What's wrong with Thiel?

The response from Symphony Sound is "on the mark". The biggest issue with Thiel speakers is finding a compatible amplifier, due to the impedance curve of the speakers. You should also try to audition the Thiel's and compare them with several other time-aligned and phase-accurate speakers, such as Vandersteen and Dunlavy.

Richard Hardesty has written fairly extensively about the Thiel speakers in one issue of his online audio publication, "The Audio Perfectionist". If you will contact me by private E-mail, I will forward Hardesty's extracted comments to you.

I also agree - nothing wrong with Thiel's. I have owned Thiels for quite some time. There is a downside - a sort of a Catch 22 - they will sound their best with SOTA electronics. Not only sound their best, but actually compete with speakers that cost up to four times their price (I know - I've auditioned lots of 'em). And that's the catch - why buy $3,000 speakers when you can afford SOTA?

What I like about them is that they do everything an ideal speaker is supposed to do quite well. In other words, they don't excel in one particular thing, but maximize the performance of all facets of speaker designs to the extent that they can.

As for cables, the MIT 330/750 series work very nicely.

All I can say is that I'm a long time Thiel owner and all the advise above is right on! Don't be afraid to call Thiel, their customer service is second to none.

SS: good response!
What I'd like to add is that Thiel has always taken the flat, neutral spectral response school of crossover design and tweeter padding, so his speakers sound lean and too-bright in most systems. Adding a flat, therefore bright-sounding Harm Tech or Nordost to a Thiel-based system is not to my thinking a wise choice UNLESS your upstream CDP is VERY warm and/or your room is VERY damped.
A high-current, ballsy amp is required, along with sufficient listening distance for proper coherence, as stated above. But if you start with a flat cable with your leannish 2.3 you may find that engineering a slightly-tilted
spectral response (what most of us prefer) to be an uphill (no pun intended!) battle.
So make sure you sit far enough away, without pushing the 2.3 back, and therefore foreshortening the soundstage (ouch!), dampen the floor, sidewalls, and possibly the ceiling (least important), and then tweak your front end and its IC for final optimization.
FWIW Thiel's latest 1.6, although lacking in the bottom octave, and limited in SPLs, is DECIDELY warmer in signature to its brethren the 2.3, 3.6, CS6, etc.
Interesting. Is Jim relaxing a bit? Ha.

I have had a pair of Thiel CS2.3's for about 18 months. The Thiel sound is fast, detailed and transparent and the CS2.3's have it in spades. I have auditioned many speakers up to and including JmLab Utopia's and Revel Salons. I prefer the CS2.3's to all of them and I won't apologize for it.

There are some people who think that Thiels are bright. For those people there are proacs or any other speaker with a blanket thrown over the tweeter and midrange. Each to his own. Let each person vote their preference with their own money.

Back to the Thiels and the CS2.3's in particular. As mentioned previously they are designed to be listened to at least 9-10 feet from the speaker so that the drivers can properly integrate. Thiel mentions this in their documentation. They require good amplification, preferably an amp that can double down to 2 ohms. A pass x250 would work nicely. The x150 will probably also work well as long as you listen at reasonable levels, <100db. BTW, I was bothered by the fact that the Stereophile review on the CS2.3 was conducted with the VAC 70/70 tube amp. IMHO there is no way the reviewer could get the best out of the Thiels with this amp. However Thiel has since used VAC amplifiers with their equipment at CES so what do I know.

Because of their resolving and detailed character the Thiels will be very sensitive to placement and to changes in cables. However I think cables are a blunt instrument when you are trying to tune a system. I recommend a TacT RCS so you can have the maximum amount of control and flexibility in tuning your system.