Thiel Owners

@jon_5912, For moderate volume levels in a moderately sized room, you'll want a rated minimum of 400 Watts per channel into 2 Ohms for the Thiel CS 3.7's.

thileiste
Nice! gear. I was fond of the AQ Niagara conditioner myself.
Happy Listening!

Happy Friday! All

As a general statement have you guys tried McIntosh amps with your Thiels? Do you like them? If so what did you like or not like. 
 I am kicking around the idea of trying a MC462 with my Thiel 2.4. I realized there are better and cheaper amps. 
Thanks. 

Some like McIntosh with Thiel. McIntosh succeeds in accomplishing their design goals, they are well made, and bench test well, they hold their value as well or better than most of the competition, they will likely have parts and well qualified techs available for some time to come, their consistent, tasteful, even iconic styling will probably go into the future making visual aesthetically pleasing compatible future McIntosh purchases probable.
With that said, I can't for the life of me understand why they still use autoformers in their ss amps. Perhaps it made sense with their background in the early 60's when transistors were anything but reliable. But easily for the past 40 years that has not at all been a concern. That they add the autoformers and all the extra taps necessitated by them, as well as the poorly functioning meters only adds technical compromise and expense. The MC462's 2 Ohm Class AB output is the equivalent to that of a 113 Watt amp without autoformers that can properly double down to 2 Ohms. The MC 462 seems rather expensive for use with the Thiel CS 2.4's The only other example of a ss amp I'm aware of that used an autoformer was a limited edition run of a First Watt amp made for unique application, and in that case the autoformer was used on the input rather than the output as McIntosh does. For the McIntosh autoformers to work ideally they need to be used on an exceptionally linear impedance load. Which is not typical. Look at the Thiel CS 2.4's impedance graph here:

Thiel CS2.4 loudspeaker Measurements | Stereophile.com

Notice that the impedance rises to 15 Ohms at 60 Hz, typically a demanding area. 

Meanwhile the MC462  is recommended to be used with the tap that corresponds to the speakers lowest impedance. Which in the case of the Thiel CS 2.4 is close to 2 Ohms, and stays there most of the time.
 
McIntosh Laboratory MC462 power amplifier Measurements | Stereophile.com

While I appreciate the MC462's spec'd sensitivities for both single ended and balanced inputs, which would accommodate direct connection to many self volume controlled DAC's, the measurements don't live up to the specs, and vary with the tap used. Furthermore,  the input impedance is not the most cooperative for that economical advantage.

FWIW, subjectively I never appreciated the Mac house sound. To my ears they lack dynamics and dimensionality. YMMV