Thiel Owners

michael - regarding the CS7, which was the flagship model with plenty of greatness; and sell cheaply on the used market. 1995 was the time of rapid development of fully in-house drivers. Between the CS6, 7, 3.6 and especially the CS2.3 coax, so much was learned to improve the drivers, that Jim redesigned the 7 with all new in-house drivers and, of course, redesigned crossovers to support the changes. Broad opinion says the upgrade 7.2 was spectacular. 7s are fully retrofittable to 7.2s - the cabinets are identical and the crossovers are modifiable. If you buy 7s inexpensively, you may have the option to fully upgrade, if Rob at Coherent Source Service still has 7.2 drivers. My wish-list includes hot-rodding the 7.2 - there is room for improvement. I have mentioned here before that just because the 3.7 obsoleted the 6 and 7.2, that was for logistics of simplified manufacture pending Jim's death, and not because the 3.7 is superior to the 6 and 7.2.

Sorry to bear the sad news, but the 7 is a qualitatively better speaker than the 3.5, especially in a large room. In many ways the 7.2 is the pinnacle of Jim's life work and a 7.3 was in development when his health failed. If you can afford them, I suspect you will never regret getting them. Consider the amplifier caveats, the 7 is far harder to drive. We can circumvent a big part of the amp problem via dividing the inputs into bass and upper ranges for separate amplification, which would require 2 amps. Jim's objection to bi-amping / bi-wiring revolved around various mis-use issues, not fundamental principles. But we can keep that straight with amp and cable choices that consider those signal integration problems carefully.

silvanik - in Slovenian your name means forest dweller. Are you a tree hugger?
I am. Anyhow, yes a book . . . This forum is the first try I have made to unleash some of these thoughts. I am rearranging my life for the possibility of writing such a book along with the related audio work. The story offers considerable fascination as something based in a particular time and place in history, with considerable detail that is obscure and far richer and potentially meaningful than the standard story you have read. These forum posts are sketches for that book. Thank you for your encouragement.

jon - you hit it on the head. As an enterprise that grew out of an intentional community (commune) in the 1970s, we all felt in our core being that music showed the way to growth in uncharted territory. Everything was changing, youth (yes, we were young once) hoped to invent a new world grounded in peace, love and music as everyman's key. Thiel Audio was how we chose to spread the joy. Our first motto was "For the Love of Music". We thought that through ingenuity and hard work, we could create something more true to the heart and soul of music and make it affordable for the many. Our enterprise succeeded in some small ways . . . It gives me great pleasure that you appreciate that core truth of the undertaking. Plenty of sacrifice went into doing what little we were able to do.

prof
Oh yeah, I've visited it before!

The ongoing mystery has always been if the site is one big troll (not implausible given that seems to be Kait's modus operandi), vs anything serious. I think the site is mostly a troll, like many of Kait's comments here, though I think he's sometimes serious in his comments on this forum. He says enough wacky things though, with apparent sincerity, that the line between fiction and honesty with him is hard to discern.

More fake news from the professor. He’s just mad because I see through his so called philosophical jibber jabber. 😛

CS7.2 (and 3.7) is just behind the very best speakers I’ve heard, and at a fraction of the price. I suspect Tom Thiel’s XO mods will narrow that gap. I’m itching to finish my 2.4 upgrade. I suspect I’d have to get something like a Vandy 5 carbon to demonstratively beat it, and that’s a speaker well out of my financial wherewithal.

Geoff Kait is on the bleeding edge of tweakery but I don’t think he’s trolling or bilking anyone. There are many things in audio that can be heard but not explained. The human ear/mind is not the same as an oscilloscope or any other measuring device. Measurements are good to have but they cannot fully inform what we experience when listening to music (and not even partially inform the emotional part of our experience). Mr. Kait’s tweaks may be controversial but I would not dismiss them out of hand.