Thiel Owners

harrylavo
Good to see you again. I, totally agree. One does not have to spend a large sum of money to achieve a very good system around Thiel Audio loudspeakers.
Happy Listening!

jon_5912
Absolutely! Musical bliss,  is in the ear of the beholder.
Happy Listening!

Hello Thiel owners- jafant asked me to join the thread as I am a Thiel 3.7 owner and I have been on a quest to get the most out of them at my budget- right now looking to maybe replace my current preamp or possibly the dac.  You can see my original post from the amplifier/preamplifier section regarding this issue.  

By way of introduction you should know that my 1st serious speaker ever was the Thiel 1.2 that I bought from Innovative Audio in NY in the late 80's- which I STILL own.  In fact I own a total of 9 pairs of Thiels: my house is wired with 6 pairs of in-ceiling Thiels for general listening, 3 pairs in my home theater fronted by 3.6's and an MSC 1 center.   

And now my main 2 channel rig has the 3.7's.   I came to these after I was using a pair of Focal Micro Utopia Be's but decided to try a more full range speaker.  I found a pair of 3.7's at a good price in my area about 3yrs ago- the owner had barely used them after he got them.  I wasn't sure they would look right in the context of the room decor but I thought I would try to swing it.  Honestly, it didn't really work.  SO i decided to get a smaller floor stander and sell the Thiels- I went with a pair Magico's S1Mk1.  After about 6 to 8 months with Magico's I decided I didn't love but I would stick with them- for the size and used price they are really an outstanding speaker.  I finally got around to being serious about selling the Thiels and for fun I hooked them up again- well, they have never left the rig since.   They are simply in another league in terms of presence, imaging, texture etc.  And the "decor" was just going to have to suffer.  So now the Magico's will be on the selling block (although I am notoriously bad at just accumulating- I have to get my sh!t together and get rid of some stuff).

Sorry, I have rambled on enough.  The post below explains what I am trying to do now.
The other matter that interests me is if there are ways to improve the crossover- I have been reading tomthiel's posts and when it might be possible to try an upgrade I think I will go for it.  
Btw, I saw that on ebay there is a person selling an added external crossover for Thiel 3.7's- anyone have any experience with that? 
I ask because if I were to nitpick a defect in the 3.7 sound I would say that maybe they can be a little "hot"in upper frequencies which can remove a bit of the organic quality of the musical performance.

Anyway, it is a pleasure to meet you all.

Here is my other post:

2. amps-preamps
3. 148037-2013

Thiel 3.7's and Pass Labs xa60.5's- now looking for the next upgrade

I finally took the plunge and bought a pair xa60.5's mono's to drive my Thiels- and the upgrade has brought my system to a whole new level. I was looking to get a deeper, more developed soundstage and with the Pass mono's I got more than I was expecting: the speakers virtually disappear, and you can see into the performance- the sound has a much more refined texture and everything is more fleshed out.  So now I am wondering what should be the next step up. What I am looking to do is to get more spatial cues, and I suppose detail, to have a better sense of the recording venue and bring me closer to that sense of a live performance.  
My intention is to stay with Pass Labs and the Thiel's so I am thinking more of a preamp or dac upgrade. The preamp is a Primaluna Dialogue Premium with Telefunken Nos tubes and the dac is a Moon 280d.  Cabling is Nordost except for the power cords to the amps which I built myself and which really did make a very marked difference- more bass and presence than before with stock cords.
Both the dac and preamp are very good in their own right so changing either to get a significant upgrade along the lines I described above rather than a sideways step isn't going to be easy.  So I am interested in any advice and thoughts from fellow audiogoners.

Here is a brief description of how my system evolved. I was originally driving the Thiels with Mac MA7000 integrated- the power amp section is basically a hot-rodded ma252. The first upgrade I decided to try was to bypass the preamp section with the Prima Luna and that was a revelation. The sound was transformed.  Then I started doing research on a replacement for the Mac altogether. It took me a long time and I considered a lot of options. What put me on the path to the Pass Labs was the suggestion from a friend, an electrical engineer that is also passionate about audio, that I take a look at a Luxman class A amp. I had never really considered this option as the Thiels are not easy to drive but as my friend pointed out the issue would not be the watts as the Thiels are 90db but the power supply which needs to feed an impedance load that does dip below 3 Ohms across a significant portion of the frequency spectrum.  Anyway, I wasn't able to find a Luxman at my budget and it was than I got the suggestion to consider Pass- the xa30.8. I was intrigued and called Pass and had a long conversation with them and they indeed are very familiar with the Thiels- and they too confirmed that their amps would have no problem driving them.  Anyway, just as I was mullling this over a pair of xa60.5's came up at a good price from a great a'goner and so I went ahead with that. And btw, I have heard some suggest that Pass does not deal well with low impedance loads- it is simply not the case- not at all in fact and the proof is in the pudding: the Thiels sound GREAT.

Anyway, any suggestions and advice would be great.

Many thx as always!

pgastone

I know exactly what you mean about re-hooking the 3.7s up and realizing you can't do without them.

I went through something like 2 years thinking I had to replace my 3.7s due to decor and ergonomic issues in my room (a bit too big).  But every time I hooked them up I realized they outdid everything else I heard, including speakers I bought to try as replacements.

I was only "saved" by finding the slightly smaller Thiel 2.7s which gave me that Thiel sound and did enough of what the 3.7s did to let me finally sell my 3.7s.
On the same "proof is in the pudding" level, despite what I'd heard about Thiels being super current hungry and necessitating beefy solid state amps, I found my conrad johnson tube amps drove them beautifully, as they do for my 2.7s.   It all depends on the demands any particular person puts on the speakers, and what sonic characteristics are most important to us.

I've had the little Thiel 02s in my system for quite a while and they continued to enthrall me.  I still think they somehow get a sense of the exact differences in materials, and the way an instrument produces it's sound, than maybe anything else I've owned.

But I just switched back to the 2.7s which are of course overall more sophisticated and enveloping.  Among the most satisfying differences is the sheer sense of ease a bigger floor stander gives.  The small two way 02s quickly give a sense of becoming strained when asked to produce more rousing music at higher volumes (though, within a comfortable volume limit, they still seem to convey more liveliness and enthusiasm in some sense).  But the ease and dynamics of the 2.7s seem almost unrestricted in comparison.  Strings swell, horns blast, drums pound, the sound breathes dynamically in more convincing and unrestrained manner.

Which is why I've never been able to stick just to smaller stand mounted speakers for the long haul.