Thiel Owners

Good dealers are a treasure! That world is generally fading in the rear-view mirror of Crutchfield, Amazon, ebay and so forth. I bet you will love the 2.4SS (just playing-whatever it will be called).

Now, back to amps. As you know, my reference amps are old classic Classe. Fine amps, hotrodded, drive the Thiels fine, especially a pair of them. Etc. But I need a second amp for proof of upgrade work; I have special considerations beyond my own enjoyment.

Jim judged that the amp's limitations are the amp-maker's problems. Logical enough - except for the consumer who had to spend 5x his speaker price for the right amps, which bucks pretty much . . . everything. As you would expect, I have been surveying the amp world for some solution for driving Thiel speakers with even higher resolution than the originals. That's a double-edged sword . . . wonderful when the signal is great, and even more revealing of trouble when less than great.

I have appreciated your amp leads. I have also investigated the PS Audio BHK-300s, Ayre and other heavy hitters. I don't want to fall into Jim's trap of designing with the stellar amps, which leaves most listeners with less than best or even objectionable performance. What to do? I would like the group's feedback on the following possibility.

Benchmark straddles the fence between pro and audiophile. Their stuff is very clean, neutral, transparent and relatively affordable for its performance level. They now have a power amp, the AHB-2, a hybrid AB amp powered by a class H power supply and class A feed-forward error correction amp. Intriguing concept. The high end pros rave about it. Its measurements are stellar. I am inclined to try it for several reasons, one of which is that it is a marginal player facing the new world with a different vision. Flashing forward 20 years, I want the Thiel HotRods to be sonically viable without requiring Krell, Levinson or similar heavy iron.

The AHB-2 breaks my double-down rule, but only a little and on technicalities. Class H is a switching power supply (which break down when past their current limit). At 100 watts / channel - 8 ohms, it is only marginally adequate. It is precisely that marginality which attracts me. I want to explore that limit of great performance with shallow pockets. Benchmark engineering is analyzing the Thiel loads to make a technical assessment. I admire their approach and there are Thiel fans at Benchmark. Their vision reads like Thiel promotion of my dreams. (I feel that Thiel never promoted itself very effectively.) I am specifically investigating stereo-amp, monobloc-strapped, and vertical bi-amp configurations. The latter would assign one channel of a stereo amp to the bass and the other to everything else. So much to learn.

Anyhow, do any of you have experience with this amp? Or do any of you have thoughts or opinions about my ideas? I would appreciate your feedback.

 

@prof I too am sorry for your setback and wish you a thorough recovery.

I would add Technical Audio Devices (TAD) Reference Series as another product line whose design shares many of the same goals with Thiel but with a cost-no-object market strategy. These are crazy expensive speakers even at used prices. TAD’s concentric Coherent Source Transducers and slanted baffles should be familiar to Thiel enthusiasts. A TAS review http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/tad-reference-one-loudspeaker-tas-218-1/ describes the crossovers as "asymmetrical [with] non-classic shapes", possibly similar to Thiel crossovers which are acoustically (not electrically) first-order.

I heard a pair of Reference One floor standers http://www.technicalaudiodevices.com/reference/ at an early (first?) Axpona sourced with a master copy reel-to-reel tape of John Lennon solo. It was spooky real. I was running Thiel 2.2s at the time, and had not yet upgraded to 3.7s, treated my room, added subs and a Thiel SI-1 crossover, or upgraded most of the rest of my system. At the time, the TAD system was far and away the most convincing music reproduction I’d ever heard. It was long ago and a different room, so I can’t reliably compare it to my current system. But I can say the gap is much smaller now.

On Thiel dealers: My sales rep in one of two high-end dealers near me was a doctoral student studying voice in our Music department in the mid 1990s. He was quite knowledgeable about audio and sold me on a Classé / Thiel system. I’ve stuck with those two brands ever since with no regrets.

Ish - TAD makes great speakers, thoroughly engineered with world-class materials, at very high prices. The have a strong following in pro and audiophile worlds. I was very impressed with the ones I heard.

However, they are neither time nor phase coherent. See Stereophile's measurements:
https://www.stereophile.com/content/tad-micro-evolution-one-loudspeaker-measurements

The verbiage surrounding tilt and assymetrical slopes is to lead one to believe that all fronts have been addressed. I do not dispute that excellent sound can be heard through non-coherent transducers. Thiel coined the Coherent Source phrase to mean "Minimum Phase - Time Coherent wavefront". TAD does not meet that definition, nor does KEF, B&W and others who suggest that they do. I would not put them on andy-2's list.

My only experience of amps on the 1.6s has been Accuphas (too tame), Rega Cursa/Maia (not quite enough in reserve when called upon but up for it), and Naim 282/250 same RMS power as the Regas 80W but with a much better transient reserve and these coped very well. With the exception of the Accuphase these amps could make the Thiels Rock, not something they seem to be noted for I gather. A Rega Osiris would be worth a try if available too from what I've heard from it elsewhere.