Thiel Owners

Dan,
You’re gonna get us kicked off this thread ;-)

I’ve got another long thread going detailing my auditions of many speakers, often comparing against my Thiels. Most don’t fully hold up.I even preferred my Thiels to the latest Magical A3 speaker.

I am however smitten by Joseph Audio Perspective speakers (incredible purity of tone) and Devore Fidelity Orangutan speakers (they sound very organic, richer than most speakers, yet do rhythm/drums etc in a super compelling manner).


Other speakers I really like are ones I own: Waveform (very neutral yet warm tone, image like crazy, very palpable), my MBL 121 omnis (incredible tone, peerless 3 dimensional imaging), and my small little Spendor S3/5 (which are so smooth, open, rich and engaging they always have me wondering at first "Maybe this is all I need!" until I put on content that really needs some bass foundation).  And my Hales Transcendence 1 speakers (which do HT duty, but I often hook them up to my two channel system for a change.  Incredible timbral beauty, rich, spacious, though missing the palpability factor of the Thiels)   All spend some time in my system at one point.

The thing I come back to with the Thiels is the coherence, lack of speaker/box artifacts, tone and density/palpability of the sound.

I've lived with the Pass Labs x150.8 on my Thiel 2.4s for a little over a week now and I am absolutely astonished at what a change this has wrought, both over the Bryston 4b3 which I had for a little over a week and my long term reference, the Aesthetix Atlas.  At first I wondered if the Pass midrange wasn't a bit too ripe and the top was a bit soft but the Pass brings together a density of texture in orchestral swells that sound alot like real symphonic music to me (and I attend about 16 or so Atlanta Symphony concerts every season).  The Bryston sounds thin in the lower midrange than the Pass, again it is a wholly different sound that anyone could recognize over the Bryston.  Its an improvement to a lesser degree over the Aesthetix Atlas as well.  The Pass renders music that is simply beautiful, liquid, incredibly detailed but also with a richness of tone that is hard to describe.  You owe it to yourself to try the Pass on your Thiels.  I am so convinced that I'm contemplating giving the Pass preamp maybe the x12 a try.  Also as a reminder I was prepared to spend more on my amp than the Pass x150.8 buying instead into the XA series of monoblocks but Kent at Pass convinced me to spend alot LESS, convincing me to go with his recommendation.  The x150.8 is plenty of power.  Its not cheap but its just flat out amazing.  You have to hear it.