Thanks for the input imhififan and tomthiel. I'm thinking I can probably get good results from any of the bookshelf, in-wall, on-wall, tv or other possible models that were produced in the early to mid 2000s. The viewpoints come up pretty regularly and I've wondered if they'd be comparable to the powerpoints.
The stuff from the auction is hitting ebay. It's amusing to see what some people expect to be able to get for it. Some silly person is asking $750 for the raw subwoofer driver. Bids on Aurora Home start at $500.
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I bought most of my stuff at audio consultants. Libertyville and Hinsdale closed but Evanston and Chicago are still there. I mostly buy used and they've got a nice selection of used stuff. I've been watching their website for so many years if it ever went down I'd probably need a shrink. |
I'm definitely of the opinion that old Thiels are great and I'm not sure how much better the new ones are when it comes to just enjoying music. I love the overall character of Thiels and as has been said, that hasn't changed too much over time. |
I wonder how many of us don't have much stuff of value outside of our stereos. I'm definitely in that boat. If I sold off all my non-stereo stuff other than the house it'd probably be worth less than 5k. I'm just not interested in any other consumer products. |
Anybody looking for used Thiels should check reverb.com. I don't think I've ever seen it mentioned here but they've got pairs of 3.5s and 3.6s right now. They've also got lots of Bryston gear and other speakers and electronics. |
The inability of certain personalities to cope with ambiguity makes the people watching aspect of audio a lot of fun. You can see with the audioholics guys that they are very emotionally invested in there being nothing audible that can't be measured. I think it would be a significant blow to their self-image if it turned out they were wrong. I get that they're annoyed by BS marketing and absurd prices but that's definitely not the whole story. Maybe it's fear that somebody might know or understand more than them in some area?
Regardless, with active DSP speakers comes the possibility that slopes can be variable. I wish I could run my Thiels first order for acoustic music that doesn't have excessive bass and I don't listen to very loudly. On the other hand, when I want to rock it'd be great if I could just switch them to 4th order for increased headroom. I wonder if the new Meadlowlark has that ability. I saw that they're using mini DSP in their products.
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Those 7.2s in NC have been for sale for quite a while. I think the best single place to see what is available is hifishark.com. It pulls from a bunch of different sites. |
It's funny to see people discussing concrete baffles. I'm back to my Madisound kit for the first time in a year and trying to make concrete baffles for them. I've tried several kinds and thus far they haven't worked. I have no experience with concrete so I'm trying to get a feel for it. My currently drying attempt is with concrete countertop mix. This stuff really should work. It costs $25 for a 50lb bag and I mixed a bunch of glass fiber in to help with cracking. |
I've sucked out tweeters with toilet paper rolls before. I'd try that before resorting to a vacuum. My kids are 5 and 6 so for the last few years I've been trying to avoid them damaging my 3.7s. I actually built light frames around them and put them on plywood platforms on wheels. The idea was that I was going to basically Vandersteen them by wrapping the frames with some fabric mesh. I never got to that but the frames consisting of 4 vertical dowels and a rectangle frame on top did a good job of preventing kid damage. Just in the last couple of months I finally got rid of those frames. I think the basic idea is a good one for anyone wanting to make it through the little kid years without a lot of dings or worse. I'm sure you give up a little bit sonically and it doesn't look great but when you've got tiny kids those things are secondary anyway. |
@yyzsantabarbara - I bought my 3.7s in 2012 and then had kids in 2013 and 2014. I've moved 3 times since then and they've been in a bunch of less than perfect setups. While they'll be best in a big, well setup room, I think you can appreciate a lot of their virtues in less than ideal situations. The coaxial mid/tweeter make them much less sensitive to listener position than previous models. I worked from home for years and used my 49" 4k tv as a monitor. The speakers were 2-3 feet from me on each side. I spent many hours listening to music that way and found them very enjoyable. Even in that situation they image surprisingly well. They are very intelligently designed to work in a lot of situations. The dispersion is great so the tonal balance doesn't shift dramatically at different angles. They don't try to do the deepest bass and therefore avoid a lot of room problems. Ear height can be important so get an adjustable height chair. If I were you I'd go for it. I doubt you'll regret it.- |
My thought has always been that the core system should be as accurate as possible but allow for an alternative when you want to listen to something that is hard to tolerate without some softening. In the past I've run two paths, one using the balanced and the other the RCA jacks. I ran the RCA path through a tube buffer that would warm the signal up a tad. It let me easily switch back and forth just by using the source switch on the preamp. I'm sure there are people who will have a problem with there being two sets of interconnects hooked up but if they're short I don't think it's a problem.
