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Affordable electronics to suit Thiel 3.5 speakers

Hi All,
About a week ago I came across a really good buy on a pair of Thiel 3.5 speakers. I got them home put them in my existing system and noticed that while the bass was much improved and they showed significantly more detail then my Vandersteen 2CE's, they seemed to quite forward and bright.

I love detail and bass in my music (which is primarily orchestral and folk) and that aspect of the Thiels really appeals to me. Unfortunately, when I listen to them for any length of time they begin to seem almost harsh. Reading in the forum, I see numerous comments that Thiels simply will not sound good until they have excellent upstream electronics. My current upstream electronics, which sounded very good with the Vandersteens, are an Oppo 83SE player , Sony TAE 80 ES preamp and Acurus A150 amp. Interconnects are Kimber PBJ and DH Labs with Audioquest Cobalt speaker cables.

What I'm hoping is that some of you who are familiar with the Thiels can help me identify what steps I should take next. I'm a bit concerned that I just am not going to be able to make the Thiels work. My listening room is only 15 x 14 and because it has a very heavy one piece home-built sofa which is L-shaped, a fireplace, and because it connects two other rooms, the only location that I can put the speakers is 18 inches from the right wall, 36 inches from the left wall and 18 inches from the wall behind them. My listening position is 9 feet from the speakers. Because there is not much I can do with respect to speaker placement, if I am going to be able to make them work it will need to be through finding electronics that keep the detail and get rid of the harshness.

Because I am on a tight budget, expensive amplifiers are not an option. I do have coming to me from an Audiogon member a Threshold FET 9 preamp which I bought before I got the Thiels. I suspect this will help some, but the consensus seems to be that if I do not have a least 200W per channel, the Thiels just won't sound good. I have had good luck with Hafler amplifiers and wonder if perhaps replacing the Acurus with an old H500 would help significantly. In one post regarding Thiel 3.6 speakers, a member mentioned that a B&K EX 442 Sonata might be a good choice but I have no experience at all with this amplifier.

So, would those of you who have expertise regarding the speakers and what electronics might result in a substantial improvement in the problem areas please share your thoughts with me?

Thanks in advance,
Jay
drjay

Showing 3 responses by drjay

drjay OP
27 posts
 
Thanks for the responses so far. To provide a bit more information:
1. I don't want to sell them unless I just can't make them work well in my room because I truly like how they sound except for the "brightness". They have much better bass and seem more detailed and transparent than the Vandersteens and I value those characteristics a lot. Plus, it wouldn't be easy to resell the Thiels, the gentleman I got them from had listed them on Craigslist for $500 for 6 weeks with no calls when I spotted them.
2. I could stretch my buget to aroud $1500 total.
Since posting, I've been researching amps in my price range and wonder if besides the DH500 Hafler mentioned in my original post an Adcom 5802, an ATI 1502, or an Audio Research 100.2 might fix things up.
3. Also, please help my thinking here. Since the problem seems to be just in the upper frequencies which don't require much amplifier power, and because pretty loud playback levels in a small room only take a few watts with these speakers, am I barking up the wrong tree, so to speak, thinking more power will help significantly? A few folks have posted being very happy with these speakers with amps in the 50W range.
I will post what changes I hear when I put the Threshold FET 9 preamp in the system but I am not too hopeful about that since the TAE 80 ES was very close in sound to what I heard direct form the Oppo,when I did a bypass test with the Vandersteens.
Thanks for the help so far and please let me know your thoughts given this updated info.
Jay
drjay OP
27 posts
 
Thanks a million Folks,

All the input has been helpful beyond expectations, especially the points relating to the 3.5s not being inherently bright and suggesting focusing on the room. Long story short, I opened the 5 foot wide pocket doors seperating my listneing room from the guest bedroom to give the Thiels more volume to breath into; opened the door to my wife's sewing room; moved the speakers 6" further away from the back wall and pointed them straight ahead; closed all the heavy cloth drapes in the room and put a spare 5'x 7' area rug right in front of the immovable couch.
Cost $0.00, improvement, priceless. Easily 90% of the problem issues were resolved. I'll still probably play around with electronics, but at this point even if I could get no further improvement I would happily rate them a step up (for my listening taste only, of course) from my Vandy 2CEs.
Thanks again,
Jay
drjay OP
27 posts
 
HI Everybody,
As a quick update on the Thiel 3.5s, I got a B&K 2220 amp from a fellow Agoner and am using it with the Threshold FET9 pre that was on its way to me in an earlier post. The combination is working really well and I'm now about 95% of the way to a system I hope I can avoid tinkering with too much, but just listen to. The problem is, of course that last 5%.
A local dealer has some Thiel 2.4s available at a good price and I have another post running here now looking for feedback as to whether the 2.4s or 3.6s would be a significant step up. I really do love the transparency and detail and everything sounds really, really nice except for massed violins which are a bit harsh,but perhaps that is simply due to the CDs themselves, since HDCDs are much better sounding.
Anyway, thanks to everyone again and please do share any ideas you have about that last little bit I'm wondering about.
Jay
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