Thiel PowerPoint Surface-Mount Loudspeakers
 The biggest problem most people have with home theater is not the size of the
monitors (everybody wants a bigger TV) or even the cost (those $10,000 plasma sets
are flying out of the stores). No, the sticking point for most people is where to put
all those extra speakers.
Actually, if you watch the home-porn on HGTV or read the
nesting press like Architectural Digest, you'd be forgiven for thinking that, if
left to their own devices, designers would just as soon ban all loudspeakers from
rooms.
Now, I'm an audiophile, myself. I figure, what's the point
of having floor space, if not to have a blank surface to put speakers on? And if
Anthony Powell opined that Books Do Furnish A Room, I feel the same way about
speakers. Why heck, the most comfortable rooms I've ever been in have been filled with
books, records, and speakers. But then, no room I've ever lived in is in the
slightest danger of appearing on the cover of Architectural Digest.
So what do you do if you have a designer room that you want
to use for home theater -- or even if your room is already so stuffed with speakers,
books, and records that you have nowhere to put any extra speakers?
Most people rely on in-wall or on-wall loudspeakers.
However, until recently, in-wall loudspeakers were pretty much aimed at industrial
applications such as restaurants, stores, malls, and the like. They were more about
disappearing than they were about sounding good. That's changed in the last decade or so,
but in-walls are hard to review, so that's still a pretty well-kept secret.
On-wall speakers have lagged behind the in-walls, simply
because they aren't as sexy. You've still got something that looks like a speaker in the
room, so designers avoid 'em like the undead shun garlic. And speaker companies sort of
treat 'em like their ugly sisters -- they include 'em in the literature, but they don't
introduce 'em to all their friends.
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme
experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.
The Thiel PowerPoints are different, though. Boy, are they
different! First, Thiel is proud of 'em -- in fact, Jim Thiel tells me, strictly based on
dollar amounts, they were the company's No. 1 selling product last year.
Further, they're kind of sexy looking. They're wedge-shaped
-- they look like a doorstop writ large. Mounted on a wall or ceiling, they look more like
modest bulges than like speakers stuck on the wall. And they're paintable, so they blend
in even more than you might think -- in fact, Thiel includes a paint-mask, so you can
conveniently paint the entire PowerPoint, including the grille, without threatening the
speaker's coaxial driver.
Nor are the PowerPoints just an afterthought product, added
to the line to make it competitive. That's not the way Jim Thiel works. One thing that has
always distinguished Thiel as a speaker line is the way it adheres to Jim's
speaker-building philosophies. There are certain features shared by all Thiel products.
Jim believes in time-aligned arrays, which ensure that all of the drivers launch a music
wave simultaneously. He also believes that first-order crossovers, which maintain the
phase integrity of the musical signal throughout the speaker’s entire frequency
response, are the only technically correct approach. And he thinks that his
crossovers must be constructed from the finest components. And that speakers should be solidly built and rigidly braced. So that's the way
Jim builds all his speakers -- and to ensure that they're all as close to his idea of
perfection as possible, these days, Jim designs and constructs all his own drivers
in-house.
The PowerPoint features a custom-built driver based on the
coaxial driver Jim designed for his SCS3 multimedia speaker. The 1" dome tweeter --
the same one used in Thiel's $13,500 CS-7.2 -- is mounted coaxially with the woofer, which
is to say that it is located in the center of the woofer cone so that its wave can launch
at the same time as the woofer's.
The tweeter uses a special magnet structure made of
neodymium magnets, which are expensive but extremely powerful. These magnets give
the speaker high output capability and low distortion.
 The 6.5" woofer uses the same
two-layer diaphragm as the SCS3. There is an aluminum layer bonded to a lightweight cast
polystyrene layer to ensure its rigidity. The cone has a specially designed shallow flare
to prevent it from acting like a horn for the tweeter. (To get an idea why that's bad, cup
your hands around your mouth and speak -- that's what a horn does to a sound source.)
