Driving Thiels

With all due and sincere respect to Zaikesman, I disagree. The newer generation Thiels are more refined in the upper frequencies, but, the 3.5's have superior bass, are easier to drive and maintain their phase coherence better from top to bottom. While the 3.5's equalizer can be improved upon, I find using it better than not and the eq does offer some room considerations the newwer models don't. Oh yeah, and they're a raging steal on the used market.

Zaikesman as usual, presents a very fair and good argument. Jim Thiel himself thought the 2.2's superior to the 3.5's. I would even agree that the 3.5' have "a somewhat 'hard' quality to the treble". Proper associated gear can help. While the Classe' gear is a good (maybe even very good match) IMHO not the best for the 3.5's in this regard. Truth is, some recordings will demonstrate this short coming. My conclusion about superior phase response is due to the sealed box. I could be wrong here, but, I don't think ports or passive radiators can really maintain time and phase as well as a sealed box. The Thiel CS 5 and 5i were also sealed boxes and my all time favorite Thiels. The cost to properly drive them though is a very real hurdle. To be fair I should mention that the 3.5's midrange drivers can be a bit delicate, but, as Zaikesman has pointed out in a preivous post, Thiel is extremely cooperative in this regard. All in all I think Zaikesman and I really do agree on the how each of these speakers sound, we just have slightly different priorites. Yes the 3.7's look very interesting indeed, I fear that the costs may be prohibitive.