Company Address: 1042 Nandino Blvd., Lexington, Ky. 40511, USA.
The new Thiel CS2.2 is priced at $2,250 a pair, making it very much a high-end speaker, although it is priced only midway in this company's line. In fact, the Thiel CS2.2 costs only about a quarter of the price of the Thiel CS5, which I use as one of my reference speakers, although I suspect that for most audiophiles, the CS2.2 will be the better loudspeaker as well as the better buy.
The CS2.2 is a floor-standing speaker about 42 inches high, 12 1/4 inches wide, and 13 1/4 inches deep. It stands high enough to deliver the midrange and treble directly to the ear when the listener is seated, but low enough so that the speaker does not dominate the room. The relatively narrow front, at tractive front slope, and excellent woodwork also make the speaker easy to place.
As for basic design features, the CS2.2 uses a very rigid enclosure that is solidly built to reduce energy storage, and it weighs about 70 pounds. Even at very high sound levels, the enclosure is very well damped and unusually free of any sign of vibration.
The CS2.2 uses four drivers. The three active ones include a 1-inch high-output metal-dome tweeter that operates above 3 kHz, a 3-inch mid range driver that operates from 800 Hz to 3 kHz, an 8-inch very-long-throw woofer that operates up to 800 Hz, and a 6 x 9-inch passive radiator. The tweeter and midrange are close together and are carefully integrated to provide an apparent point source. The CS2.2 uses a complex crossover net work, and in what is virtually a Thiel trademark, it's designed for time and phase coherence. The Thiel CS2.2 includes such a wide range of other technical features that they all cannot be covered in a short review, but they are discussed in depth in a Thiel white paper.
The frequency response specification is set at a very demanding ±2 dB from 35 Hz to 20 kHz, the phase response specification is 5°, and time response is 150 µS for-20 dB.
The tweeter is a metal-dome design whose resonance is out at 26 kHz, while the woofer is a completely new two-cone design that reduces diaphragm resonance and low-level vibration. The front baffle is curved to reduce reflection and diffraction (thus providing cleaner sound and more precise imaging), and sloped to cut time error to less than 0.5 mS.
Specifications are one thing, and actual sound is another. The Thiel CS2.2 shows that a cone speaker design can compete with ribbons and electrostatics for apparent speed and transparency. At the same time, properly positioned, the CS2.2 smoothly integrates its outstanding treble and midrange with a level of bass dynamics and deep bass that few speakers any where near its price can touch.
Extended listening to the CS2.2's mid-bass, midrange, and treble makes it clear that this is a very flat design. It sounds consistently natural with a very wide range of well-recorded classical music, and is also free of any tendency to favor one type of voice over another or one instrument over another. The CS2.2 also blends the frequency extremes smoothly into the midrange. I have criticized some past Thiel speakers for providing a bit too much treble energy and for appearing to tilt the overall spectrum toward the upper frequencies. This is not a complaint that anyone is likely to make about the CS2.2. Few speakers provide treble this clean and extended.
Similarly, this really is a very different kind of bass than I've heard from past Thiel speakers. It measures very deep, and the CS2.2 can move a great deal of air in real-world listening rooms. Far too many speakers cannot really deliver deep or consistently tight bass at musically realistic power levels. The CS2.2 may not have the low-frequency extension of the CS5 in this regard, but its bass is both more realistic and better integrated with the midrange. It also adds a natural warmth lacking in Thiel's previous small and mid-sized speakers. The only caution I would make is that this kind of bass requires careful attention to placement. Putting the CS2.2 near a room boundary will produce too much bass, and experimentation is needed to avoid room interaction and standing-wave problems. As is the case with all speakers with this kind of bass power, the CS2.2 is not suited for a boomy room. Further, as a 4-ohm speaker, it naturally puts higher demands on the amplifier, and both the bass and the dynamics benefit a great deal from using a high-power high-current amplifier with excellent damping.
The most impressive aspect of the CS2.2 is its level of clarity and definition. I spend a great deal of time listening to ribbons and electrostatics, and, prejudiced or not, I generally find they provide more speed and detail than conventional speakers, and do so with more coherence and integration. I was also listening to a well-regarded electrostatic while I was auditioning the Thiel, however, and the CS2.2 consistently revealed more harmonic and transient detail.
Although it may not be important to the average user, I was also surprised to find that the CS2.2 revealed some of the differences between cartridges and digital decoders better than its big brother, the CS5. I was particularly struck by its ability to resolve the finer details in low-level passages with larger midrange content and on solo guitar. The acoustic guitar is an instrument that virtually all good speakers can reproduce reasonably well, but few can reproduce very well. The Thiel CS2.2 is in the latter category.
The speaker's soundstage and imaging are also very good, as they have the normal characteristics of a mono polar speaker configured to provide an apparent point source. With the speakers positioned about 7 feet apart and angled slightly toward the listening position, the soundstage was wide with out any tendency to leave a hole in the middle or to cluster the sound around the speaker. The apparent depth was the apparent depth on the recording; the CS2.2s do not add any depth of their own or lack any of the CS5's ability to reproduce the depth that is actually on a recording.
The size of the soundstage was moderate, at least compared to bipolar and planar speakers. There also was no extra hall effect of the kind you get with speakers with rear radiation, al though the clarity of the CS2.2 benefited from the lack of extra reflections and the apparent soundstage was very natural.
The imaging was very precise, with no exaggerations or subtractions, and was stable over a relatively wide listening area. The arc of left-to-right imaging was excellent, with instruments and voices reproduced at the size appropriate to the recording. Back-to-front imaging was good, although some other high-end speakers do a better job of reproducing layers of depth.
Musical dynamics were very good for a speaker of this size, and the CS2.2 reproduces complex and demanding dynamic passages with no apparent trade-offs of frequency range or clarity. This is an outstanding speaker for romantic symphony, grand opera, jazz groups, and the increasing amount of well-recorded power rock. At the same time, it does equally well with chamber music, solo voice, and solo instruments.
If you give proper attention to room placement and the choice of power amplifier, the CS2.2 is a superb choice for real-world audio systems-providing outstanding performance in a moderate-sized speaker that only requires a single amplifier per channel. This is not only Thiel's best product yet, but a best buy.
-Anthony H. Cordesman
(adapted from Audio magazine, Aug. 1992)
Also see:
Tannoy 615 Speaker (Equip. Profile Aug. 1992)
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