Thiel Owners

I had never had a chance to listen to theil speakers before saving a pristine pair of 2.0 from going into a dumpster. A relative of an audiophile friend suddenly went to assisted living and an apartment had to emptied quickly.  Nobody wanted them so lucky me. I put them in my main system which entails a PS Audio direct stream dac , bhk pre, bhk 250 amp, with synergistic research atmosphere cabling. The theil’s replaced my Merlin vsm’s black magic edition.  WOW was I impressed. Large soundstage, sweet highs, solid midrange and a nice tight bass for a speaker of its vintage. I enjoyed a week of listening including a live broadcast of Beethovens 9th on period instruments from Carnegie hall that was especially memorable.  Lots of jazz,some Dead it was all good. They will not be replacing the Merlins but they will be the foundation for a great starter system for my son when he finishes graduate school. I’m thinking of looking around for a pair of 2.4’s to play around with. Thanks for the thread.

mobilesax -- I've heard Merlin VSMs at a few audio shows and at one store, but not in my own room vs whatever speakers I've owned at the time.  I've had the utmost respect for his creating a solid design and then constantly refining it year after year to as fine as it could possibly be.  That a pair of vintage Thiels of unknown condition one step away from the dumpster could so impress you says a lot about both the Merlins and Thiels, and certainly your electronics are 'adequate'!  

More to the point, if you do score a pair of 2.4s, a thorough listening contrast would be appreciated, if only by me, because those two speakers were on my short list a 15 years ago.  I didn't get the Merlins, so I'm still not entirely sure what I'm missing, though I can't complain about my 2.4s.

mobilesax

Welcome!  Good to read that you saved a pair of Thiel loudspeakers from a dumpster?  Go ahead and seek out a pair of CS 2.4 loudspeakers- you and your Son will not be disappointed. Keep me posted and have fun!

Happy Listening!

I find this question re "opposite of Thiel" to be a good one. It demonstrates how individual the pursuit is. Each designer / company brings their own values, perspectives, resources and vision to the task. And both the task and its historic and cultural contexts are sufficiently large and complex to allow huge variability of outcomes. Thiel was a tiny player, which may have helped it remain true to its calling, which was to produce and support Jim's vision of a thoroughly accurate transducer, equally honoring all musically relevant aspects - augmented by the contributions of the other founders.

I didn't notice Bose on the list. Even if nothing is truly an opposite, I think it fair to remember that Bose was greatly responsible for the emergence of high end, especially brick and mortar demonstration stores. Most of the operators I knew in the day cited Bose as their focus for entering the arena, with phrases like "there must be better than Bose" , "Bose doesn't cut it", "Hard to believe people think they want Bose" etc. The upstart young designers resented that the large majority of Bose's budget went to advertising and marketing rather than product development and other oddities of Bose's dominance.

A personal piece of history: Bose made Thiel cease and desist from using the number 2.2 for our second generation model 2, which we renamed the CS2 2, without the decimal point, garnering more publicity and support than any emerging company could ask for. I found it amusing in the 2000s after moving near Boston and knowing some guys who worked for Bose, that they used the Thiel CS3.5 as their laboratory reference standard for product development benchmarking. Now, isn't irony sweet?

Ladies and gentleman, Mr. Tom Thiel once again dropping the knowledge...Thanks for sharing, Tom!