Thiel Owners

@improvedsound Wow, that outboard cabinet is really impressive! The attention to detail off the charts.

 I see you put aluminum cooling fins on the bigger resistors. Tom had me try a similar cooling mechanism in my build. But it seemed to produce an echoey anomaly. Subtle on many tracks but I heard the best sound without the aluminum heat sinks. One of the advantages of an outboard XO is you can just vent the cabinet, no need for heat sinks. Simply add holes to the bottom and, maybe, top of the rear panel. When I was considering outboard, I imagined the top of the cabinet would just be stainless steel mesh.
 

I see coils on left side of coax and woofer have the same orientation, almost stacked. I suspect those are close enough to cause interference. Here are a couple of resources for your consideration:
http://www.troelsgravesen.dk/coils.htm

https://techtalk.parts-express.com/forum/tech-talk-forum/1439851-inductor-placement

Finally, the binding posts look like Thiel gold over brass (or equivalent). There are better choices out there, and it appears you have the budget. I used Cardas rhodium over silver.

Please hear those as friendly suggestions, not criticisms. You have done a lot of hard work!

@tomthiel I am leaning more towards replacing the tonearm cable and / or experimenting with damping fluid since for the most part the speakers only sound bright when I play vinyl.  It's a jelco 750d with a jelco cable.

@sdl4 , I’m not completely sure of the following, but I seem to recall reading a discussion where Bruno Putzeys said something to the effect that GaNFETS were indeed superior devices but a their current costs one could just as easily build Class A amps and that would defeat one of the main reasons of going with Class D in the first place; efficiency/cost. If I recall a correctly he was waiting for the price of the devices to come down. On the other hand, he’s also indicated that he's become a bit bored with amp design and would like to give more of his attention to speaker design. Honestly, I would take everything I just posted with a grain of salt, my recollections could be failing me.

I will say that the specs I previously posted on the link for the upcoming new amps look way better than anything I’ve seen for any(!) GaNFET amps I’ve seen so far, especially with regard to those specs that would be of particular interest to many Thiel users. And at more affordable prices too!

Tom Thiel I am really fascinated by the Iconoclast wire please post your findings as soon as you have time.

I use Bruno Putzeys Purifi  6.5 in driver in my most recent speaker rebuild and just love its performance. Cross over is 1st order to a Via Wave SRT 7 ribbon tweeter at 3k what a wonderful blend . TomD

I have learned that the speaker cable in Thiel’s listening room was Kimber Type 88.

Let’s grant that Jim, et al, judged that to be his best choice along with his Krell FPB600 and as I remember a Sonic Frontiers preamp. Whatever the gear was, it certainly out-priced the relatively modest speakers. Jim’s logic was that the better the speaker, the better it translated its input signal. (Period). His job was to make that transducer and the job of others’ was to make their parts of the chain to do their jobs. Clean logic, dirty implications, especially when espousing a speaker (and the implied system) for everyman.

The problem gets hard for real reasons. Phase coherence allows the ear-brain to scrutinize everything - I have itemized some details in these pages, but basically everything goes under a sonic microscope. Getting it right becomes a far more complex puzzle, but so nice when pieces fall into place.

I won’t be buying any Type 88, but I will be testing some Iconoclast along with my poor man’s double helix contender.