Thiel 2.3 amplification

I was doing a little research over this forum and I am kind of intrigued by McIntosh. Owners seem to swear by it. Will 202 power amp or better 6900/6850 integrateds have the juice to power my Thiels?

Thiel 2.3s are between 2 and 4 ohms between 100 and 1000 Hz. This makes for a real current demand on any SS amp. You should use be looking at amps with a power rating into 2ohms, and preferably a doubling of power into 8-4-2 ohms. They are reasonably efficient watts vs spl (>87dB/W/m) but lesser amps will suffer at higher volumes and just not sound as good overall. Thiel tells me they use Krell 600W monoblocks to drive their 2.3s.

I'm using what I think is the minimum, a McCormack DNA 0.5 deluxe (SMC rev C), in a moderately large (and acoustically dead) room and sometimes like to crank rock music up. The amp starts compressing at much over 100dB, with 106dB peaks. Granted, this isn't the ideal pairing for loud rock. My amp makes 120Wpc into 8ohms, 220 into 4 and 330 into 2, and is rated for 25A current. A more powerful amp would likely enhance the speaker performance at somewhat lower volumes too.

I'm also using a tubed preamp and generally 'cool' audioquest interconnects - this plus the dead room keeps the treble energy well in check. But as those above have already suggested, you simply can't skimp on the quantity and quality of power for these speakers. I would think you could do fine for $3K used.

I love my Thiel 2.3's with my pass x-350, Harm Tech Pro-9's and Pro-Silway's. These speakers do very well away from the side walls. The Pass Labs complement these speakers very well.

I auditioned the Transparent Cables and liked the pro-9's over the Transparent Cable. The only Transparent Cable model that bettered the pro-9's was the Opus model (25k). Not worth the 25k paid.

I'm using a McCormack DNA-1 (and a tube BAT VK-3i pre) to drive 2 2's.

For normal volumes, it sounds great! But either the amp or the speakers get rough at higher volumes. In other respects, I feel like I run out of gas with 185 respectable wpc in the McCormack long before the speakers are having difficulty.

By the way, the tube preamp REALLY helped tame the tweeter, but that probably isn't as much of an issue with the 2.3's.