Thiel death do we part . . .


OK, stupid title, I know...but so is my question, probably. So in spite of years of owning lots of different gear - speakers (Maggies, B&W), preamps (Bottlehead,AR), amps (C&J, Bryston) and so on, I've never quite got "the magic" I often hear about. I sort of went the path of least resistance and settled on a small setup - Theil(1.6s) & Bryston(B60) with Rega front ends (analog & digital).

The other night, however, I set it up in a near field format for the first time. After playing with speaker placement a bit, everything suddenly snapped into place, and it all sounds amazing. Magic. I found myself digging into my record collection (maybe 4000 deep) for the 1st in years and now there's not enough hours in the day to listen to it all.

One thing I've noticed is that the system is just brutal with poorly recorded media. While well produced material (Patricia Barber, Cowboy Junkies, some Rickie Lee Jones, Stan Getz and so on) can be just stunning, detailed, spacious and even deep, lots of others just aren't pleasant to listen to. Things I used to enjoy can now sound lame and muffled. I understand this may be a Thiel "take no prisoners" issue. So, just as an experiment, I swapped out the Thiels for a pair of old B&W 802s that are passing thru on the way to eBay and was surprised that while good material sounds adequate, bad material doesn't sound too bad...at least not embarrassing.

So the question is, without swapping nice speakers for not as nice on a regular basis, is there something that I can do to get the set up to be more "forgiving", at times? I listen mostly to what you might call intimate music, small groups and individual singers, often in live recordings.

Listening area is 12x18 with a low ceiling (open joists) off a corridor.

So maybe alternate cables (Zu Julian now) or a subwoofer or an equalizer? Thanks for your patience.
dancub
Seems like the early Stones LPs are quite nice if you can find originals. Not much for stereo mix though.
"Rolling Stones prided themselves in making recordings of poor quality, more "raw". "

"raw" characterizes a lot (not all) of the Stones heyday recordings, especially those most leaning towards the blues, and rightfully so! "raw" does not mean bad! TEchnically inferior to many for sure, but if it sounds good and "raw" when it should in an enjoyable way then you are hitting the mark there at least at a minimum.
If they played "raw" and recorded it well, it would have been reproduced "raw".
When you are "raw" you are "raw", good
sound or otherwise.

In their prime, the Rolling Stones were as raw as a bunch of
newly rich British white guys could get.
Just listened to one of the CDs in the Stones album we were discussing -not loud, wife still in town - and, yep, there's a real sense of "there" there. Thin sounding still to my ears but lots of stuff going on inside what was there. Might be the better set up of the speakers but it was enjoyable. Definitely uncooked and raw . . . just the way they liked it I guess.