Thiel Owners

ronkent - that live album at Stony Mountain is a normally produced remote recording, pretty good as they go. Her studio albums have higher audiophile values. Above I described the first Dancing at the Gate, later Will Ackerman produced Color of Light which has his (as in usual Windham Hill) high production values, but uses 18 mics and lots of gizmos and signal manipulation to get "his sound". That is the album where Dana and I "caught" (on CS2.2 / Classe) numerous, ongoing plugs and other artifacts which Will with his $multimillion studio insisted couldn't be heard. Then Dana produced locally "Above the Fields", which is very carefully and well done and can take you there.

If you like solo piano and have a contemplative streak, I highly recommend Dana's work.

hi Tom,   thanks for the clarification on phase, absolute phase, and all those other phase things.  i had mixed up polarity with phase but your comments make me realize how many things can go wrong in the process.   Also thanks for the info on DC.  I will have to get the Dancing album.  your comment about WH was interesting as i found many of their albums clean but not real sounding.  My fave artist on WH was Michael Hedges who was such a great talent and gone way to soon

As others have posted I too am casually looking to upgrade my 10 year old 2.4CS speakers. I took a pretty long break from audio. I just picked up other hobbies but I am starting to get the bug again (used headphones for a year or two in there too).  

Anyway after a hand full of demos of speakers costing at lot more I came home to feel they were simply a side step from my Thiels in some ways and that I would be paying a lot of money for slightly more resolution in the upper mids/highs. I did find the new speakers with new tweeter designs to be a good bit better in the highs though. More air and less matter of fact kind of detail I get from the Thiels. 

I should mention I run two JL audio e112 subs actively crossed over at 50hz and it takes the Thiels to a whole new level. They are cheap and plenty good enough for the 2.4 or 3.7s. Well worth a try for any thiel owner with a large room. 

The other day I listened to a pair of b&w 802D3 for just a song or two and the bass was not as good as the slam or quality I get from my 2.4s with subs. The highs and mids were very detailed, almost hyper detailed but my ears gave up fast and I tagged out. I will not be buying B&Ws, just too bright and a little unnatural sounding. 

A long time ago I got the older b&w 802D2 in the same room same system as a pair of thiel 3.7s and I remember the 802D2s bass being stronger so adding subs has greatly changed my Thiels and should not be over looked if you don’t mind the extra wires and clutter. 

I also tried the sonus faber olympica iii on classes amps this week for a few songs for something different and while nice they did not inspire me. They look amazing though but for $13,000 they are pretty meh. Might still be worth a real audition as my dealer is super close and I like to work with them if possible but first impression is that they are over priced. 

My dealer has the paradigm personas on the floor. Not sure the models but one set was $35k-ish and the other was $10k so I might give them a try. I don’t like the plastic look of them though. Maybe with my subs I could get away with the $10k model. 

I am playing with the idea of buy a pair of wilsons used. I always liked the Sophia 3 and Sasha and used they are now in my price range. I also might try to run down a pair of focal sopra 2s to try. 

I have kind of gotten out of audio and I am much more sensible on what I want to spend. I am probably looking at around $10k, new or used and will be keeping the subs in the system. 

My other local dealer carries revels and has the salon 2 and F228be on the floor so I will try those too. Last time I heard the salon 2 I was impressed but non engaged emotionally. Not sure why. 

At this point my demos have just made me appreciate how good the 2.4s are for the money or maybe my priorities have changed enough that little improvements don’t impress me these days. 

@ronkent I’m less optimistic about properly and seamlessly integrated a couple of subs with the 2.4’s than you are but the proof is in the pudding and if you’re happy that’s all that matters for you obviously. I took delivery today on a pair of Paradigm Persona 9H’s today to fool around with for a week or two. So far we’ve dialed the in pretty good, and dsp’d the bottom end (powered subs built in). I’ll post my impressions shortly. Out of the gate they’re a little tilted up a bit on the top end as people generally rag on them about, but a little dsp up there with only a few filters does the trick to bring that down a bit. They do seem to be doing alot right. My room is pretty well damped though and I’m surprised they’re a bit bright on the top end. Of course there’s not a huge amount of music up there but this is some. Driving the top end with my Pass 150.8 which is hardly even knows they’re there since most of the heavy lifting is being done by the 1400 watts of digital power.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4t9h6pfk4mf7v8m/IMG_2593.JPG?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d00i6maudbymwv8/IMG_1952.JPG?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qed8aizmaynlz69/IMG_4006.JPG?dl=0