I think the way to go if you want to manipulate the signal a little bit is to get digital eq. I'm 100% on board with the speakers being as accurate as possible. Accuracy is a difficult enough to achieve without trying to somehow modify the sound to have a particular character.
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I played around with test tones on my 3.7s and heard some mild vibration in the crossover. Something is resonating down there but I've never heard it with anything other than the test tone cd so I don't worry about it. Test tones can do funny things. When I bought a big sub and was running frequency sweeps I heard a loud weird sound upstairs that scared me. Turned out the pan in the oven was going crazy with a particular frequency played loudly by the sub. Never noticed that with anything other than test tones either. All sorts of stuff can start resonating with a continuous signal at a particular frequency. Since music doesn't normally contain long continuous single frequency notes like that you'll likely never excite those resonances to near the degree you can with tones. |
"in-room power response" - I don't know what that means and if I ever find the time to look into it it'll probably be decades from now. I will say that maybe the biggest reason I became a Thiel guy is that the 20 year old 2 2's I got for a second system sounded so great in a far from great room. A lot of reflections will certainly lower resolution but they don't need to make the music unlistenable because it's way to bright, way to bass-heavy and dull, etc. The overall character of the sound can remain intact if the speaker allows it to. |
I finally got around to trying to figure out what was going on with the ViewPoints I bought in March. I had bought a replacement tweeter and installed it but it wasn't working right. I took the speaker apart and played around trying to get it to work. There was a signal at the tweeter terminals and at the plugs where it is installed. After being mystified for a while I noticed that the new tweeter had the same problem the old one had - the wire that connects the voice coil to the plug was broken.
Hmmmmm. I played a 60hz test tone and measured the AC voltage at the woofer terminals and the tweeter terminals. They both had exactly 2 volts. I'm thinking this means that one of the capacitors or the resistor in the tweeter path is a full short. Anybody have this experience? |
I can't believe Audio Consultants is going away completely. They had 4 stores in the area only 2 or 3 years ago. I live about 10 minutes from where the Libertyville store was and that's where I've bought much of my stuff over the years. I'm in my early forties and it's amazing how much audio has changed just since I've been following it since the nineties. I'm glad I got good quality stuff before the audio world got this bad. |
jafant, It's interesting to think about what an ideal location for a retailer might be. 40 years ago I bet a pretty high percentage of people walking into Audio Consultants were people who lived in the neighborhood. I bet now almost none of them are. Certainly not the ones buying the expensive stuff. I bet they're mostly taking special trips to the store and it makes almost no difference where the store is as long as it's in the greater Chicagoland area. I was just poking around and F1 audio is moving to just south of where the Libertyville Audio Consultants was located on the same street. They'll be in a shopping center kitty corner to a former United Audio/Tweeter. There must be some demand around here. The only thing in the area that interests me is the SS3 in Libertyville on audiogon. I don't need it, can't justify it, won't buy it, but I want it. |
Tom - Thanks for the feedback, I think the crossover must be what is described as point to point. All of the components are soldered directly together on the back of the board. I don't see any other possibility than one of the three components has a short. There is another path but it goes through a resistor, pair of capacitors, and coil in series. I'm guessing it's some sort of secondary path to deal with some specific problem. It's really annoying. I guess now I bust out the soldering iron, take the components off the board and measure them. I have a hardware store multimeter that won't measure capacitance. Picture of cs2.4 crossover with same type of construction. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/333477547409233370/ |
Here's a picture of the other side. While it is on a PC board, there isn't really any significant tracing. All of the components are connected via solder except one short spot on the left. That appears to be part of a secondary path to the tweeter that I'm guessing is supposed to carry a very small signal. It appears the importance of the printed part is mainly to help with assembly. Viewpoint back of crossover: https://imgur.com/e3YK20g |
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Don't forget the ViewPoints. My working one sounds fantastic.
