Thiel Owners

You're welcome.  As long-winded about audio as I can get, be relieved (all of you!) I'm not transcribing my thorough listening notes here of all the gear mentioned on this forum that I've compared to other stuff, or pre- vs post-modifications, that a career test engineer tends to do!

sdecker

Thorough listening notes are always welcomed here. 
This is the aspect that I miss the most reading current Audio press.

Happy Listening!

I was just re-visiting the old Stereophile review of the CS5.It sure did impress that magazine! JA had a room-based problem which didn’t work with the CS5s so LA took over the review and raved.

In the measurements section JA concluded:

"All in all, the CS5 is both the most thoroughly worked-out speaker design I have ever come across and perhaps the best-measuring loudspeaker I have yet experienced."

Which is about as strong a comment as I’ve ever seen from JA in the measurements section before or since.

Prof - that was a great review EXCEPT that both John and Larry included the statement that they couldn't get the CS5 to sing. That product sold poorly and didn't pay back its R&D costs; Jim was discouraged and dropped the idea of deep sealed bass. By the way, Rob has retrofitted CS5s with dual inputs to raves from the customers. Taking the deep bass killer low impedance burden off the main amplifier solves tons of amp  issues. Also, I have imagined a physical solution to staggering the drivers on the baffle to eliminate the two bucket brigade delays on the upper and lower midrange circuits and thus radically simplifying the feed circuits for those critical drivers. At that time Jim was convinced that those custom styrene caps and high purity coils were sonically invisible. I have my doubts from my present-day perspective.

I wouldn't mind finding a CS5i pair for the hot-rod garage. 

Several thoughts, will try to parse a bit...

reminder I have a pair of 2.3+
Yes, Charlie at Ayre a brilliant designer and EE with ears, to wit his A to D converter ( and musical recordings) and DAC with listen and measure filters ( a fantastic poke in the eye to those obsessed with measuring the wrong things), yes his SS amps some of the best, TomT the old 100 watt amp very affordable used, getting long in tooth for sure but still quite musical