Thiel Owners

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.

Good Morning All

I had to look at the 3.7's on E-Bay , listed at $7,300 .
When I purchased my 2.7's new and delivered for $3,000 
I passed on the chance of owning new 3.7's for $7,000 delivered ,
the same birdseye maple finish ! ( if they were $6,000 I might have )

While looking at all the Thiels for sale there was an ad for 
an add-on filter for the 3.7 & 2.7 speakers ,
does anybody have any knowledge about these ?

I'd like to thank sdecker for all the info about McCormack amps .
.

Robert - I know a little about those add-on filters. I spoke with the maker, who would only say that he is fixing known problems with the 3.7 upper frequencies, as well as with Rob at CSS, and we ran a cost thumbnail. The Stereophile review near-field response shows a rough rising high end and the undamped oil-can tweeter resonance. Jim let that ring due to its out of band frequency and that the required notch filter imparts a veil on the whole sound. The low-treble roughness is, in my opinion, in the time domain and primarily an artifact of near-field measurement. In other words, it will not be fixed by more XO circuitry which modifies the frequency domain. Note also Stereophile’s averaged listener-position graphs, which show no hint of that alleged roughness.

Rob and I looked at the parts vs retail selling price and determined that those parts, if of Thiel quality, would cost more than his asking price for the assembled unit. So, he is inserting coils, caps, resistors and wire of lower quality, which quite probably reduces global transparency.

Neither I myself, nor Rob to my knowledge, has heard the mod. Plus, he may be doing more or differently than what I’m saying. It would be instructive to hear direct experience. But at this point we would not recommend it.