However, the PowerPoint places certain physical requirements on the driver -- it needs to
keep quite close to the wall, so the SCS3's magnet system had to be redesigned to employ
higher-output neodymium magnets in order to keep the driver's motor-system compact.
Like all Thiel loudspeakers, the PowerPoints employ a
complex first-order network using many polypropylene and polystyrene capacitors.
"Well," Jim Thiel allows, "By our standards, it's not really complex -- it
is just a two-way design, after all. There are some small changes we had to make
because it's designed to use on a boundary, so we had to correct for the emphasis you do
get in the lower midrange and bass regions."
Dancing on the ceiling . . .
The shell is thermo-formed 3/8"-thick plastic, heated and vacuum-formed to
its complex shape. It is rigidly braced from the inside, so that the whole is quite inert.
And small -- it's only 19.75"L x 12.25"W x 5.5"H.
And the PowerPoints cost $1300 each. That's a hefty price
tag for such a small speaker, but -- packed with premium parts, custom-built drivers and
custom-built motor systems -- the PowerPoints aren't built like mass-produced products.
They're essentially cost-no-object devices built to optimize performance in what other
designers have deemed a compromised situation.
It's obvious that Jim Thiel doesn't see it that way.
"When Kathy [Kathy Gornik, Thiel's president] said, 'We need an on-wall.' I went, 'Ohhhhhhhh-kay,'"
Thiel said. "Originally, I just figured I'd take our coaxial driver and put it in a
shallow cabinet with the driver mounted parallel to the wall, like all the other designs
out there. I had some vague idea that I'd taper the cabinet to the wall to minimize
diffraction."
The results weren't pretty. Thiel continued, "We
mocked up something along those lines and we took the first measurements and saw that
there was a big hole in the midrange caused by the reflection off the wall, even though
I'd tapered the cabinet into the wall. That caused a cancellation where that distance
equaled a quarter wavelength. That cancellation created a 6dB hole smack in the middle of
the midrange and we just couldn't do that."
Then inspiration struck -- instead of trying to create a
speaker that tried to compensate for its near-boundary location, what if it exploited
it? "I got the idea that, if I mounted the driver close enough to the wall, and, if
the driver was mounted at a significant angle to the wall (in the case of the PowerPoint,
that angle is 45 degrees), at some higher frequency the dispersion will become less than
45 degrees. So, if you can get the driver close enough to the wall so that the frequency
that is cancelled is higher than the frequencies that the driver can disperse at 45
degrees, then you won't have a cancellation because the frequency that would be cancelled
is high enough that the driver is not dispersing energy at that frequency at a wide-enough
angle to project energy against the wall.
"That was my idea -- and it turned out to work really
well. The only complication in working it out was that, to get the driver close enough to
the wall, we had to build a really shallow driver with a physically small magnet system.
So we had to use a neodymium magnet system and design things a little differently."
Oh sure -- it sounds so easy when he says it.
"Only then did we start appreciating that there's a huge
benefit in having the driver so close to the boundary that you essentially have no
reflection from the boundary. Also, by having that driver at 45 degrees, there were
advantages in room coverage and dispersion of energy throughout the room.
"Those benefits were serendipitous -- we didn't really
have them in mind going into the project and, since the topology was developed in response
to certain more obvious considerations, it still didn't occur to us that the design would
offer these benefits. But when we listened to the finished product we realized we had
something really cool!"
Adieu tristesse / Bonjour tristesse / Tu es
inscrite dans les lignes du plafond.
(Farewell sadness / Good-day sadness / You are inscribed in the lines of the ceiling
…)
Really cool, eh? That's about right -- the first time I
heard my system with five PowerPoints set up, I just kept giggling and replaying parts of The
Ghosts of Mars that sounded really impressive. This says a lot about how well
the Thiels enveloped me with sound and not a whole heck of a lot for the quality of the
movie, which was so uncompelling, I didn't mind interrupting it frequently.