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pair of 2.4s at audio consultants until they close forever on 12/21. They're listed at 1700 but I think the extra 25% off on the front page puts them at $1,275. An obscene deal for what you're getting. Makes me wish I needed more speakers. http://audioconsultants.com/UsedEquipment.aspx |
@jazzman7, these just showed up in the last day or two. These same goofballs are offering a pair of Vienna Acoustics Mozarts for 4498. I bought a pair of Mozart grands for <500 when Best Buy dropped the line a while back. I realized how ridiculous the VA's were when I bought some Thiel 2 2s. They're very mediocre. |
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I'd guess the overpowering sound was due to distortion when the drivers were pushed outside their normal range. It's an interesting problem to have. I've found it's distortion that hurts the ears. I can crank my ATCs up really high but because they're made to play very loudly without distortion it doesn't create the discomfort just about any other speaker would. 115db continuous is loud! http://atcloudspeakers.co.uk/professional/loudspeakers/scm110asl-pro/ |
@Rob, I definitely think it would be good to document problems and their solutions that we've had with our Thiels. That'd be a good addition to the Thiel models blog actually. I found out about the air chamber when I took my blown midrange into Audio Consultants and they told me that was a potential problem. |
Well, I bought a pair of ViewPoints off ebay for $450. I don't have a real specific use in mind yet. They might be surrounds, might end up used as computer speakers. Maybe I'll take them to work and use them to listen to music at work. I'm frequently the first one in the office and I have an hour or so before anyone else gets in. I'm guessing these are probably as good as the PowerPoints and an off the chart bargain at the price. |
daaaaaaaang. Whoever didn't buy the viewpoints off ebay made a good decision. I just got them and the backplate that holds the binding posts on one is shattered and the woofer on the other is completely seized up and clearly not connected. Something is rattling around in that box. |
@jafant, I'm pretty sure it was shipping damage. I think Fedex rolled the box down a mountain. |
I just took apart the ViewPoints that FedEx destroyed. One works aside from the shattered back plate. On the other one the back silver part of the woofer is loose and the woofer cone itself is stuck. I tried to get it loose but no luck so far. Both coils broke off of the crossover circuit board and are floating around, though still connected. The tweeter still works. It's a real bummer, I've been wanting a pair of these or PowerPoints for ages. |
I think I'm going to be able to fix these. When the magnet broke loose it caught the voice coil in the gap which is why the woofer was dead. I finally got the voice coil loose and it doesn't look damaged. I realigned it and it seems to be working fine. I just need to glue it back together and reconnect the tweeter and I think I'm good. Fingers crossed. |
Just screwed my most broken ViewPoint back together and it sounds awesome. The woofer sounds great, no rubbing or distortion. I plan on using these as computer speakers so no need for high volume. I’m feeling rather proud of myself as I now have what are probably about the best computer speakers on earth that I paid about as much for as you’d pay for something from audio engine. Take that establishment. |
Just got the other one screwed back together and they're sitting on the floor playing. What an absolute joy. The plastic plate on the back is very cheap and flimsy, somebody deserves to get kicked in the scro for that. I'm gonna get some hardware to glue to that to keep it from vibrating so much. The overall sound is glorious and I'm enjoying it immensely. |
Old Thiel was probably always there but the URL www.thielaudio.com was redirecting to the new Thiel IP address for the last several years. That probably expired and the url is pointing back to the old IP address somehow. URLs like www.thielaudio.com are just pointers that point to the real web address which is a user unfriendly number like 10.023.23.4003. |
After having my broken viewpoint sitting on the floor taken apart for a few months I decided to buy the single powerplane on ebay for $135. I'm curious if it has the same innards as the Viewpoints or if the crossover will be a little different. I've gotta think the box volume is the same and they're both meant to go against the wall so any difference won't be much. I'll probably just stick the powerplane innards in the viewpoint unless I for some strange reason have a chunk of free time and energy to mess with trying to fix the viewpoint crossover. Unlikely. |
