Thiel Owners

Beetle - thank you for consolidating your experience for us. It all sounds quite straight-forward as written, but considerable study and thought went into this trial and, as you know, considerable time elapsed while researching and considering this first trial build. This build is fairly high-end; although more money can always be spent for greater but diminishing returns. The upgrade parts cost alone is somewhere in the $1K range. (We haven't actually counted beans.) I want to commend and thank you for your enthusiasm, patience and careful listening tests with detailed notes and summaries, along with your good-natured willingness to try new solutions when something failed. (For the record, we are experimenting with heat management and mounting the resistors on aluminum heat rails created a subtle sonic anomaly.)

Among the points made above, I wish to comment on one in particular. At the end of the second-last paragraph, you address the "flaws in the recording" issue. This issue has been a constant companion during the entire lifespan of the company. Nearly every reviewer picks it out as a problem, often called out as a shortcoming of the speaker. Indeed there are very many very good speakers which do not exhibit this trait. At the very beginning, when co-developing the 03 as a phase coherent point source vs "normal" topology, we sweated blood over whether to take this plunge, knowing it would remain the core of our struggle forever going forward. We did and it did. Our central reason is philosophical: "the best speaker reproduces its input signal with the greatest fidelity in all its aspects." Phase coherence has been both a burden and a torch that led our way.

This "warts and all" approach is, as you know, not the normal approach, which seeks to present the most involving musical suspension of disbelief with the broadest range of recordings to the largest body of listeners. Everyone at Thiel learned to live with the "bare, naked facts" dilemmas, as did many critics, dealers and users around the world. But we still hear today a drum-beat of criticism around how revealing Thiel speakers are.

My central misgiving in this upgrade project is that it seeks to intensify that "music under a lens" approach. Every day I hear technical, mixing and mastering errors or shortcomings on recordings. In fact, in my life after Thiel Audio I have provided evaluation services to recording artists by identifying such flaws in their production mixes and trial masters (and that is with stock CS2.2s.) So the results and report of your upgrade journey gives me encouragement. I believe and you concur that by removing more of the subtle artifacts introduced by the speaker, we are more closely approaching the original musical event, making a firmer connection between the music and the listener. I believe that connection brings joy, even if it reveals some flaws in the music making process. 

So, thank you for your participation and thank you all for your interest, which has helped me take on this rather complex and challenging project.

So, thank you for your participation and thank you all for your interest, which has helped me take on this rather complex and challenging project.

You’re welcome and thank *you* for your coaching and encouragement. It’s been fun, even if I had a moment or two of doubt. 

I saved for over two years to buy my Ayre amp. But then it became obvious that my speakers were the weak link. Not wanting to wait as I saved again, I bought the SEs which I figured would be a nice step up for relatively small investment. They were,  but I knew even more was possible. With the SQ I’m now hearing I think I would need to spend at least $15-20K to find something better. I suspect these are my last speakers :)

Greetings Thiel Owners!


I am a hopeful future Thiel owner and I have been lurking on this thread since early November.  I felt it was finally time to introduce myself and tell you all a little bit about my speaker/Thiel journey to date.


Before I explain anymore about myself or my journey, I was hoping to do a quick review. Not a speaker review but a review of this thread and this community.


This thread, Jafant and the people contributing to it are something special. I have never been accepted as a beginner into a community of enthusiasts, as easily and quickly, as I have been into this community of Thiel owners. I had the extreme good fortune of meeting JA at the start of my audio journey and I must say he is every bit as friendly, passionate, knowledgable and generous with his experience in real life as he is in this forum. JA lives down the road from me and he has been communicating with me since early November. He is always giving me time on the phone, or on email, or even going out to lunch with me, to discuss anything from our dream systems, how to audition gear, what music to listen to, work, health, travel, anything. He even gifted me a great reference disc(Jamie Cullum's TwentySomething) to take on my travels to audio shops. I reached out to an internet stranger and got an instant friend and I am very grateful to him for his kindness and for sharing his passion and experience with me and all of us by creating this thread.


JA is not the only one. This entire thread is driven by all of you and your experience and passion and the respectful banter and exchange of ideas between you. For a newb like me, your passion and experience fuels and inspires me to find my own sound and system. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the conversation here, you have all taught me something.


Thank you to Prof who has been a great source of information, thank you for sharing your time and experience with me. I appreciate your help.


