Thiel Owners

unsound...

I’m pretty much with you on the meters thing, but for reasons including your opinion and others. I kinda enjoy music a little bit more when my living room is practically dark,  illuminated only by the evening outside the window.  My neighborhood doesn’t have streetlights, is heavily treed, so it can get pretty dark under the right conditions. 


I sit 10-11 feet away from my speakers and the last thing I want to look at is a miniature replication of a city scape sitting atop my equipment cabinet. The Belles integrated I am enjoying now has but two small LED’s on its faceplate, one for on/off, one for mute. Using either one makes it disappear.  Noice. 


It’s kinda like the way new automobiles are. I see something “new” added to the “experience” and I immediately think, “Oh, that’s gonna be the first thing to break.”  I had a sedan with a/c’d seats. Nice. Broke. Expensive to fix. One with a heated steering wheel - very nice touch. Broke. Damn. 


On a somewhat similar note - why do some manufacturers position the on/off button on the rear of the cabinet?  Drives me crazy...

Hello batmanfan!

I have a pair of Thiel CS 2.4s powered by a Bryston 3B ST fronted by a Bryston BP20 preamp.   Speaker cables are Transparent Music Wave Super Gen MM.  Interconnects are Kimber Hero XLR.

Almost all of my listening is in the digital domain (only exception is an old Rotel analog tuner).   Although I have a very good CD player,
a Bryston BCD-1, I rarely use it.  All of my CDs have been ripped as uncompressed FLACs.   My listening is via either these ripped CDs or via TIDAL.
 
My digital supply chain consists of the following:
Hard wired ethernet connection (albeit utilizing Netgear powerline ethernet adapters) into Melco N1A.  All of my FLACs reside on the Melco which functions as a NAS, a streamer, and not unimportantly as an ethernet line conditioner.  Melco feeds Chord Qutest DAC via Curious USB cable, as well as a Bluesound Node 2i hooked up to Melco's outbound player port via Audioquest Cinamon ethernet cable.  The Bluesound player feeds the Qutest via Tributaries Coax and my older Bryston BDA-1 DAC via Audioquest Vodka Toslink.
I typically stream directly from Melco when listening to my ripped CDs, and employ Bluesound Node when either streaming from TIDAL or streaming to multiple rooms (have Bluesound kit in 3 other rooms in the house).  Chord Qutest feeds preamp via Audioquest Black Mamba II RCAs.

I am very happy with this setup.  

Have yet to go Roon, but definitely considering it.  Thinking about acquiring Roon Nucleus, at which point I'd have Melco feed Nucleus from its ethernet player port, and then have Nucleus feed Chord Qutest directly via USB.   

I continue to be happy with and amazed by the dispersion characteristics of my 2.7s.  Having been playing them for several guests, all of us seated along the listening sofa, the tonality remains so consistent from seat to seat, and they still manage to image for everyone.

They also sound particularly good from outside the listening room in my hallway.  My speakers face the front of the house, and when outside that room down the hall, that puts you with the speakers both in another room and facing away from you.   My Spendor speakers and my old Thiel 02s are more directional, so they sound more dulled from behind the speakers or outside the room.  Especially the Spendor speakers sound more like "speakers" in hearing more of the back-radiated sound/port.

With the 2.7s they continue to sound so open tonally you'd still think they were facing you.  They sound outside the room like they do inside the room - the same sense of "no speaker there, just the sound occurring in the space."  It's quite fascinating actually.

prof,

Agree!  
My 3.5s didn't project this way.  The 27s and SS2.2 sub have made me a very happy camper. 

George

Updated my virtual systems page...


Picked up the 2.4’s from seller in NYC.  It was a typical mid-August summer afternoon in the city, about 94 degrees with oppressive humidity. 3rd floor walk-up, tight stairwell, 5 landings and about 100 stairs. (At least it felt that way.)



Original owner, all paperwork, manual, floor spikes, AND a spare midrange/tweeter driver!  That wasn’t mentioned in his eBay listing.  Very cool beans. 


Did my bestest 62 year old he-man imitation and picked those 70 pound cabinets up by myself, taking a break on every other landing to catch my breath and wipe the sweat from my brow.  Total travel time, payment, removal, and set up in me house?  Four hours. 


(I once sold off a pair of CS3.5’s because I found them to be “too heavy” to futz around with. Umm, these 2.4’s weigh EXACTLY the same.)  But the slightly taller cabinets make futzing just a touch simpler. 


So here I am, back with another excellent pair of Thiel loudspeakers once again - this time for keeps. I ain’t kidding.