I bought a pair of viewpoints off ebay several months ago but when they arrived the box had been abused and one was broken. One of the tweeters was shot so I bought another only to have it immediately go bad. I measured the voltage output and it turns out the crossover has a problem where the tweeter is getting the same voltage as the woofer at low frequencies. I need to either fix the crossover and get a third tweeter or throw the mess out. I'm thinking maybe I can combine the parts from both speakers to make a single functional pair. We'll see. |
@solobone22 they have a black silver weave pattern. They're pretty old, the color has probably changed. |
I've been driving my 3.7s with a pair of bridged mono Cambridge 840W's for a long time. I think they're great. I thought they were clearly better than the pair of Classe CA200's they replaced. They've been in my system for close to 10 years now with no problems. The front-end is a $600 Sony 4k blu ray player feeding a benchmark dac2 with Bryston bp26 preamp. I run inexpensive balanced interconnects. Possibly blue jeans or mogami gold, I've got a pair of unbranded interconnects I paid $100 for that might be in there and maybe some lower tier Audioquest. Speaker cables are very short Audioquest type 4 I think. I never ever feel the need to upgrade. This is my low/moderate volume system so I don't push it volume wise. It excels at unamplified music played at moderate volumes. It can play reasonably loudly but if I wanna rock I listen to my other system that is better suited to it. |
@yyzsantabarbara1 I bought 3.7s in 2012 and had kids in 2013 and 2014. Audio dropped way down on my priority list and I had them in several far from ideal spots. I had them right next to each other for a while and they sounded great. You don't get much in the way of imaging but otherwise great. I had them nearfield for a while on each side of my desk with my head a couple of feet in front of them but way off axis. Still great. I worked from home for a few years and I was always amazed at how good they sounded in this far from ideal situation. I couldn't believe how well the image held together. From a placement standpoint the coax is magic. |
Even so, it's 32 watts for 102 db. I appreciate the benefits of extra power but the Krell FPB300 puts 600w/ch into 4 ohms.
64/105, 128/108, 256/111, 512/114. I'm skeptical, do you buy Thiels because you like it loud? They're magnificent with unamplified music at reasonable volumes. I tend to doubt you can have the best of everything in one package. Wouldn't drivers that can play crazy loud need to be built differently than ones that are optimized for detail? |
I think focusing on doubling is somewhat misguided. If an amp is stable and low distortion into 2 ohms it should be fine. How much power can it put into 2 ohms? An amp that can put 300w/ch into 2 ohms can put 150 into 4 ohms and 75 into 8. Whatever it can put into 2 ohms is what matters rather than doubling.
With the 3.7s it's hard for me to imagine they need a huge amp. They're 90db sensitive. (Stereophile measured 90.7.) 2 watts for 93db, 4 for 96, 8 for 99, 16 for 102, 32 for 105, 64 for 108, 128 for 111, 256 for 114. I'd be shocked if these can get anywhere close to 114db before exceeding their physical limits. The fairly inexpensive amps I have do the first 30 watts in class A. I'd bet that pretty much all of my listening is in class A. I worry about bottoming out the drivers a lot more than the amps. |
@unsound,
90 dB at 2.83 V 1/m into 4 ohms means current = 2.83/4 = 0.7075. Watts = current x voltage = 0.7075 x 2.83 = 2 watts. 90db at 2 watts, 93 at 4, 96 at 8, 99 at 16, 102 at 32. Regardless, the older I get the more I'm convinced that the way to go is to have a couple of systems. My den (I guess you'd call it) has my Thiel system, and my family room has my rock 'em sock 'em robots system. I'm guessing this is actually cheaper than having a single system that tries to do everything. I've got around 27k in both systems combined but components going all the way back to 2003. Less than 2k/year, not an extravagant hobby by any means. |
@prof, in the past I've thought that rolled off highs improved imaging. I thought that the very high sounds threw off my ability to hear spatially. I'm entirely in the listen to what you enjoy camp so I'm not at all critical of tube lovers. I just wonder if I'm the only one that has gotten this impression. |
That is quite a list, zero relationship between price and distortion. There's some seriously expensive stuff way down at the bottom. |
