Thiel Owners

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. 

Like sdl4, my search for speakers ended in the early 90's with a pair of 2.2's. 2 years was a long time for me to own any piece of audio gear. I had some Maggies at the time, and had 2 Adcom 555's acting as monoblocks. But Still wasn't feeling it. I spent hours and hours auditioning against the likes of Vandersteen, which just weren't doing it for me. There was something so right to my ear with the Thiels across the board. Perhaps the most impressive thing was their ability to throw a sound stage like few floor-standing speakers I've heard. Not just left and right, but even from behind.

Since then, I've upgraded everything at least once but usually 3 times, and most specifically a dedicated listening room with dedicated power (maybe the biggest upgrade of all). But no other speaker tempted me enough at the end of the day, even for a lot more money.

Sadly, a variety of things got me out of music for several years. A divorce has kept my system/software away from me for 4 years, but I'm about to get it back! The Thiels are way too large for my townhouse, I'm looking at downsizing. They'll go back in their boxes for the first time in almost 30 years, but they're keepers. I'm not here forever. I'll probably see if the KEF R series can come close to the magic that is Thiel, but I'm not counting on it.