Thiel Owners

Maybe I’m just lucky, but I find the integration of two subs with my 3.5s to be seamless and without issue.

I spent a little time getting the positioning absolutely correct, by ear, which in my music room turns out to be exactly 1 foot behind the speakers with the sub drivers at 90 degrees to the Thiel drivers and both sub drivers pointing into the soundstage. My inspiration for this configuration was side firing subs such as can be found in the Golden Ear range. I found that having the drivers pointing at the listening position made them too obvious. For whatever reason, having them at right angles to the 3.5s creates an incredibly smooth transition. I never sit there thinking I have subs on. It all sounds totally integrated.

Obviously there is some tweaking with sub settings but what’s interesting is that I found exactly the same positioning and levels also work perfectly with my Quad 57s. The subs are connected to the amp by an extra speaker cable per channel. I prefer to still let the Thiel woofers do their high quality stuff and then set the subs so that they subtly kick in at the right point.

The subs are the now discontinued but still available Polk 505s which were practically being given away at the end of their run, but work amazingly well having been designed with music reproduction in mind, according to the blurb. These have 12" drivers so they produce plenty of very clean oomph. I bought them as a stopgap, assuming that I’d have to upgrade to fancy RELs or similar to get great results. Three years on and I don’t have the slightest urge to change this set up.

I note Tom’s comments about the preference for a new all-in-one bass eq solution on the work he is doing. However, I can report that the bass performance I’m getting is substantially better than through the Thiel EQ box. It seems to be a really effective compromise.

With ageing speakers, I think it’s also valid to say that running subs takes a lot of strain out of the mid range drivers, especially. Obviously for the moment it’s important to keep those running until an adequate replacement is either created or sourced.
Fully accept that everyone is going to have their own experiences in their own listening environments, but in my own case I just couldn’t be happier.

I want to be able to run these 3.5s for the rest of my days if that’s at all possible. They are that rarest of speaker that never drops the ball on any type of material. As happy with punk as they are a string quartet. A genius design.

Guys - thanks for the grace for my rant. The marble baffle was a work of art as it stood. The concrete of the 6 and 7 has its own story. My last project in the mid 90s was developing a lower cost baffle for the 6 and 7, which was a Hydrostone product combining gypsum with portland cements , is highly machinable, accepts damping agents and paints quite well, and has zero shrinkage. It also requires forced hot air kiln drying, could not be outsourced and all-in, cost more than the CS5 baffle in its final painted form. That never made it to production.
Back story: introduction of mystery character. Walter Kling was one of the 5 partners who started Thiel Audio as our communal venture. Walter was genius at tooling, jigs, fixtures, and so forth. He complemented my skill set very well, and we wouldn’t have created a company without him. He left after a few years for personal reasons and had a career in architecture. For my exit plan after 20 years, I hired 3 people to carry on the rigors of growing production. Walter was central to that transition, and he shone till he left at Jim’s death. Unsung hero, and Jim’s right-hand man.

Walter brought his architectural mind-set, and Jim had always asserted that "Concrete would be the ultimate cabinet material". I disagreed due to its high Q, low impact strength, continual shrinking over time and its quirkiness as a paint substrate.
You probably saw this coming: they chose concrete for the next baffles. And it shrank and cracked and required replacement with the "polymer mineral compound", which is shorthand for aggregated polyester, similar to the CS5 baffle but strictly paint-grade with no marble / pretensions of high-gloss, see-into glamor. I understand that it worked fine. But then what to do with that Hydrostone research and development? After Thiel, I did some consulting including Hales. Remember the mid 90s upper end Hales’ with cast baffles? That’s the stuff.

As a long-time CS3.5 owner I'm glad to see that so many others share my love of this speaker! Fortunately the original drivers are holding up so far, but I do live in fear of losing a mid range driver. My listening area is quite small so even with the EQ they live a pretty easy life. I can't wait to see what you come up with to keep these speakers going long into the future.

After Thiel, I did some consulting including Hales. Remember the mid 90s upper end Hales’ with cast baffles? That’s the stuff.

Maybe not coincidently, Thiel and Hales were among my favorite speaker brands of the 90s and continue to be so.  I owned Hales Transcendence 5 speakers and still own and love my Hales Transcendence T1 monitors and center channel, which do home theater duty these days.