@yyzsantabarbara1, Your experience sounds very similar to mine. I had a single amp that was 200 w/ch into 8 ohms, around 300 into 4, and not specd into 2. It sounded ok with my 3.7s but I was motivated enough to buy a second one when my local store put the demo unit on sale. I was surprised at the improvement. Bigger, harder hitting, and more engaging is a great way to describe the difference. |
@solobone22 that speaker is still taken apart in the corner of the garage. Maybe I'll get to it and maybe I won't. I've already done 2 repairs and bought a replacement part. Knowing that I need at least two more parts to get them working has me considering just keeping the one that works and ditching the other. I bought a single PowerPlane 1.2 off ebay for $135. I'll probably just troll for bargains rather than sink more time and money into this mess. |
Sounds like a fried tweeter to me. I think what causes it is when the leads break, the strands tend to be touching at low volume but at high excursions they lose contact and then regain it, causing a crackling sound. I recently had this problem with a Thiel Viewpoint I got off of ebay. It was damaged in shipping and I glued the woofer together and got it working. The tweeter was crackling though, I took it apart and saw that strands of the wire leading to the voice coil were broken. I ordered a new tweeter and it had the same problem almost immediately. I took it apart again and the leads were broken just like the other one. I measured the crossover output for the tweeter at 60hz and it was the same as the output for the woofer. The crossover was damaged in such a way that it was frying tweeters. |
If I were going to try to reinforce an mdf box the first thing I'd look at is porcelain floor tiles. They're incredibly stiff and tough. They don't resonate much but what little they do is at a high frequency. I'd think combining them with mdf would be an ideal combination. |
One of my amps has been shutting off randomly. I've got a pair of Cambridge 840s I run bridged mono powering my 3.7s. They're both 10+ years old and are fairly budget oriented made in China products. I'm on the fence about trying to find someone to fix the problem. I'm assuming I'll be amp shopping in the next few months.
So, what should I consider? Should I consider a pair of the Benchmark amps? That's 6k and knowing me I'm unlikely to spend much more than that, or even that much if I can avoid it. I want the best performance I can get for the money but also reliability. There's a pair of Bryston 7B3 for sale somewhat locally and I might stretch the budget a little for something that will be under warranty until I'm retirement age. On the other hand, a lot of people seem to think the Benchmark amp is something special and I could get a pair of those brand new. All else being equal I'd rather buy something that runs cool and doesn't waste a lot of electricity. I definitely prefer buying made in America, or at least something not made by the brutally impoverished.
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@sdecker, absolutely, the relaxing nature of Thiels is something that I can't claim to objectively explain but I've experienced it very consistently. It's the thing that bothers you about other speakers not being there. It's funny because I'm generally an audiophile skeptic. I don't entirely disbelieve in wires but I mostly do. I'll probably never try an aftermarket powercord. but in this case I think there's something significantly different that I can't explain.
I had my Thiels in storage for a few years due to complications from the real estate crisis but when I got them set up again that quality was still unmistakably there. It's a little bit difficult for me to admit it. |
As a cable skeptic, I'm wondering how the length of speaker cables plays into this. If we assume that the perfect cable is transparent, shouldn't the ideal situation involve extremely short runs? Since I run mono amps I have a very short run of Audioquest type 4 cables, 3 feet I think. I could pretty easily shorten this to less than a foot if I believed it mattered. Is 1 foot of moderately priced cable better than 10 feet of expensive cable? This length vs price relationship has to be relevant. And if this sort of thing is so important shouldn't we see a lot more mono dacs and preamps so you can send your digital signal from your digital source to the mono dacs right next to your speakers that are hooked directly to the preamp that is hooked directly to the amp that is hooked directly to the speaker? Why not just eliminate significant analog cable runs altogether? I could buy a second identical dac, use only one channel on each one but make the dac/preamp/amp connections essentially plug to plug. If cables have the potential to do such harm why not just get rid of them? It's terribly difficult for me to believe any of the cable talk. I feel a little bit bad about it. |
