Thiel Owners

@unsound ...if you would consider other amplification...

You make a very valid point.

The other part of this for me is the desire to try a tube amp setup. For example the CS.5 is a 4 ohm speaker that is supposed to be able to run on 30 wpc per the Stereophile review link that Tom Thiel shared. The CJ LP66S is rated at 60 wpc at a 4 ohms. Along with jazzman7's postive comment, maybe I should try a pair. Not a real expensive experiment at current used prices for the .5's.

I appreciate the advice. Thanks!

@dsper, 

Keep in mind that the Thiel specs at 87dB/2.8V/1M which is confusingly not the same as 1 Watt. Considering the 4 Ohm nominal impedance, it's more like <84dB sensitivity. Jim Thiel told me that his power recommendations were based upon the assumption that quality ss amp that could appropriately double down be used and that for example that if one using a Thiel speaker with a 4 Ohm rating with a tube amp one should double the power of those recommendations. Furthermore, the c-j specs seem quite generous:

lp66s2man.pdf (conradjohnson.com)

with a rather high +/- of 1.5 THD and a somewhat limited bandwidth of 30Hz-15Khz. 

Considering the limited bass output of the CS .5's and that they can seem a bit tippy without any treble roll off of their own, and the fact that tubes overload more gracefully. it would seem as though it should all work out. But in a room of that size you might be at the limits.

Of course, due to the small size of the CS .5's, they are not at all too cumbersome, and it wouldn't be too difficult to move on from them.

Sure, I guess it's worth a try. 

@dsper 

From 1996 to 2004 I had my .CS 5s hooked up to an ADS A2 integrated (80 watts per side into 8 ohms) and it was decent, but then in 2004 stepped it up to Bryston rig - 3BST with BP20 preamp, and it made for a big step up in SQ. Very same room and speaker location as displayed on my virtual systems page.  Not a small room, but plenty of sound. And if more bass is desired, one could always work in a subwoofer.   

To answer a direct question to me my Thiel are CS1.2, one speaker sounds great, the other one sounds blown, when I removed the grill found the tweeter was crushed, so have to replace both, not currently in a hurry for that.

To follow along with OP thread, and ideas, I went first with ProJect streambox S2, quickly returned it, ordered a ProJect Streambox Ultra, currently using it with a USB hard drive directly connected to the Ultra (which is really a raspberry pi running volumio), the audio is, so to speak crystal clear, since it is early in the morning I have not played audio too loud, don't wish to disturb neighbors, but I now have the audio quality I was seeking for a relatively low cost, well, compared to some.

A bit of an update on the ProJect Streambox S2 Ultra... I spent a good part of my morning attempting to disable the bluetooth connection as it was not secured. I eventually gave up and reflashed the Streambox with dietpi, I wouldn't recommend this task if you are not comfortable with Linux, but there's plenty of help available in various forums.

Now my custom box is running dietpi and my music collection is accessed with emby, a very slick interface. Audio quality is superb, temps of the box are lower. 

Most of my music files are flac's with some dsd thrown in as well, all sound great. Now to rip my remaining cd's.