tomthiel
Do you really want to hear the crap from these dealers? It'll be painful listing their comments, but I'll try to be accurate.
Dealer 1) Imaging and focus are not real, but created. Thiel speakers basically do sound effects and sound big and flashy but are not accurate. That dealer also criticized me for mentioning imaging and focus, stating they're not real speaker attributes but rather sound effects created by Thiel speakers. This dealer stresses that imaging doesn't occur in concerts or real music. He also actually said that I was partially responsible for the failure of Naim's Ovator speakers because imaging wasn't a priority for them but "people like you" value those kinds fake qualities in a speaker. When I asked him what speakers he liked, he stated that he likes to listen in mono, prefers speakers that do not image and that are "in-you-face" since he likes to listen really loud. (not much comment necessary.)
Dealer 2) Thiel speakers are very poorly designed, especially the newer models with the coax mid/tweeter which were a "disaster." The old ones were a little better. Thiels use cheap drivers made overseas, are not accurate and are not time coherent - that's all just marketing. Their sound is a mess because Jim Thiel used very complex crossovers which had no way of being phase correct and they were not really first-order crossovers anyway.
Dealer 3) Thiel's crossovers have to be extremely complex to compensate for the poor drivers. If a speaker is so hard to drive correctly and so amp dependent, then it is a very poor design. Why would you design a speaker to go down under 2 ohms and drive amps into distortion? You're crazy wasting your money by having them repaired; there have been so many improvements in drivers and crossovers in 21 years that its time to get rid of them.
(None of those dealers were talking active or DSP.)
Interestingly I spoke to a couple previous Thiel dealers who praised the speakers and stated their regret regarding what happened to the company. I also found them to be superior dealers overall. (One of those did talk active and DSP and his setups did sound excellent IMO.)
All of the negative dealers made their comments after I'd stated to them that I've owned various Thiel speakers for the last 32 years. I guess they feel it's OK to spread this nonsense. High-end audio is a ruthless business!