And a very big thank you to RonKent for his amazing generosity and hospitality. After a few email exchanges with ronkent, I invited myself to his house, to listen to his system. Not only did I invite myself but I gave him very short notice. He took me into his home and not only let me listen to his system but fed me an excellent home cooked meal, prepared by his girlfriend, and then let me stay after dinner to continue listening. Let me say that again, he let a complete stranger sit in his house and listen to his system until 8:30pm and fed him(me) dinner. If you make it to the end of this wall of text, or if you want to skip to the bottom, I will save my thoughts on his system for last. Ronkent is an awesome guy with an amazing system and I sincerely appreciate him welcoming me into his home for a listen.


Now for a little about me. I am 38 and my current setup is an audio technica turntable with a wifi transmitter and a bose soundlink bluetooth speaker. I have always had an interest in getting a real stereo setup centered around a beautiful tube amp and turntable. I was recently diagnosed with pretty significant heart disease and my doctor told me I need more music. That was all the excuse and motivation I needed to get my first real setup. I live in Alabama and my options here are limited so I turned to the internet and that's where I met Jafant. JA pointed me in the direction of this thread and several dealers in the south east. I had a work trip up to Raleigh and JA helped me setup some demos up there. I was so excited to hear my first hifi setup but a few days before that trip I went into Atrial Fibrillation and spent a few days in the ICU and my trip was canceled. Since then I have recovered and continue to pursue my first setup. Since my trip to the ICU I have had some really great opportunities to listen to some amazing gear and I was hoping to share my experiences with you guys. I know this is a long post and appreciate anyone making it this far. I feel this context was and is important to understanding my experience level, which is none, and what some of my motivations are for jumping into this hobby.


So far I have had 5 different demo sessions at 5 different places and listened to a lot of amazing gear in a short period of time. I have listened to the Dynaudio Excite 38 and Contour 60. I got to tour PS Audio and visit their listening room with their Infinity IRS V. I went to Soundings in Denver and listened to Vienna Acoustics Concert Grand, Chario Academy Sovran, Rockport Technologies Atria, and Rockport Technologies Cygnus. I also went to ListenUp in Boulder and listened to Sonus Faber Sonetto VIII, Sonus Faber Sarafino, Focal Kanta, Focal Maestro Utopia, Magnepan 1.7i, B&W 804 D3, and B&W 802 D3. Lastly, I got to listen to ronkent's Thiel CS3.7 paired with his PS Audio gear.


I had initially intended to give my first impressions on all of these speakers but this post has gotten rather long. Also, I don't want to derail the Thiel discussion with first impressions from a newb on other non Thiel speakers. I would however like to give my first impressions as a newb on 2 of the systems I got to hear, the IRSV at PS Audio and ronkents CS3.7s. If anyone is interested in my impressions on anything else I heard, or more in depth details about the gear I heard them on, Im happy to share those details as well.


As far as my experience in the PS Audio listening room, it was eye opening. The listening room features Infinity IRS V speakers powered by PS Audio BHK 300 monoblocks. I am assuming their listening room would blow away even the most seasoned audiophile, but for someone who has never listened to a true high end hifi setup, it was a "wow' moment. I did not know that a two channel setup could make a sound like that. I don't really have the vocabulary to describe it yet but I explained it to a friend as "black magic". The music came on but it did not come from the speakers. It came from behind the speakers or really from everywhere but the speakers. Those IRS Vs absolutely disappeared. Scott played the first song and he picked James Taylor Gaia. It sounded like a full sized James Taylor was in front of me singing and he was there, just 10 feet behind the speakers. Then a choir started singing and they were another 10 feet behind him and the separation of the other instruments and band members was so obvious and amazing. And beyond the separation and imaging, I found the overall sound to be amazing and clean. The voices sounded amazingly real which I really like. But this experience taught me about imaging and I am hooked.


I tried to explain it to my brother who is a skeptic in general but also has no experience and limited interest in hifi. The best way I could explain it to him was that it was like if you had seen black and white your entire life and then you saw color for the first time. I used the same analogy with JA Fant but took it a bit further. I have read so many adjectives and descriptors of sound quality that are hard to understand or comment on, until you have actually heard them. I told JA that it is hard to describe the color green but it is even harder to describe it if you have never seen it and now that I have seen color, so to speak, it makes it a little easier to understand and discuss.


I was worried about having the Infinity IRS V be the first listening experience for me in Colorado as I was scared it would set my expectations too high but in retrospect I think it was actually the perfect place to start as it set the bar for the rest of the gear I listened to thereafter. Everytime I listen to something now it is always in comparison to my memory of those IRS V. Nothing I listened to came close to the performance of those IRS V(except maybe the Focal Maestro Utopia at $75K) that is until I got to listen to RonKents system.


