Do Thiel Audio CS3.7 Rock?

As someone who has "rocked" for nearly 5 decades as a working musician and live sound tech, I'm generally mystified when components are claimed to be "music style specific." "Rock" is such a wide category as to render it meaningless as a style relative to how it wends its way to your face from any speakers, and using live sound as a reference gets even weirder. If you want loudness obviously you're gonna need loud amps and drivers able to handle that (I've heard LS3/5As punch big time with a good, musical sub at a very famous "rock" engineer's house…oh yes indeed), and both of these things aren't music specific…Mahler and Julian Lage (his latest trio thing anyway) will crack your walls if your gear allows it to, and great jazz piano trios will kick it as hard as Metallica if you wish, albeit with possibly more dynamic shading. Speakers need good electronics to sound their best? Who knew? I use a modestly powered tube amp with subs and it will easily provide all the dynamic balls as required for my largish listening area, as well as clean coherence regardless of it playing Jimi or Joni or Yo Yo. Thiels mostly can reproduce whatever you ask them to as they're generally fine speakers, but simply add a sub or two for range and go for clarity in all things…maybe you'll be able to add "roll" to your rock.

When it comes to punch I find my 3.7s are transparent.  If a recording lacks punch then it sounds that way.  If it has been mastered in a way that makes it sound unnaturally punchy I notice that as well.  These speakers will not give punch to recordings that don't have it the way many other brands do, but they can punch very convincingly.  Fantastic transients.

First order speakers aren't meant to play extremely loudly.  If you want to be in the front row at an ac/dc concert this isn't the right choice.  In my experience they do better with a powerful amp.  I was surprised at the difference I noticed when I went from 350 watts into 4 ohms to 7 or 800.  That made a big difference when it came to bass texture and clean punch.

Excellent points, well stated,  wolf and jon.

Happy Listening!