But to be fair, I was having such a ball with the Thiels, I
probably would have done the same thing with a movie that actually had characters I cared
about. The five Thiels created environments that were totally sonically believable. Even
though they're monopoles, and it's dipoles that are supposed to disappear and generate
sound that doesn't seem to emanate from a specific location, the Thiels totally
disappeared.
Actually, as I went through my selection of greatest-DVD
surround-ambience hits, I came to the conclusion that I had never heard a more immersive
system in a home -- the sound rivaled the sort of envelopment I have only heard in 42nd
Street showcase cinemas.
 I don't tend to
revel in explosions, crashes, and giant lizard stomps -- although the Thiels do handle
high-excursion silly sound levels with great aplomb -- I'm a bigger fan of the subtle
sounds that emulate real life. Stuff like the rainfall and lightning taking place during
Gene Hackman's big quayside speech in Crimson Tide or the changes in room acoustics
as characters dash in and out of different rooms in the Pentagon in Clear and Present
Danger or the simple sounds of the wind passing through the jungle in the same film.
Jonathan Demme is the master of mise en scéne or
the setting up of the environment in which a film takes place. Nowhere is this more
obvious than in The Silence of the Lambs, where every scene has the lived-in
clutter and individual touches that distinguish rooms in real life and that movies and TV
shows never get right. Places like the autopsy lab where Clarisse discovers the
Death's Head moth or the victim's bedroom where Clarisse searches for clues have the
disarray and jumbled minutia of real life. This attention to detail extends to the sonic
landscape of the film, and the film distinguishes between rooms with a myriad of tiny
sound cues.  With the Thiels, shifts in scene were
almost dizzying, and the longer the camera lingered in each environment, the more detail
accrued. This is precisely what surround sound is supposed to be like and almost never is.
What the Thiels don't do is recreate deep bass. From about
75Hz to 20kHz, you couldn't ask for better response, but below that, nada. Well,
fine, that's what subwoofers are for, but that puts the total system cost up there. I used
the Polk PSW650, which is not only quite reasonably priced at $780, but a most effective
partner to the Thiels. Rolling off the Thiels at about 80Hz made it possible to seamlessly
blend the PowerPoints with the floor-mounted subwoofer.
When I spoke to Jim Thiel about his design process on the
PowerPoints, he almost apologetically suggested that I listen to a pair of them as
full-range speakers in a stereo configuration. No need for apologies -- they sounded
fantastic! Just as the 5.1 system was completely enveloping, the two-channel system was
practically holographic.
The men's chorus Chanticleer recently released a recording
of John Tavener's Lamentations and Praises [Teldec Classics 0927-41342-2], a
specially commissioned work for the group's 12 voices and a fascinating combination of
instruments and electronics: flute, bass trombone, string quintet, tape, and a percussion
section comprised of a Byzantine monastery bell, Tibetan temple bowl, tam-tam, simantron
(a large wooden sounding-board struck with a hammer), tubular bells, and timpani.
The composer describes Lamentations and Praises as a
"sequence of ikons" linked, as he explains in the score, "by a
corridor of music." Through the recording, laid down at Skywalker Sound, the group
essentially "stages" the work by exploiting different acoustics for the various
scenes and connecting passages. The PowerPoints set me down in the midst of the changing
acoustic, cushioned in the soft pillow of the reverberant sound of men's voices and the
shifting instrumental textures. What a fabulous experience.
In fact, as I told Jim Thiel, it was better soundstaging
than I had experienced with some very serious loudspeaker systems. "In a way,
these speakers image better than a conventional floorstanding speaker," Jim
explained, "because you don't have any equivalent floor reflection. By not having
that boundary reflection to tell you the sound source is a certain distance away, you are
more transported to the soundfield of the recording you're listening to." What he
said!
Talk about an acoustic ceiling . . .
The last complete home-theater speaker system I reviewed
consisted of the Polk LSi15, LSiC, LSi7, and PSW650 -- a system that
retails for just over $3900. A system comprised of five Thiel PowerPoints and the Polk
PSW650 retails for a little over $7100.