RonKent has gone into his system, setup, and listening room in great detail already in this thread so I won't rehash all of that. If you are not familiar with Ronkent's setup he has the Thiel CS3.7 powered by the PS Audio BHK 250 and all PS Audio gear and cables and he has everything dialed in perfectly. It is impossible for me to do justice to his system with my limited vocabulary but to say my jaw dropped is an understatement. We started off listening to Gaia by James Taylor, just like in Boulder with PS Audio. Of all the speakers and systems I listened to, this was the closest to replicating the sound I heard at PS Audio. The only other system that sounded that good or better was the Focal Maestro Utopia paired with Marc Levinson gear and the speakers alone were $75K. I remember grinning so hard and so much at Ronkents house that my cheeks hurt. Those big CS3.7's absolutely disappeared and it was that same black magic effect I felt in Boulder at PS Audio. The sound literally came from everywhere. He has some acoustic treatment panels in his room and I told him I wouldn't be surprised if people who didn't know better thought the sound was coming from those, and he said that has happened before. We listened to a song off of Deep Purple "FireBall" and there was this effect where the sound crashed in like a wave from the left side of the soundstage to the right and then rolled back again, it was an awesome!


Ronkent asked me for an honest first impression comparison between his system and the one PS Audio has and this is the honest feedback I gave him. First impression was that the soundstage on the IRS V felt taller to me, which to me makes sense, since those speakers are so much bigger. Also, the sound stage on the IRS V sounded like it had more depth to me. For example in Gaia, when I heard the choir singing 10-15 feet behind James Taylor in Boulder, they didn't feel quite as far away in ronkents system but there was definitely separation there. That being said, I was absolutely blown away by ronkents setup. I have read so much about the Thiels that I was scared I had set myself up for disappointment but when I heard them they were better than I expected. I told ronkent I thought it sounded "rich" but in a good way, he agreed and used the word "full" which was exactly what I was trying to describe. Voices sounded very good to me on the Thiels which I really like as I have been described as someone who like "big voices". Getting to listen to and experience ronkents setup was a great experience that proved to me, what I had been suspecting all along, which is that I want to be a Thiel owner too!


So the day after meeting ronkent and listening to his system, I met up with a guy who has a pair of Morado CS3.7. He mentioned he might be interested in selling them and he was upfront about the fact that he was on the fence. I took him a certified check with my best offer on it and he thought the offer was the right price but he needs more time to think about it, so I sadly drove 550 miles back home empty handed. I am hoping he comes around and decides to sell them but I'm not sure if he will or not. He assured me if he sells them, they are mine. In the meantime I am actively on the lookout for some CS2.7 or CS3.7 with a very strong preference for the CS3.7, so if any of you decide to sell, please consider me, as I would give them a very good home and they would be very well appreciated and cared for here.


This has been an epically long post, thank you to anyone who actually made it to the end and thanks again to this community and JA for all the help and support.

Is it too late to join this party?
2+ years and 100 plus pages of forum discussion proved too much catch up reading, so hope you all don’t mind me jumping in at the risk of repeating what may have been covered.
i just got a pair of CS5i  and am going through the process of getting to know them. It’s early on (3-4 days) so I will hold off on giving any comments. 
I will say that I have not found the right position for them to get focused imaging. My room is 14’ wide. The  length is 19’ but really doesn’t come in to play because the back wall is almost completely open to a dining room.  I have had success getting other speakers placed to focus fairly sharply in this room.  this pair placed 8’ apart 2’ off the front wall as a starting point with 4 moves so far have me lost.  Usually as I make changes I can tell whether I am going in the right direction and adjust as I go. Not here.
i’ll be Happy to list system components if anyone is interested.
Cheers.

Jack - I'll jump right in since I have set up many rooms with CS5s. I suspect the root of your problem is having them too close to the wall behind them. The 5 goes down below 20Hz as a point source, so you are getting lots of back-bounce reflection for your aural brain to try to conflate into the direct wave-front. See what happens when you pull them out to 5' behind them.
Also, you probably know that they present a potentially challenging sub 2-ohm load at their lowest reach. If your amp is running out of current, that wreaks havoc on imaging.

Hang in there, when you get them right, they can be marvelous.
The folks here have good ideas on amplification and placement.