Thiel Owners

@8th-note, Great job reporting!
Geesh, $600 for a driver rebuild !?
....And with so much work on your part.

@tomthiel, sorry I was off the forum for a week and didn't see your response about 2.7 development until recently.

I'm unclear why the 2.7 needed a HIGHER frequency woofer XO point than the 2.4's 1000Hz. The 3.7's 4.5" midrange should be able to much better handle lower frequencies than the 2.4's 2.5" midrange. Indeed, the 3.7 XO is at 300Hz, so the mid can go at least that low. So why not lower the XO point of the 2.7 woofer to say 500Hz for better power handling and even less beaming? That would stress the 2.7/3.7 midrange less than in the 3.7, and stress the 2.7/2.4 woofer less than in the 2.4, so a win/win with a lower XO point, but you state it is higher, and with 14X more capacitance, it would seem a LOT higher. Hmmm.  Please expound.

To that point, why wouldn't the 2.7 use 4x100uF film caps or even smaller to get to 416uF, rather than one massive 400uF? It would seem the slight increases in space and price 4 or more film caps would create would more than offset the potential sonic deficit of one giant electrolytic directly between the amp and wonderfully pure coax driver.

Indeed, that's the weakest link of the 2.4 for me, the excursions required of a 2.5" cone (effectively less when including the hole in the middle for a tweeter dome) to move enough air at lower frequencies at higher volumes, to below say 250Hz (2 octaves below XO point, so only -12dB; if playing 100dB, mid asked to put out 250Hz percussives at 88dB (round 'electrical' numbers, not taking acoustic roll-off contributions to the end-result 6dB/octave slopes.)).  Ask Rob how many 2.4 coaxes I've gone through, and not due to lack of clean watts and amps!

sdecker - you are asking the right questions. And I have no answers. Remember that I had no involvement or insider information from 1995 to 2012. I'll tell you what little I have pieced together. Please pardon any repetition for the long term readers.

Thiel created the CS2.7 to develop and demonstrate their ability to produce valid products without Jim. They auditioned multiple inside and outside engineering solutions and landed on Warkwyn - Toronto, a full service design development firm with full access to the Canadian Research Center which develops most of the Canadian brands' products. The concept design was developed by Home Team Thiel, and Warkwyn did the engineering and prototyping. The results were not acceptable to HTT, and that process went on for a couple of years and cost mid $six figures. I got the impression that engineering decisions, such as you iterate above, were not on the table for discussion for reasons I can only speculate.

I will say that Jim never used a cap larger than 100uF, even in parallel circuits. I will say that Jim was very cognizant of beaming and its power response implications. And it seems to me that the core personality of the 2.7 became conflated with the 3.7 to a much greater degree than previous model generations. The 3.7 was designed to play louder into larger spaces with deeper bass; whereas the 2.7 was to be more intimate in smaller spaces with less bass extension to not distress those smaller spaces, at considerably reduced cost. Such gestalt overview seems to have suffered as time went on - the 2.7 / 3.7 seem far more similar to me than the CS2 / CS3.5.

Your suggestions above seem well considered to me. I wonder with you why such basic considerations didn't make it into the product. Notice that there is a convenient slot of 2.5 - 2.6 in the line-up. Who knows what the future might bring?

Correction: In the second last paragraph I mis-typed 3.7 and 2.7 where I meant to say that the model 3 was designed to play louder . . . and the model 2 was to be more intimate . . .

if playing 100dB, mid asked to put out 250Hz percussives at 88dB (round 'electrical' numbers, not taking acoustic roll-off contributions to the end-result 6dB/octave slopes.)). Ask Rob how many 2.4 coaxes I've gone through, and not due to lack of clean watts and amps!

Interesting. If ability to play >100 dB was an important factor to me I would probably look at something like the JBL K2 S9800. Modestly efficient Thiels with their low impedance seem a, um, sub-optimal choice for those who like to listen at very high SPLs. And to still have your CS2.4s after burning multiple coaxes? You must *really* like their sound!