Both systems were immersive and dynamic, but there were
noticeable differences between the two. The front three Polks worked extremely well
together and offered a greater sense of slam in loud and clamorous scenes, but they
couldn't match the speaker-to-speaker timbral uniformity of the three identical
PowerPoints. Also, as good as the Polk LSiC is, it contributes a mild
"picket-fence" comb as you pass your head from one side to the other. The wide
dispersion and identical dispersion pattern of the three front channel PowerPoints'
coaxial driver systems not only avoids that, it almost avoids any indication of there
being three separate soundfields up front. From one wall to the other, the sound is
seamless.
The surround channels differ, as well. The Polk LSi7s
are monopoles, as are the PowerPoints, but the surround effects coming from the Polks are
far more speaker specific than the same sounds from the Thiels.
Now the Polks are no different from most other monopole
speakers in this regard. While some people insist that only dipoles deliver the properly
diffuse soundfield that movie-theater surround is known for, I've never been able to
summon any great degree of passion one way or the other on the subject. I've heard
great-sounding dipoles that generated truly non-locatable diffuse soundfields, but I've
also known monopoles that performed just as convincingly.
The PowerPoints seemed to offer the best of both worlds,
however. While I never found the Polks unsatisfying in my audition, I vastly preferred the
atmospheric immersion the PowerPoints were capable of. It sounded "real"-er.
As a surround system, the PowerPoint/PSW650 system was the
clear victor -- albeit at nearly twice the price. Things were on a much more equal footing
when I compared the LSi15s as a stereo pair to a stereo pair of PowerPoints. The
Thiels still had that seductive complete envelopment thang going -- I've seldom
heard their equal at that trick at any price. But the LSi15s present an amazingly
seamless sonic portrait that is difficult to fault -- and sure enough, even the coaxial
PowerPoints were hard pressed to beat 'em at it. Call it a draw.
However, the Polks had far more low end -- and even lower
midrange -- authority. The Thiels, like many stand-mounted monitors, just don't have the
low end to compete with Polk's floorstanding bargains. Music has greater body and heft --
and sounds more believably anchored to this world -- with the LSi15s. And,
just as with many minimonitors, the Thiels achieve a great deal of their U-R-There
holography because they don't have to struggle with the bottom few octaves. Some
people prefer this sound to the more realistic, but less detailed-sounding
full-range reproduction of a larger speaker.
On the other hand, unlike stand-mounted monitors or the
Polk LSi15, the Thiels offer that seductive sound without occupying any
valuable real estate on the floor, which makes them all but invisible in the room. I
almost said that's something you can't buy at any price -- except, of course, you can
buy it for the price of a pair of Thiel PowerPoints.
Can a muse of fire exist under a ceiling of commerce?
The Thiel PowerPoints are speakers that were born of
necessity and -- through Jim Thiel's design insights and Thiel's general construction
integrity -- overcame the conventional shortcomings attributed to an entire class of
loudspeakers. That's a pretty amazing story in itself.
But they sound so good they actually turn the audio
world, ummm, upside down. Let me say this again: They almost totally disappear once
mounted to the ceiling and painted to match it. They aren't inexpensive, but they are
built to an extremely high level. Considering that you're buying a custom-molded enclosure
with custom-built drivers and packed with exotic electronic parts, their price doesn't
seem out-of-line at all.
And then, factor in the fact that you get all this and your
uncluttered House & Garden décor to boot. I call that a bargain. I'm sold --
maybe floors do have better uses than holding up loudspeakers.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhometheater.com
Thiel PowerPoint Surface-Mount Loudspeakers
Price: $1300 USD each
Warranty: Ten years parts and labor
Thiel Audio Products
1026 Nandino Boulevard
Lexington, KY 40511
Phone: (606) 254-9427
Fax: (606) 254-0075
Website: www.thielaudio.com
|
