Thiel Owners

That’s a great, and funny, story, Tom! And a good reminder of the compromises designers must make. Throwing money at the problem helps but even with unlimited budget, consumers will not have a “perfect” system.

For myself, I most value transparency, resolution, imaging . . . musical immersion. Those are the very qualities improved with the CS2.4 XO upgrade. And I have assembled a system that addresses those priorities within my particular budget. I have zero interest in recreating SPLs of The Who in my room.

Great story about Nelson Pass and his "dangerous" speaker design!

In terms of amps for use with Thiel speakers, I've been very happy with my PS Audio M700 Monoblocks driving Thiel 2.2 speakers. These amps put out 700w per channel into 4 ohms and can handle peaks at 2 ohms if necessary. Fortunately, the 2.2 runs mainly at 4 ohms or higher and only rarely drops into the 3-4 ohm range (per JA's Stereophile measurements).

It's clear that some of the later Thiel models are harder to drive than the 2.2, but folks on the PS Audio forum report great real-world performance of 2.4's and 3.7's using the M700's or the BHK signature designs. I don't think anyone should be hesitant to at least demo Thiels with PS Audio amps.   

@Beetlemania, I’ll say this one more time. IIt’s not about ultimate volume levels!It’s about dealing with impedance!
Look at the graphs of distortion levels in the previously posted links.
Your correct, if it was about ultimate volume levels, I’d have very different speakers.

Yawn. Stereophile amp measurements tell you the outer limits of the unit. If I needed anything even close to 200+ W at 2 ohm continuous, you would have a point. But . . .
never mind. You can have the last word. 

My 2.2s are used almost exclusively for kids tv shows these days and they're hooked up to a ~$900 Yamaha HT receiver.  I'm surprised at how deep and forceful the bass is even from this very modest power source.  I'm sure there'd be some improvement with a big power amp but it's pretty darn good the way it is.  They most definitely don't require a massive amount of power.  My 3.7s are hooked up to a pair of Cambridge 840s running bridged mono, have been for the last 7 years, and work great this way.  I was somewhat afraid that the low impedance combined with bridging would be a problem but it hasn't been.  

I'm sure some Thiel models require monster amplifiers but the ones I have definitely do fine with more moderate amps.  I don't listen especially loud so I'm sure that's a factor.  Maybe the 3.7s with their well-behaved drivers and relatively simple crossover don't present as difficult of a load as some other Thiels do.  I did notice a significant improvement in bass definition when changing from one amp to 2.