Thiel Owners

I always believed that too.  I haven’t discerned any downside so far but I’ll listen to them this way for a while and then put the cloths back on. 

@coop_301 

Assuming the CS6 speakers are level to start, raise the front of the speakers 1/8 to 1/4 inch higher than the back of the speakers and see what that does for you regarding the sibilance.  You might also need to adjust toe in.  Beyond that it might be the electronics.  Let me know.

PS.  If you all want to hear what your Thiels can do, try these Albums titled Closer to the Music Vol's 1-5 just released on Qobuz.  I'm just now on Vol 2.  Captivating!

@thieliste

Good stuff and always fun to try out new gear.

Some of us cringe at the word "smoked" when it comes to amps. 😊

Thinking back to the 70s and 80s it was not so uncommon for some amps to literally go up in smoke. In fact, my Dad’s 1968 Philco Color TV caught fire once. It was maybe a year old when it happened. Managed to contain the damage and get it repaired. Needless to say, always some tension turning it on after that.

 

Yes.  Thank you very much. 

I just listened to my Thiels naked.  I mean I removed the cloth grilles. I kept my clothes on of course since that could affect the sound reflections. I don’t know why I have never tried that before.  They look cool without the grilles on.  It took the clarity up a notch.  The imaging is so tight and focused now I have been getting autographs from the singers.  

CS6.  I bought them as demos from a dealer in 2005.  They are beautiful speakers in a light oak finish. 

Do you know how many CS6s?

I put the grill clothes back on my CS6’s. It was fun for a day to listen to bare speakers. They sound different with the grill cloths off but more natural with them on. Also, I have been tweaking my speaker position lately as well and I think I have found the ideal arrangement for me. Using the center of the tweeter as the reference point, the speakers are 102" apart, 50" from the side walls and 80" from the front wall (ie. behind the speakers) to the front plane of the tweeters. I find a tiny bit of toe in sharpens the focus of the imaging. I have 1/2" toe in. My listening position is 122" perpindicular to the front plane of the tweeters. That means from my ears to each speaker is a bit more than that distance. This gives me a deep and wide holographic soundstage. I can almost reach out and touch the performers, (but of course I wouldn’t do that).

Hello brettmcee,  I will chime in.  I have had my CS6 speakers for 16 years now.  I know them pretty well.  As far as amplification they need lots of current.  The impedance drops to 1 ohm at some frequencies.  As a rule if your amp can double wattage from 8 to 4 and then from 4 to 2 ohms then it should handle the Thiels.  But another important consideration is a dedicated power line to your amp.  That also helps the sound quite a bit.  Next, placement:  I find the Thiels sound best when at least 8 ft apart on centers to get a good large sound stage.  I also find that the bass sounds best when the center of the tweeters are 4.5 to 5 feet from the side walls and 5 feet from the back walls.  Yes, they take a large room, in my experience to sound their best.  At those dimensions, I toe the speakers in just a bit, like 1/4 to 1/2" front to back to bring the imaging into sharp focus.  Too much toe in and the imaging gets too much in your face and the large holographic sound stage starts to collapse.  I also find tilting the speakers back slightly affects the sound.  Try tilting the speakers back such that a level on top of the speaker front to back is off by 1/3 bubble.  That should help with the hollow sound.
Now, about the floor.  The CS6 speakers will interact with the floor even when using spikes.  Without spikes you do not stand a chance.  The speakers must be decoupled from the floor to clean up the bass.  Carpeting seems to suck the life out of the music.  I have my CS6 speakers in a carpeted room too (but I am getting hardwood installed any day now) so I have the speakers sitting on stone tiles.  I tried wood boards and stone.  I preferred their sound standing on their spikes on stone tiles on the carpeted floor.  In my last house, I had the Thiels on carpet and then changed the flooring to hardwood.  It made a big improvement in sound.  Decoupling the speakers from the floor is crucial.  
I added subwoofers to get that last 1/2 octave.  I feel I have successfully integrated the subs with my Thiels by having them roll off at 34 Hz and I phased them based on their relative position to the Thiel's woofers.
I have auditioned the Wilson Alexia 2's a couple of times now.  The Wilsons have incredible bass.  They are a little faster than the Thiels and the bass is a bit cleaner.   The problem is that it is not a hands down massive difference.  The Thiels do some things better actually.  So I'm struggling with the idea of changing speakers because I'm asking myself if I will really move up or am I just looking to change for the sake of change.  
The Thiels can be very rewarding.  Even after 16 years they still give me goosebumps and can move me to tears.  These things are very nearly timeless.

