Thiel Owners

"Looking for CS5 suggestions."

I have CS5's and live in the greater Indianapolis area. Audio Solutions would lend me used gear home for in home auditions, which were on a 15 amp circuit. 

I tried Krell, Pass, and Mark Levinson, among others, all of which were rated at 300 WPC plus into 8 ohms and doubled down. They all could power the CS5's and all sounded a bit different to me in my listening room. Also, they all were huge boat anchors, like 150 pounds. It was really a lot of fun maneuvering those behemoths from car trunk, down the stairs, and back out again. Fun - truly and sarcastically.

I thought that the Pass 350.0 was the best, because it sounded very solid and had a presence to the sound. But it was just too big.

I lived with a Coda at 300 WPC for a while and it did a pretty good job but seemed to me to get a bit constricted at the highest volumes.

My current amp is a McCormack DNA-500 and It is effortless in powering the Thiel CS5's as anything I have heard in my listening room. It may miss that last bit of rock solid presence I thought I heard with the Pass.

I always am looking at potential amp changes but the DNA-500 makes me very happy and weighs in at less than 100 pounds; so it will probably take me winning a lottery to change it out.

FWIW

Thanks for listening,

Dsper

ovinewar

Re DAC/Transport - here are some items I can speak to from personal experience that you could land today for less than a grand.

Re transport - check out the Bluesound site's outlet store at www.bluesound.com.  They are currently asking $199 for 1st gen Bluesound Node and $399 for 2nd gen Bluesound Node 2.

For a more than capable DAC, I've seen Bryston BDA-1 currently going for as little as $500 on Audiogon.

I personally had the 1st gen Node hooked up to the BDA-1 via Toslink and can report that this is a more than capable combination.   
I happily employed this combo in my main rig from 2014 until earlier this year, and still employ both pieces of kit elsewhere.     

Dsper

Steve McCormack said the DNA-500 is the best amp he's ever heard ,
lucky you .  If you truely like the sound I would suggest
sending it to Steve for one of his upgrades , or DIY .

I have a CJ/McCormack DNA-250 that I have been replacing/upgrading
capacitors and resistors ( getting 4 Hovlands in todays mail  )  
and I can tell you that
changing a few componets can make a hugh improvement in sound .
Replacing three  2 watt  resistors with Tantalum ones from Audio Note
suprised the heck out of me , highly recomended .

jafant 
seems like more people are discovering McCormack amps .

Next year my Thiels !

Rob

p.s.  Does anybody here have experience with Goldring MI cartridges
or Grace F9-L ( 5.5mv ) cartridges ? 

Your Bryston in bridged mode is not recommended for the low impedance of your speakers. In bridge mode, 8 ohm is recommended as minimum and your speakers go down to below 3 ohm. Keep them in unbridged mode and they will comfortably go down to 4 ohm and produce 200 + watt. Your amp would be great for bi amping though!

Ovinwar - the CS5 was Thiel's first application of in-house Finite Element Analysis, applied to all aspects of development. The original CS5 tweeter (also used in CS5.1, 3.6 and 2.2) was wholly developed in-house and represents a giant leap ahead, beyond what we could buy in the marketplace. The other drivers, MB dome upper mid, Focal lower mid and both Seas upper and lower woofers were the closest to our goals that we could get from those various suppliers. After introduction, we developed custom motor manufacturing which we applied to those non-tweeter drivers for considerably lower distortion and greater clarity.

Most CS5 owners upgraded to the CS5i, which might be available from Rob Gillum at Coherent Source Service. However that settles might influence the level of performance you seek in your ancillary gear. The CS5 was our state of the art, but the bar was raised significantly by the CS5i, which could justify ultra-performance signal purity.