Thiel 3.7 vs Wilson Sasha

Well here is a shot list of great $5000ish speakers. I have included some "expert" reviews... if you don't want to trust my opinion. So here we go flame suit on.

Thiel C2.4 (price just raised from $4900 to $5900 last month)

"The Thiel CS2.4 is a great loudspeaker, one of the very best I've heard regardless of price. Its treble soars and its bass plummets, but all the while the CS2.4 sounds utterly neutral and musically communicative. This speaker looks gorgeous and has the earmarks of heirloom-quality craftsmanship. The CS2.4 will be at home in a tweaked-out dedicated listening room or in a finely decorated living room, and its moderate size means it won't take up much space in either."
http://www.soundstage.com/revequip/thiel_cs24.htm

PSB Synchrony One

"With a proper amp, though, you'll find that these speakers are capable of remarkable performance from top to bottom with bass performance that is notable for the speakers' size and price, loudness capabilities that belong to speakers twice the size, and a midrange presentation that sets a new standard for tonal accuracy, clarity and detail."

"To my ears, the Synchrony One is the best PSB speaker yet, and it establishes a benchmark for value and performance -- something that seems synonymous with Paul Barton’s name."
http://www.soundstage.com/revequip/psb_synchrony_one.htm

Magnepan 1.7

"Here we have a $1995 speaker whose staging, focus, and low-level resolution are not just much better than that of its excellent predecessor but downright superb by any standard short of a CLX or an M5, with detailing in bass choirs that was so good it reminded me of the Maggie 1-Us (which had the most lifelike detail in the mid-to-upper bass I've ever heard). " Jonathan Valin
http://www.avguide.com/blog/magnepan-mg-17-unqualified-triumph

Magnepan 3.6

No review needed hundreds of owners here alone...

For the last speakers I was actually thinking of Dynaudio's S5.4 but they are a good bit more than I thought... But the list of brands that make good budget speakers goes on and I am sure someone could add to my list with Gallo, Usher, Revel, Dynaudio, and countless other speakers I will never hear...

Some speakers in the $10,000-$15000 that I demoed at length that did not make the cut.

Focal 1037s $1100ish (bad integration, tweeter oddities, bass VERY room depentant, but had a very clear midrange)

B&W 802D (moments of glory, but odd bass anomalies, very poor dynamic contrasts, colored as a whole, I did like them at one time though).

Klipsch P-38F $12000 (wheres the music?, each driver was great but sounded separated in space, too much bass in room I heard them, not for me but I heard them in the same room as the Magnepan 20.1 so it was not a fair fight)

Wilson Audio Duettes $14000ish (Poor detail retrieval for $14000 and only ok in general, uneven bass in a very good room, some resonance in the kick drum+ range possibly caused by port noise). I realize there is some adjustability to these but I did not take the time, YMMV.

I am sure many of you have speakers/brands you love to hate and great brands that don't get press... and there are lots of speakers that fall into no man's land of good but not great.

I think that it is silly to think that you can really understand the differences in speakers if the demo uses different electronics or rooms. How do you attribute the differenct characteristics heard to the speaker, but not to the upstream signal or the room interactions?

My last serious demo was when I bought my Wilson Sophias. I had already owned the Thiel CS 1.6s (a very highly regarded speaker) as my fronts for a couple of years. I made a special trip to the dealer (over 200 miles away) to do some auditioning. I listened to another pair of Thiel's (but I can not remember which particular model) as I was considering staying with that house sound.

We started by auditioning the Thiel's with using the same amplfier that I owned at that time so that we could be as close to my system as possible. I then demoed the Wilson Sohpias whith those electronics. We then switched to some other higher powered amps so that I could make sure that I was hearing all the potential out of both pairs of speakers. The pre-amp and source was never changed. The process took several hours but I was able to make very accurate conclusions on how these speakers sounded in their dedicated auditioning room and how they would sound in my home.

During that audition there was a clear winner and I knew that I was certainly hearing the differences in the speakers. Even my wife (who has never been a fan of how the Wilsons look, even to this day, 6 years later) could hear the diffences. Simply put, the Wilsons just sounded more like real music.

Musictime,

All of our choices are more personal at this stage in the game than anything. I demoed the Sophia 3 and Thiel 3.7 in the same room same system yesterday for about two hours.... I pretty much feel the same way as the original poster but my review would be even less kind to the Wilsons.

Maybe I will start a new thread and go into the detail. I am pretty worn-out from traveling (work related) at the moment though.

James63,

Thanks for your post. When you do have some time, I would be interested in hearing the deatails of your demo day. I do agree that there is alot of personal taste at this level of audio reproduction. I wonder how much the difference in opinion on these speakers is due synergery (or lack of) of the upstream components.

Musictime,

I wrote you up a review of my demo but it ended up being three pages long and I could not post it as a new thread....

I e-mail it to you instead. If anyone else wants to read my BS about the Sophia 3 vs 3.7, just send me an e-mail, and I will forward it your way.