon to satisfactorily drive multiple speakers for both movies and music, she said that potential benefit had actually never occurred to her, though she wouldn't rule it out as a theoretical consideration - certainly Thiel has been successfully addressing that market. Whatever the reason, that Thiel has been using tubed amps (including the model I use) in their auditioning set-ups is also an encouraging thing to know. Shari agreed that a little ameliorating of the toughness of some of their speakers' electrical curves could help go a long way toward doing the same thing for their mostly undeserved reputation for inherent brightness as a brand.

IMHO, Thiel would be better off trying to keep the impdeance load at or above 4 Ohms, maintain the current sensitivity,and maintaining or better yet lowering the bass response. I would also suggest placing the drivers closer together. This might allow for easier driver intergration and ergo, closer speaker to listener placement. While the smaller speakers allow for appropriate bass reductions in smaller rooms, they don't take into consideration the logistics of placement. As it stands now, Thiels smaller speakers require nearly the same distance from surrounding walls and listener as their larger ones. While allowing for closer surrounding wall proximity, might compromise imaging, it might also economicaly improve bass response. Improved bass response might shed the reputation Thiel has for "brightness" (an opinion, I don't subscribe to). I know its hard to bend the rules of physics, but, if anybody can, Jim Thiel can. I would love to see the return of sealed boxes. Perhaps a fresh (digital?) approach to the brain child that was the 3.5. All the recent research that went into the new subwoofer should help to keep development costs down. Heck, they could just slap a powerpoint on top of the subwoofer. Maybe, just for giggles, they could slap two of them on top, back to back, and play with a dipole?