Thiel Owners

More good info thanks tom.  Can you elaborate on “kind of problems that plague Thiel users” when using the Adcom amp?  Would other Thiel models benefit from being modified for dual inputs to allow for vertical biamping, and could (should?) this be done as part of a XO modification?  Apologize if this has already been covered in the thread, if so I will go on a search mission, unfortunately withthis format it’s easier to ask than go back and search.

Congrats on the score! And many hours of sweet, happy listening! A few years ago I had picked up the 3.7s and love them. I often gravitate to vintage and good, and paired these with a Bryston amp, and eBay Tom Evans pre-amp. But some of the greatest advancements came from the cabling which, relative to the system, was actually the most cost effective. I first experimented with, then put broadly, the Anticables, from Paul Speltz. At that time, Tidal was offering a section of their website that tested the "can you hear a difference [with lossless format]?" And before the cables, it was random. After the cables (on the same system) I want to say I picked out five out of six. 

All of this is through Oppo BDP 105D, which is a sweet (but unfortunately discontinued) media server.f

Enjoy!

Tom, thanks for your very experienced discussions here! Fascinating reading.

Thanks donzi, whichlevel anticables did you end up with?  Assume speaker and interconnects, did you also try their power cables?

Thosb - the broad brush paints a picture that the select few amps (which you guys end up with) seem to handle the difficult loads, mitigate "the harshness" or otherwise perform well without softening or sweetening the signal. Jim's view was that these are "good amps" which should be used with "good speakers". He tested amps and knew the designers and indeed many of the used our speakers for their design loads.

What I hear from the Adcom is somewhat bland / lifeless, grainy and dry. Not bad. Pretty good compared to many, but fairly vanilla compared with better.

Regarding dual inputs: I'll recap. We identified dual inputs as a good solution and used it in the CS3. Problems occurred when people used radically different cables for bass and treble and/or bi-amped with differing amps, including unmatched gain. These hassles were unacceptable to Jim, who put tons of energy into matching to within a fractional dB across the spectrum. Kathy polled dealers who thought at our price points life would be much simpler with single inputs. End of that story.
But the back story doesn't change. Since the current draw makes many amps misbehave, even if marginally, separating the bass loads from upper loads cleans things up enormously. There is a perceived problem by some that jumpers degrade the sound if you choose to single-input. I don't hear it when using Cardas high purity copper jumper plates, which are affordable and allow the user to substitute with jumper wires if desired. I like vertical bi-amping where one channel drives the woofer and the other channel drives the mid-tweeter. I don't have a good sample, since my amps are pretty good and I only have 1 Adcom stereo. (The second one arrived DOA and I opted for a refund unstead of repair.)
I suggest adding the second pair of posts when modding the XO. Beetle may chime in - he looked in to that with his 2.4 upgrade.