Thiel Owners

From the manual for the CS2.4:

Optimum phase and time alignment is provided only for a seated listener who is eight or more feet away from the speakers.

There is no mention of ear height, which is very important for the first order filters (ie, vertical dispersion).

Measured at 3 meters.

That's >twice as far as Stereophile in JA's open air arrangement and 1 m more than Soundstage in their anechoic chamber. Do you know if Thiel had an anechoic chamber? Or did they measure outside? Must have elevated the speaker well off the ground if the latter.

Comparing Stereophile and Thiel measurements (published in Audiophile Journal archived on the Vandersteen website) it's quite clear that Thiel measured from farther away. Not only do the Thiel measurements indicate much flatter frequency response, the waterfall plot is much cleaner than suggested by Stereophile, with a clean initial decay even in the upper midrange.

@beetlemania, I don't think it did too badly at low volumes but I cranked it up pretty quickly to see how it would do with something loud and meaty and it wasn't up to it. I was at the dealer and I didn't spend a whole lot of time listening for subtle differences.  I find that it takes me a long time to make up my mind about whether something is different, better or worse and I can't really do it at the dealer.  I listen to make sure it's about what I want and then take it home and usually need weeks to make up my mind 100%.  

I'm also a believer in having too much power.  It might be my imagination but I think having what would seem to be way more power than necessary makes a difference.  My current setup has 2 200 watts@8ohm/channel amplifiers running bridged mono.  I've had this setup for 10 years or so and I prefer it.  

Much of the spike length was intended for carpet height piercing.

The outriggers and spikes on my CS2.4SE raise the speakers a good 2". I think these spikes are a bit longer compared to the standard version. About one-half of my floor is slab and tile with a hand-woven rug under the speakers. I use 1.5 x 2 x 0.25" wood blocks under the spikes to protect the rug. The other half, which includes my listening seat, has wall-to-wall on top of the slab. I find the spikes to improve the SQ at least a little altho' not sure how much is due to listening height v. better coupling to the floor.

limited to perhaps 200 Hz and above.

Yes, Thiel's graphs are truncated at 200 cycles:
http://www.vandersteen.com/media/files/APJ%20Files/APJ_6-7r.pdf

Those CS2.3 measurements are superb!

For the bass, I think Stereophile's nearfield technique fills in the gap nicely.