Thiel Owners

Krell and Pass Labs are top runners as well.
Any other brand over-looked?

Happy Listening!

I have been happy with my long-time "Thiel friendly" McCormack DNA 1 (with SMc Audio upgrades). It provides sweetness and excellent midrange detail. Soundstage presentation is also 1st rate. Wide, very deep, and gives the impression of the music appearing to be at once a "whole" presentation with each instrument or voice being heard as completely distinct and apart from the others. The top end is articulate but not overly analytical or forward. The bass improved with the addition of the SMc Plitron transformer option, but this is no 100 plus pound monster amp. I would describe the bass as tuneful and accurate but slightly lacking in the chest-thumping slam and weight department compared with the really big amps with overbuilt power supplies and extra heavy-duty metalwork- Think Krell, Levinson, Moon, Pass, Classe & Bryston, etc. However, it does the double down trick with really impressive current capacity and drives the hell out of my 3.6es. 

https://www.stereophile.com/content/mccormack-power-drive-dna-1-power-amplifier-1992-measurements-pa...

In addition, these amps can be customized by SMc Audio to fit your system or needs. Steve McCormack has many decades of knowledge (wisdom!) gained by experimenting, careful listening (to systems and customers), and refining a brilliant design architecture. In my experience, McCormack is an excellent pairing with Thiels of the 3 series and smaller variety. I do not know how a DNA 1 would drive the larger 6es & 7s, but for my 3.6es (3.7s here and unboxed but not installed) it is glorious. McCormack made some bigger amps that might do the trick on 6es & 7s or I suppose you could have SMc configure DNA monoblocks.

I do not have audio memory long enough to completely recall the last time I heard Thiels with another amp. However, I do remember Classe as being very good, lush, and smooth sounding. I did hear 3.7es with an Ayre front end and amp that sounded a bit flat and emotionless, but that was a very long time ago in a demo room with 3.7s that might have been just out of the box.

Anyway, you may want to give McCormack a try. Oh, and if you hear any top-end edge, try a tube preamp. I have an ARC Ref 3 that helped open up the sound stage and beautifully refine the top end. Happy holidays and happy listening.  

yabe1951: others here have heard from me -- some years ago now -- of Steve McCormack thoroughly upgrading my DNA 0.5 to optimally drive my CS2.3s.  A complete success, that was only bettered when I started using CS2.4s as I still do today.  

   The same Plitron transformer in the smaller 0.5 makes for power doubling 125/250/500 wpc into 8/4/2 ohms, absolute stability into 1 ohm, an alleged 60A peak current.  He put in a few other tweaks specific to my 2.3s, as well as his established upgrades he was using at the time for a 'revision B+ Gold' designation.  Steve knows his design cold, and can optimize any of his amps for nearly any preference or load.  My avatar is the internals of the reworked amp, if you can possibly make it out.

   This was completed in 2006, and just recently this amp, at a high-end audio shop, was the best-sounding amp of five modern $5k-$16k power amps, driving a pair of Aerial Acoustics 7T speakers.

   To me this is sort of old news, but your post confirms I shouldn't take what I have for granted!

SMc has worked on my amp twice making upgrades. Both were very successful. I suppose one advantage is that Mr. McCormack will "tailor" an amp to fit your needs and purposes. Like a good suit, instead of buying off the rack, Steve will be sure you get what fits. I am not surprised that your amp did well in comparison with others. At this point, SMc upgrades are essentially a hand-crafted product/solution w/o the need for mass production, a large dealer network to support, and ad budgets, etc. They can focus on what sounds best rather than worry about all of the requirements of running a large and complex production and sales operation. If they hear something better, it does not require a big redesign or operational change. This ongoing R&D may eventually run its course and further improvement may no longer be possible given whatever limitations the original amps create. Sometimes one must start from scratch to do better. Tesla seems to be working on that angle. But for now, and into the foreseeable future, what SMc Audio does seems to work very well. Perhaps this is why and how SMc can compete with more expensive amps.

Actually it took three upgrades to make mine *perfect*, though the first one was just the ’basic’ upgrade of the time. I imagine by now it’s a labor of love, as Steve is past able to retire if he chose. He’s spent decades listening to the best passive discrete parts to mix and match into his existing circuit boards and amp topology, as you say, knowing exactly how to tailor his suit to fit us.

Just a couple examples of ’business as usual’, as part of my middle-of-the-road (non-Thiel-specific) upgrade, he uses 10" of some massive Shunyata Copperhead AC power cable to just connect the rear AC input to the front panel power switch. 1" per channel of some sort of carbon fiber conductor to go from the WBT NextGen RCA input jacks to the circuit board. 4" of Van den Hul high-end speaker cable to go from the output transistors to the Cardas speaker terminals. And that was in 2006 as part of a B-level upgrade!

The beauty is that for some time he *did* the mass production, dealer network, advertising, at least on a modest scale, and enough to have a long-running well-regarded set of products, that were a big bang for the buck as his designs allowed for modest parts to sound ’good enough’, and little money was put into cosmetics.

A good design is still a good design, optimized by the parts and their integration. Just look at all the recycled vacuum tube circuits from the 50s and 60s that are used in today’s top gear with fully modern parts in the signal path and support circuits (power supplies, auto-bias, layout). It would seem he could extract a bit more by further optimizing his circuit board layouts 25+ years later, but that would be a question for Mr. McCormack to assess price vs performance, a calculation he’s always excelled at...

It's this designing for the long haul I find similar to Thiel, and find this approach to be of personal value to me in the components I choose to make up my audio system as a whole.  And other products of note I own...