Thiel Owners

@tomthiel

I would love to see such a list of ’best Thiel amps’.

While I’ve had SS amps of various types, including the Bryston 4B SST for a while (driving various speakers, including Thiel CS6), I’m ultimately a tube amp guy. So my addition to the list would be something like my Conrad Johnson Premier 12 mono blocks. 140W/side of push-pull tube power. There hasn’t been a speaker these can’t drive to satisfaction, and they were heaven with the Thiel CS6, 3.7 and now 2.7.

Way back in 90’s and early 2000s, although I’d heard and admired Thiel speakers for years and admired them, it was hearing CS6s driven by VAC tube amps at an old CES that started my Official Thiel Fever. "Thiels and tubes, never thought of it!" The VAC were to rich for my blood, but I managed to mostly replicate the magic using the CJ amps.

(My Pal has a vinyl set up with great speakers and he usually uses a Audio Research tube amp with a tube pre-amp.  He got a bit sick of the hassle of tubes, bought a new Bryston amp, and he's very happy.   But for me his system has taken a distinct step backward to a harder, less organic and listenable sound from what he had before.  Just goes to show how subjective this is).

I think we tend to forget about the vagaries of an actual acoustical presentation and the coloration endowed by the hall. For instance, my wife and I attended a solo piano recital a couple of nights ago. We knew the hall, we knew the performer, and it was one of two Steinways used in the hall, both of which we also knew. But there are contingencies--audience size, hall size, curtain across back of hall open or closed, the way the pianist voiced (not to mention the way the piano tuner voiced the piano), seat location, all kinds of variables. These all affect how we hear, in real live music, qualities such as attack, decay, envelope, stage, etc. that we as audiophiles use in evaluating components.

But what was very nice was when, a day later, I put on a cd of Peter Serkin playing some Wolpe , Lieberson, et al. It was just like being back in the hall. That's what the 3.7s do for me.

Todd - you address a core but obscure point. What is the job of the hi-fi component? It is far from agreed that each component should faithfully reproduce its input signal. Most components editorialize in various ways and require the user to mix and stir the playback system to taste. The other end of that chain is that most recording is considerably editorialized and often with a bias toward adequate performance for MP3 or car radio. So the soup is nearly impossible to decipher.

As you know, Thiel stood squarely and obstinately in the 'reproduce the input' camp. In that camp, the vagaries of the recording venue and performance are squarely in the recordist camp.

My present work, which is making slow progress, is to further purify the precision of Thiel speakers reproducing their input signal.

Cheers,

Tom

All this talk of amplifier power got me curious so I checked the measurements of some of the stereophile reviews.  The 3.7s have a minimum of 2.4 ohms which is pretty low but they are also pretty sensitive so overall the are a difficult load but not exceptionally so.  The 2 2s are actually not that difficult of a load with a minimum 3.5 ohms impedance.  This is in line with my experience as I have found that they do fine with a Yamaha Home theater receiver.  I'm sure more would be better but they're pretty darn good this way.  I can see why the 7.2 would be an amp killer since it's a tough load impedance wise and also has low sensitivity at 85db.  


https://www.stereophile.com/content/thiel-cs37-loudspeaker-measurements
https://www.stereophile.com/content/thiel-cs2-2-loudspeaker-measurements
https://www.stereophile.com/content/thiel-cs24-loudspeaker-measurementshttps://www.stereophile.com/content/thiel-cs72-loudspeaker-measurements

@tomthiel, Would you please offerer your considered opinion on my 09-17-2018 musings?