Hi everyone.  I just made a change to my listening room.  I removed the carpet and installed 3/4" hardwood flooring.  The upgrade exceeded my expectations.  The Thiel CS6's have never sounded better.  The new floor not only made the bass tighter and clearer but it also makes the speakers sound faster.  I'm am rethinking the idea of new speakers now. Check out my system page for more details and pictures.  
I gave up on the contractors and installed the wood floor myself.  I lost 10 lbs in 2 days putting down 500 sqft of flooring.  I was tired, sore, stiff and angry that I had to do it myself.  That all melted away as soon as I played the first song.

Tom,
Thank you for the information.  I learned something.  I ordered a new throw rug for my room to go in front of the speakers.  I unwittingly ordered a wool rug because I like wool and I opted for the more expensive fiber pad instead of the much cheaper rubber pad.  I didn’t know I was doing what’s best acoustically.  

Hi Jafant,
I brought home an AQ Niagra power conditioner with an AQ Hurricane power cord.  Ow! That hurt the wallet a bit.  It was the price of a very good amplifier.  Regardless, it is not going back to the store.  The biggest improvement?  The highs are now creamylicious.  That's the best way to describe it.  The Thiels really sing now.  Even digital highs are so smooth and sweet.  I know it is costly but I'm a believer now on what clean power can do.  And this Niagra replaced a Furman Elite 15i.  I thought the Furman was good.
Our Thiel speakers still have a lot to give us even decades later.  Remarkable speakers.

Interesting conversation about the Wilson’s. I heard the Alexia 2’s for the first time about 10 months ago and auditioned them in depth in June. The Alexia’s have fantastic bass. The mids and highs sounded faster than the Thiels but the Thiels have better imaging and vocals, I thought. Since then I replaced the carpeting with hardwood in my listening room and adjusted my subs to improve the bass and added dedicated power lines. The wood floor made the Thiels sound faster. The dedicated power lines helped too.
I too thought the Thiel’s tweeters were lacking and still a bit harsh until I added the Niagara Power Conditioner with a Hurricane Power Cord. The highs are creamy smooth now. My lust for the Alexia’s is waning as I have made these progressive improvements to my room and system. The bass is much improved but still not quite the caliber of the Alexia’s but I feel like I would be giving up a lot to gain that little bit better bass. I plan to make another audition in December perhaps.

Thank you for sharing.  Using subs adds a lot of flexibility to tuning the system to the room.  I also experimented with speaker/sub placement.  I like the Thiel's well away from the back wall to create a deep and wide soundstage but that does lean out the bass a bit.  So the subs ended up close to the back wall and toed in just a bit.  I wouldn't think that toeing in subs would matter but it seems to help.  The bass is very satisfactory, very good now in my system.  I happened to take a CD by Stanley Clark titled East River Drive, with me last summer when auditioning the Alexia's.  I played the first track and I could hear the skin of the bass drums on the Alexia's.  The Alexia's bass is very fast and crisp.  That sound was very apparent.  I now have my system to the point that playing this same track sounds really close to that of the Alexia's but I listen for the skin of the bass drums and that detail it is almost there but not as obvious.  This is the difference that I'm talking about.  And that difference could be due to the D'Augustino amps driving the Alexia's vs. my Pass Labs Amps at home- or the DCS DAC at the store vs my Ayon DAC or a hundred other things.  Think of the bitter disappointment were I to bring the Alexia's home just to learn that I need different amps.  This is the thing about Thiel speakers.  It will be very expensive to find a speaker that can surpass the Thiels in every way.  And then I heard the new Vandersteen Model 7 XTRM speakers in August.  They sound better to me than the Alexia's...

