Thiel Owners

May I chime in with pairing that has worked well for me? My Thiel 3.6 set is driven by a modified McCormack DNA 1 with Kimber Monocle XL cable. Last year, I replaced my ARC LS 9 with the an ARC Reference 3. I purchased all of my gear used a piece at time over many years which is the only way I could come close to affording any of it. Don Hoatson (since passed, RIP) of the Listening Room in Baltimore always suggest that Thiels are well served by running a SS amp (Classe, Pass Labs, McCormack are reasonable choices purchased used) and a tube preamp to add a touch of warmth and sweetness. Don may have heard this from Kathy Gornik. I was never sure that this was not just sales hype, but now, finally, I know better. The rubric of using Thiel+SS amp+tube pre=joy is real from my experience. The upgrade for me of the LS9 to Ref 3 was pure magic with Thiels. Heard much on recording that I have never heard before with a wonderful spatial
context and refinement. 

The best cables I've ever used are my Cardas Clear Beyond speaker cables. Yes, expensive, but the difference from Golden Reference was staggering. Took the speakers to a new level.

audiojan,

I'd love to hear those Clear Beyond speaker cables in my system, but they are just too expensive for me to seriously consider. I have a pretty long speaker cable run (7-meter pair) in my 2-channel system, and the list price for a pair of the Clear Beyonds would be $21,470. I paid around $400 for the Straight Wire Encore cables I've used for several decades, so I can't wrap my head around the idea of paying thousands of dollars more to replace the Encores. I could afford the Cardas Parsec speaker wires (at $1575 per 7m pair), but I'd be reluctant to spend more than that, especially without any assurance that they would sound better than my current Straight Wire cables.

I did some in-home testing of moderately priced interconnects last year and ended up liking the Cardas Parsec (in a 1-meter length) better than the Shunyata Venom or similarly priced interconnects from Synergistic Research. I'd be inclined to try a similar speaker cable shoot-out in my system if I could try several samples of wire that were long enough to demo without having to move my amps and source equipment out of their cabinets and across the room.

I'm glad you found some cables that have taken your speakers to a new level.

yabe1951,

I've heard several other people recommend using a tube preamp with a SS power amp to drive Thiel speakers. The last time I seriously listened to any tube gear was many years ago, and I came away liking the liquid midrange but disliking the flabby low end I heard in my demo. I also did not like the idea of having to change tubes and deal with sonic changes as the tubes aged. However, maybe it's time to give a modern tube preamp a chance to impress me.

I use a Modwright LS36.5 DM tube preamp and an EVS 1200 Amp (discussed here -  https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/life-with-ric-schultz-2200-highly-tweaked-evs-1200-class-d-icepower-d) with my 3.7s