Thiel Owners

tomthiel,

Just as you are happy with your Morrow interconnects, I'm very happy with my Cardas Clear Refection XLRs. I'm running one Cardas XLR between my DAC and preamp and another between my preamp and amp. Both XLRs are short (.75-1.0 meter). As I mentioned before, my problem is that I would need an 18-foot XLR pair (for the pre to amp run) if I change my set-up from "short XLR - long speaker cable" to a "long XLR - short speaker cable" arrangement.  I either need to spend thousands on a long Clear Reflection XLR or a few hundred on a high-quality pro cable of the same length.

My best bet may be to buy 2-3 short pro cables (e.g.,Vovox, Grimm, and/or Ghost) to compare to my Clear Reflections and decide which one to order in a longer length. If I go that route, I'll post my impressions here.

Thanks again for your comments!

If we had a sticky option, I would elevate Tom's description of thiel speakers to that status. It is fully consistent with my experience.
The 3.7 with sub woofers is an excellent system.
Tri-amping with eq for system and room effects has done wonders for my 3.5, coming very close to the 3.7 system. I can only imagine that 4-amping with eq the 5i would easily match the 3.7 with sub woofers.
By the way, I think that going with multi channel amp and DAC plus eq is essential to mitigate room effects, affordable compared to high end amp and solves most technical short comings of high end thiel speakers. It's fun too. 
I have settled on a 8 channel hypex ncore252mp amp, a laptop with Adobe audition software and a motu interface to conduct my experiments. 

So you guys are literally going around the internal crossovers? 
I don’t think I want to break into the speakers to set this up. But really could be amazing as long as you don’t overdrive one of the drivers by mistake.

@jafant @jafant  I’m not sure yet. Im looking at the ar9, kef 107 or 207, thiel cs 5 or 7, b&w 800 series, dunlavy audio, smaller apogee, sonus faber. Among others

thoft - among your short list, the Dunlavy is phase/time coherent like Vandersteens and Thiels. The others are not.

brett - I don't know how many of 'us' have ventured into DSP / active, etc.

"That bass affect" is present in all reflex bass alignments. The 3.6 passive is in proper polarity, pumping out when the woofer pumps out, but it is a whole cycle out of phase - 360° phase shift, just like other reflex systems. That same 360° phase shift is present in most "modern" crossovers which use 4th order filters on all drivers. The ear-brain compensates or learns the phase lag. But Thiel fans tend to appreciate the lack of that phase shift and resulting naturalness of zero phase shift through the crossovers.

Among Thiel speakers, those with sealed bass (like your Kappa 8s) include the model 01, 03, 03a, CS3, CS3.5, and CS5 plus the PowerPoint / PowerPlane with the 6.5" PowerDriver. The others have either ports or passive radiators.