Thiel Owners

unsound, thanks for the compliment.  I'm hardly a 'vintage' guy, but my late-production (2001) Line1 SE has been *completely* reliable over nearly twenty years of often daily use.  Of course, I can't leave well enough alone, and it too has been substantially upgraded over the years, to the point where last year it bettered 4 modern $5-15k preamps, though did get 'beat' all-around by a wild-card Plinius solid-state unit.  If our house burns to the ground, the insurance 'replacement' cost for my stereo is going to be far more than what I paid, starting with those CS2.4s...

sdecker

Thank You for the clarification.  I have considered a Plinius amp except for the fact that the specs report it does not double power from 8 into 4 ohms? 2 ohm not avail/tested.

Happy Listening!

jafant, these were separate amp and preamp shootouts.  The Plinius power amp compared to my McCormack was a class-A SA-103 (125wpc 8ohms, 220wpc 4ohms), that had comparatively unremarkable sound.  The Plinius Kaitaki preamp vs my Sonic Frontiers was remarkably good-sounding across the board, the only preamp in the shootout to better my preamp in its current configuration.

Just to stay on topic to your thread, the most recent in-house speaker comparison was my 2.4 vs the Dynaudio Confidence C1, a modern, large-for-a-stand-mounted $7500 2-way.  To my great surprise, the Thiels crushed them in every possible aspect.  Even their vaunted Esotar tweeter had no discernible improvement in natural accuracy, smoothness, or micro-dynamics over the 2.4 simple aluminum dome constrained within a jiggly midrange cone.  And the Thiels smoked them in every form of soundstaging, imaging, center focus, wide speaker spacing without loss of center-fill, etc.  Nobody was more surprised than me that such a highly-regarded monitor had nothing - *nothing* - on my 'old' Thiels...

Of interest here is that the C1 is a first order design. Thanks for the wonderful report!

And, by Dynaudio's ad copy, a couple 'tricks' in their crossover to capitalize on their first-order slopes to mimic a sloped baffle and correct the phase response between drivers.  Stereophile's step response plot of the C1 even looks more coherent than most small two-ways.  Good design intentions didn't equal my high expectations I had for their sound.