Thiel Owners

In response to Andy 2 "Monday Quarterbacking" I'll offer that over the 40 year Thiel sales history, perhaps 10% of their buyers knew what a first-order crossover was, its real benefits and challenges. And perhaps 1% of those buyers knew the engineering well enough to truly appreciate the technical aspects, as Tom touches on above. That's just a total guess knowing the hifi buying population I've engaged with over 45 years (not as a salesman).

I'm perhaps in the 1% above (NOT "the 1%"!) and it still came down to lots of listening in audio showrooms in the brick and mortar days to Thiels versus similarly priced and respected speakers. I had a preference for their engineering, but if they didn't appease my sound priorities vs all the other good speakers of the day anywhere near their price or form factor, I wouldn't have bought 2.3s, and later 2.4s. I had no trouble finding Thiels among many dealers throughout the northeast with which to compare to many other brands. They didn't seem a 'boutique' speaker to me at the time, splitting the difference between say B&W and oh I dunno, Silverline Audio.

Also, Thiels were generally getting good to great reviews over the years, with 'too bright' being the most common complaint I recall. Thiel's "real" designs of their final decade seemed the best-received.  So I don't agree that things would have been any different if Jim chose to use higher-order crossovers to 'save' the company, assuming the voicing, pricing, cabinetry, etc were otherwise similar. Doing so would dumb-down the brand for the 10% and have little perceivable difference in the showroom for the 90%.  Perhaps the bigger 'problem' was Jim's solo brilliance and unwillingness/difficulty in finding a suitable protege, ending up with perhaps the dumbest audio-related buyout I've ever been aware of :-(

I worked at a Thiel dealer in 1978/1979, so right you are Tom...people hear it or they don’t and first order slopes are difficult and require a lot of innovation and work. I also eventually worked selling Vandersteen and Dunlavey and of course others, many others.... I own a minty pair of Thiel and a couple pair of Vandersteen today - last man standing but with a succession plan, my hope is it works - they are certainly a small family centered business.
trade secret and move fast is a better strategy than patents for sure.
wishing you all the best in 2020!!!!

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.

I am not arguing about the technical merits of time-phase coherent.  I am only arguing about Thiel business model as if it is financially viable.  I would not criticize PSB or B&W as they are able to find a way to be viable even if using a different design strategy.  To me it seems like Thiel had put themselves a bit into a corner with such a singular mindset - that is first order time-phase coherent or all else which may be correct technically, but financially, it did not have a way out.  

For those who "get it", there is often no going back. Count me in that camp in company with many of you.

Again, I am not arguing about that either, but financially, since there are very few who actually "get it", and it seems to limit the potential pool of buyers.

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.  

What you said was a bit of an irony.  I could interpret what you said as a "put down" of Dynaudio, but then Dynaudio is one of the largest speaker maker in the world so they definitely know what they are doing.  

That seemed worth doing, and still feels good.

I think it was Plato (or Socrates I don't remember) who said that if it feels good, then it probably is not good.  I've been drinking too much beers so I probably agree with that :-)

Dynaudio was a close, interactive supplier, and lots of mutual respect developed between us. No put-down intended. The point is that we did our thing.

Regarding viability: companies form around and live their goals. Ours was to make musical tools that mattered. FYI: Thiel’s demand was always beyond its ability to produce. In the first 20 years, that growth was a huge burden. Later it became a choice. 50 people is a manageable number that allowed innovation and large enough scale to pay the bills.

This discussion, especially the inside history lesson from Tom, have me thinking about why I bought my 2.2s in the early 1990's. I was aware of the "rightness" of the sound from speakers designed using 1st order crossovers so my decision came down to a choice between Thiels and Vandersteens. I have several friends who were (and still are) very happy with their Vandersteens, but I liked the clarity of the Thiels - as well as the stunning cabinet work on the Thiels (thanks Tom!). It is a testament to the quality of the 2.2 as a package that it is still my primary set of speakers 28 years later.