To make sure we are talking the same thing- on the first track, the bass drum comes in at 28 seconds.  It is a double tap through out the song.  
I listened to some of the Nameless album.  Interesting and well recorded.  The vocals are very intimate.  
I will order some more acoustic diffusers for the side walls.  I have been thinking about that.

I just used the spring mass formula.  Fn= 1/2Pi * (k/M)^0.5
So my 165 lbs speakers needed 4, 57 lbs/in springs for a 3.3 Hz resonance. That particular spring was available on the McMaster Carr website. 

Hi Jafant et al.  I have been reading about isolation on other threads and watching some videos online.  I became intrigued and wanted to isolate my Thiel CS6 speakers with springs but not spend $1000's doing it.  Last weekend I came up with an idea to use butcher blocks and coil springs as stands for the speakers.  Easy enough to calculate the spring rate needed to keep the resonance point of the speaker stands at 3 Hz. I ordered the springs I needed from McMaster Carr.  Reference my system page for a picture and a couple of paragraphs with details.  I drilled pockets into the butcher blocks to hold the springs and keep the travel down to about 0.100" so the speakers are fairly stable.  I downloaded a vibration analysis app onto my iPad.  Here is the interesting part which I also saw demonstrated online.  With the iPad sitting on top of the speaker and the speaker coupled to the floor with the spikes, I tap on the speaker cabinet with a steel ball and I can see not just the impulse on the screen but I also see the cabinet ringing for a few moments.  I can tap the steel ball on the floor and see the exact same impulse and ringing on the iPad app still sitting on top of the speaker.  But when I placed the speaker on the spring platform and tap the speaker cabinet with the steel ball, the impulse appears but the ringing is gone.  I tap the steel ball on the floor and see no impulse at all on the iPad.  The speaker is completely isolated from the floor.  I think the ringing is caused by the vibration energy going into the floor and being reflected back into the speaker cabinet spikes or no.  By the speaker being completely isolated the reflections are eliminated.  As expected the imaging became even more focused.  Clarity improved greatly.  Drum beats are tight and clear.  I just isolated my amplifiers using the same design and springs.  Since my amps weigh 100 lbs apiece the same springs work out with only a few tenths of a Hz increase in resonance frequency.  There is good and bad to all this.  The good is that it sounds great and I hear much more detail.  On digital material the music now decays forever.  I hear low level background noise on more digital files now.  The bad is that I hear more detail to the point of distraction.  On an acoustic recording this evening I heard a low level buzz off to the right.  Immediately I thought I had a buzzing tweeter.  My anxiety went through the roof.  I jumped up and put my ear close to the speaker and I could hear the buzz.  It was apparently a bad cable in the recording.  Next song was ok.  Whew!  I heard a sound in another song but this time I switched my preamp to mono and the noise moved to center so speakers are fine.  Spring isolation works just be careful what you wish for.

The app is called VibrationAnalysys. 

Total cost for my project was just under $200.  Most of that was for the butcher blocks.  The springs didn't cost much and I had to buy a 1.5" diameter Forstner bit- $15.  This project requires a drill press.  
I have been using spikes on my speakers for decades because that is what I always believed was best.  I decided to try out springs just to see if the concept had merit.  I can tell you my head was spinning the moment I hit play with my speakers on springs.  I was amazed at the difference it made.  I'm glad to have the vibration app for the iPad which helps explain why the springs work.  Btw- the app also does FFT (Fast Fourier Transform from the time to frequency domain)  and so I can push down on a speaker and see the 3 Hz resonance on the plot.  Pretty cool.

Thank you.  I am enjoying them very much.