Thiel Owners

@tomthiel 
“Jim set about executing reflex bass very well indeed; but the lagging time alignment is baked into the physics of the beast.”

I noticed this first time I played my CS6’s. And by reason of being pushed out as the woofer settles, the passive radiator is in a sense out of phase with the woofer.

I could only sense this because the CS6’s immediately followed Infinity Kappa 8’s, that just knock you over with near physics-defying bass. Also why they eat up so many amplifiers…like two of mine.

Great post Sir!

So which Thiel do I step up to after the CS6’s? The 5? The 3.7? I love the sound but that bass affect is unwanted. 

tomthiel,

Your comments on the Vovox cable are very interesting. Have you ever tried using unshielded Vovox as an interconnect between preamp and amp?

sdl4 - I have not used the Vovox for interconnects - just because I never felt the need. I'm happy with my Morrows. My opinion is that unshielded sounds better than shielded; so only use shielded when there is a need (evidenced by shielded sounding better.) I'm very interested in what you learn about Vovox as interconnects.

tomthiel,

Just as you are happy with your Morrow interconnects, I'm very happy with my Cardas Clear Refection XLRs. I'm running one Cardas XLR between my DAC and preamp and another between my preamp and amp. Both XLRs are short (.75-1.0 meter). As I mentioned before, my problem is that I would need an 18-foot XLR pair (for the pre to amp run) if I change my set-up from "short XLR - long speaker cable" to a "long XLR - short speaker cable" arrangement.  I either need to spend thousands on a long Clear Reflection XLR or a few hundred on a high-quality pro cable of the same length.

My best bet may be to buy 2-3 short pro cables (e.g.,Vovox, Grimm, and/or Ghost) to compare to my Clear Reflections and decide which one to order in a longer length. If I go that route, I'll post my impressions here.

Thanks again for your comments!

If we had a sticky option, I would elevate Tom's description of thiel speakers to that status. It is fully consistent with my experience.
The 3.7 with sub woofers is an excellent system.
Tri-amping with eq for system and room effects has done wonders for my 3.5, coming very close to the 3.7 system. I can only imagine that 4-amping with eq the 5i would easily match the 3.7 with sub woofers.
By the way, I think that going with multi channel amp and DAC plus eq is essential to mitigate room effects, affordable compared to high end amp and solves most technical short comings of high end thiel speakers. It's fun too. 
I have settled on a 8 channel hypex ncore252mp amp, a laptop with Adobe audition software and a motu interface to conduct my experiments.