sdecker - from my perspective, I appreciate your thoughts very much. This thread is my sole involvement with the world of internet opinions. Because I am committed to Thiel speakers as my life-long transducer, and because Thiel performs in somewhat idiocentric ways with some equipment, I find it quite helpful to hear people's opinions about the system performance with various gear. Also, in this on-going community we gradually develop a sense of various contributors' tastes, values and approaches to their sense of rightness and musical engagement.
I don't consider such reviews and commentary in any way improper or off topic. Of course it's not my call to make, but I did think expressing my opinion might encourage discussion around the issue of what is or isn't on or off topic. JA has consistently encouraged broad musical dialogue.
As an aside, my Sony SCD-1 was delivered by a friend today to Bill Thalmann in Virginia for his assessment and possible resurrection. It will spend a few days in his audio ICU and I hope to have a report next week. I'm really fairly in the dark regarding its performance relative to other spinners - I got it because it was Thiel's and had been upgraded and it was, after all, the first of the genre and a heroic engineering effort, especially for 1999. I'll be open to hearing how you guys think it stacks up with more modern gear.
