Thiel Owners

@Norbert,

What I neglected to say above is that I think that your original point above really being about weak-sister sub/standmount systems having inherently more bass problems than they’re even worth is actually true and a perfectly valid one. But, I suppose that maybe the problem is less about the design goal than about the overall execution....the bass region being both so much more critical to the listening experience and technically difficult to get right than many of us may be, initially anyway, willing to deal with.

@nkonor and prof,

I tried and tried as well. But, in my own case, I came to the opposite conclusion - good, "killer" subs and and 2-way standmounts just might be the Only way to solve that problem...at least if you ask me. But, what I found was that all of that pushed me well into the DIY waters before I learned how to swim with it.

I have some amps that each have a suite of digital pro-tools (crossover, EQ, delay...everything except phase adjustment, which turned out to not be so critical for me) and with 3 of them (one stereo amp each for highs, mids and lows) I had the architecture in place to build my own speakers from scratch.

But with all that flexibility I found that I was, in a real way, suddenly freed from all the oppressive blunders and corner cutting that speaker manufacturers invariably make...crossover points that are too high or too low, crossover overlap or underlap, mismatched drivers, questionable crossover components or design complexity that’s intended to cover up for mismatched drivers, bad parts, etc, etc. But with an ability for me to design the speakers completely around the crossovers (from the start) instead of the other way round, I found I could finally have speakers (OB in my case) the way "I" would’ve made them, because...well, I Did.

All that led to my current setup, a pair of 15" Hawthorne Audio "Augies" paired with my own horn-version of Danny Ritchie’s "Wedgie" OB standmounts. But, again, no passive crossovers along with endless control over just where all the parameters are set is what made the difference...throw in some generous amounts of conditioning to settle the digital noise down and voila, it’s done. OB bass does load the room a little differently than box designs, but OB, IME, has the edge in everything else bass.

In this setup though, there IS no bass region any more...only bass instruments, with every bit as much tone, body, color, texture, harmonics, transparency and extension as instruments in any other portion of the range. As big as the Augies are, they hit hard and are more invisible here, from what I’ve ever heard, than any floorstanders I’ve experienced. Yes, all that took years of tweaking and a lot of off-roading on my part before I ever figured it all out, but it is possible to make this approach work and work well...even if all the challenges end up being not to be taken lightly.

In effect, I suppose I had to become my own designer.

Best regards,
John

Amen to that!