Thiel Owners

@andy2 Thiel Audio found a formula that sounded good to them and they pushed that vision as far as they could. No doubt they considered and listened to alternatives but first order filters became their cornerstone. Tip of the hat to them for finding something good and sticking to it. You can decide whether it sounds best to you. All designs have trade-offs. My ears quite like Thiel’s solution.


I have a lot of respect for that. I mean, look at Magico. Their models are all over the map in terms of design philosophy. I think their main skill is throwing gobs of money into the company, trying whatever design element they can think of (well, mostly borrowed from others). IMO, they’re mere hype from TAS.

From my perspective, Thiel Audio had two main problems: 1) Jim Thiel didn’t train an engineer to carry his vision forward; and 2) New Thiel owners had almost no experience in high end audio.
Do you really think Thiel Audio folded because of adherence to their design principles? I sure don’t. Quite the opposite.

I like Beetle's perspective, and the two factors are fundamentally linked. Early-on, I wanted to work toward an ongoing entity that would transcend any and all founders' contributions. Jim disagreed. He wanted a vehicle to support his research and development ideas. "And when I'm finished, it's over". That stance caused the lack of successors to his chops, which in turn caused the lack of interest from qualified buyers, since history is but a small fraction of viability. An extensive multi-year worldwide search turned up NO qualified buyers. The denouement was thoroughly predictable because it was embedded in the company's genes.

The paragraph above is a short snippet of a 40 year scenario that was quite difficult to live through. A company, even a small entity like Thiel Audio, orchestrates significant life events and outcomes for scores of people spanning dozens of years. A primary motivation for my re-entry into this story is to soften some of the rough edges of the company's trajectory.

To Andy's point: New Thiel demonstrated quite clearly how a marketplace responds to non-focused strategies. New Thiel spent $10Million trying to do the standard job really well. Their tower speaker got 5 stars from Brent Butterworth and did the standard thing at least as well as X,Y and Z. But who would buy a Thiel Standard, when you could buy the real X,Y or Z Standard from PSB, B&W or anyone else in the field. Primary among the reasons we chose first order slopes is the uncanny rightness of sound, which I have previously addressed in this forum. For those who "get it", there is often no going back. Count me in that camp in company with many of you. Another reason was the extreme difficulty. By the time of the 03 and 04 in the late 1970s, there were companies (Japanese and European) buying them for competitive evaluation. I, as external affairs liaison, would follow up those encounters. Frankly, we were afraid that companies with comparatively unlimited resources would take our ideas and leave us in the dust. A senior executive at Dynaudio relieved our angst by saying: "What you are doing is impossible, expensive and invisible. Don't worry about others trying it." He was right, and we changed stragegy from patenting innovations to running as fast as we could on our own course. That seemed worth doing, and still feels good.   

In case anyone is interested,
received the following email from Audio Consultants:

Audio Consultants Retirement Sale Continues

Dear Friends,

As you know, before we officially closed our doors on December 21st, we held a comprehensive sale and most of our vast inventory is gone.   However, a few interesting items remain.  Some of these include:

- 1 pair Vienna Acoustics Music, with crates

- 1 pair Vienna Acoustics Mozart Grand with boxes

- 1 pair Vienna Beethoven Concert Grand, with boxes

- HRS MXR double wide rack with platforms

- Various Salamander cabinets and racks

- Various Transparent cables

- 1 Solid Tech 20” high double wide rack

- 1 pair McIntosh HT3 dipole speakers

- 1 pair Klipsch RS7 speakers

- Critical Mass amp stands

- Grand Prix amp stands

- 1 pair Thiel SCS 3 speakers

To inquire about anything, please call 847 864 9565 or please stop in.  I will be in the store every day until about the end of January, probably from 10am to 4pm.

Thank you again.

Sincerely,

Simon Zreczny

^I just called, not particularly helpful. 

I am in complete agreement with Beetlemania. The core designs are what helped separate Thiel from the herd. It would be hard for a small company to market competing design principles and still maintain credibility. Grooming a replacement for Jim wouldn't be too easy. As the late Roy Johnson of Green Mountain used to say, most people aren't up to doing the math. There aren't that many with the chops and the will. It's one thing to put together a 1st order crossover in a slanted box , it's another to customize for driver anomalies so that the whole acts as a time coherent system. When I first got serious about auditioning speakers, and not understanding the reasons why, I kept coming back to the few time coherent designs (the maggies were the only exception even considered). To this day I am still consistently  attracted to time correct designs over all others.