Thiel Owners

nkonor,

Yeah, my wife...and especially one of my audio buddies...mock me if I suggest I will end up with "the speaker." If I haven’t by now, I probably never will. I always start pairing down my speaker collection, but then build back up again.

Especially since I renovated my 2 channel room into a home theater/music listening room, the tension between "big and fully satisfying sound" and "discrete enough to work in the room aesthetically" has been a real back and forth. I switch between floor standers and stand mounted speakers. When I set up one of my monitors I always love the sound and think "this is so great, what more do I need?" That happened again recently when I put my old Waveform (egg shaped) monitors in my system. The tone was so gorgeous, the dynamics so convincing, it was only when certain sections of a song would hit where I would miss the drama I was used to with the extension of the bigger speakers that I’d say "Oh yeah...that’s why I tend to go back to floor standing speakers."

I still have one of my all time favorite speakers - the Omani-directional MBL radialstrahler 121s. Within their frequency range they astonish me.
But then I ask myself "Why do the MBLs have so much less time in my system when I have a floor stander like the Thiel 3.7s?" I seem to eventually crave what a big speaker can do. (And adding subs to my monitor speakers is a non-starter for several reasons).

So this time of trying to downsize somewhat, I’ve tried to find an in-between: a speaker that is smaller than the 3.7 but which has *enough* frequency range to make me not feel I’m missing something.
That’s why I’ve been auditioning mid-sized speakers like Audio Note, Audio Physic, Joseph audio Perspectives, Harbeth Super HL5 Plus, and some monitors that are larger and go low for their size - e.g. JM Reynaud Offrande Supremes, and others. And that’s where the Thiel 2.7s come in - they may look good enough in the room to leave there, while giving enough sonically of what I desire. Though, I’m no longer under the delusion that anything will be my "last" speaker.

I picked up a pair of Harbeth Super HL5 Plus speakers to check out in my home and while they were excellent, I couldn’t pass up the deal on those Thiel 2.7s, so I’m selling the Harbeths to finance the Thiel purchase.

BTW... I mentioned earlier in the thread my interest in Kudos speakers as well.  There is almost no talk on Audiogon about that brand, it seems because they are a small British company that doesn't get much word outside Britain.   But a couple years ago at an audio show, walking through the hall, I heard the most life-like symphonic sound coming from inside a room. I popped in and there were these huge horn speakers which I presumed were making the sound. As the tracks switched to - I think Stevie Wonder and other tracks - there was that incredible clarity and palpability of sound, and dynamics, that had me say "Yup, that's why some people love horn speakers."  Turns out it wasn't the horns playing at all, but the modest, slim, non-descript wooden two-way floor standing speakers right beside them. They blew my mind and I took note of the brand.

Recently I was in an audio store and noticed they had the elusive Kudos speakers - smaller, cheaper models than the one I'd heard at the show.
I listened to some tracks and there it was, that sound I remembered from the audio show.  They really wowed me.  It turns out Kudos has introduced a series of flagship speakers, one of which may be within my reach, so it's now on my radar.  In my mind, thus far, my "smaller speaker" solution has come down to between the Thiel 2.7, Joseph Audio Perspective, and the long shot Kudos Titan 606 (if I ever get to hear it...and I might).

I mention this partially because, as a Thiel fan I found the Kudos pushed many of the same hard-to-find buttons (though the Kudos are brighter and less neutral) as the ones Thiels push for me. 
 

prof, 

I tried and tried. IMO you cannot put together a coherent full range system out of disparate parts. That's what designers do. You can augment a full range system down to 16hz ; but a giant killer monitor/sub system??? You can amaze people (even yourself) for a period. Then the cut, the one note that your heart is waiting for and Blah! Your make an adjustment and all is good until the next BLAH!! Bleep+#!?% moment.

 I suspect coherent full range is what you need and have.

There is no substitute.

Best to you and All on this Journey,
 
Norbert

@nkonor and prof,

I tried and tried as well. But, in my own case, I came to the opposite conclusion - good, "killer" subs and and 2-way standmounts just might be the Only way to solve that problem...at least if you ask me. But, what I found was that all of that pushed me well into the DIY waters before I learned how to swim with it.

I have some amps that each have a suite of digital pro-tools (crossover, EQ, delay...everything except phase adjustment, which turned out to not be so critical for me) and with 3 of them (one stereo amp each for highs, mids and lows) I had the architecture in place to build my own speakers from scratch.

But with all that flexibility I found that I was, in a real way, suddenly freed from all the oppressive blunders and corner cutting that speaker manufacturers invariably make...crossover points that are too high or too low, crossover overlap or underlap, mismatched drivers, questionable crossover components or design complexity that’s intended to cover up for mismatched drivers, bad parts, etc, etc. But with an ability for me to design the speakers completely around the crossovers (from the start) instead of the other way round, I found I could finally have speakers (OB in my case) the way "I" would’ve made them, because...well, I Did.

All that led to my current setup, a pair of 15" Hawthorne Audio "Augies" paired with my own horn-version of Danny Ritchie’s "Wedgie" OB standmounts. But, again, no passive crossovers along with endless control over just where all the parameters are set is what made the difference...throw in some generous amounts of conditioning to settle the digital noise down and voila, it’s done. OB bass does load the room a little differently than box designs, but OB, IME, has the edge in everything else bass.

In this setup though, there IS no bass region any more...only bass instruments, with every bit as much tone, body, color, texture, harmonics, transparency and extension as instruments in any other portion of the range. As big as the Augies are, they hit hard and are more invisible here, from what I’ve ever heard, than any floorstanders I’ve experienced. Yes, all that took years of tweaking and a lot of off-roading on my part before I ever figured it all out, but it is possible to make this approach work and work well...even if all the challenges end up being not to be taken lightly.

In effect, I suppose I had to become my own designer.

Best regards,
John

@Norbert,

What I neglected to say above is that I think that your original point above really being about weak-sister sub/standmount systems having inherently more bass problems than they’re even worth is actually true and a perfectly valid one. But, I suppose that maybe the problem is less about the design goal than about the overall execution....the bass region being both so much more critical to the listening experience and technically difficult to get right than many of us may be, initially anyway, willing to deal with.