Thiel Owners

hi fitter468,

I have both 3.6's and CS5's. 

Both are very good.

To my ear, the CS5's are much better in the treble and high mids.

FWIW

Thanks for listening,

Dsper

These speakers are really good and therefore have to be matched with really good electronics.   If there are flaws in the preceding components, cables, etc. they will be exposed.  Thiels can be wonderful or really annoying if great care is not observed.

beetlemania,

Until I win the lottery, I'm going to put my money where >99% of the musical content is. 

That makes sense in one way of course.  But it does miss some of the major reasons why people integrate subwoofers.  A sub tends to change (and if done right, enhance) the sound almost across the board on content, even when there isn't obvious deep bass content.  Having experimented with my subs, I've found that to be true.  In most content soundstaging and dimensionality increase when the subs are on.  And then there is the purported benefits of crossing over the low frequencies to a sub,.   Relieving the main speakers of doing the low frequencies is supposed to lower distortion in the main speakers, make for better performance, more dynamic, less restrained etc.

I haven't tried using a crossover yet so I can't give my own report on that, but I do have a great crossover to try, so I'll report how things sound if I ever get around to adding my subs :)

As others have mentioned, integrating the sub to the main speakers is not easy.  For time-phase coherent speakers, it's even more difficult.  I think that is why Vandersteen chose to integrate the sub into the main speakers so at least you have some control over how the sub will be integrated to the main with your own DSP algorithm.

I personally think deep bass is important.  Now I don't mean earth shattering bass that vibrates your windows, but I mean the speakers able to reproduce the low frequency portion of the recording such as capturing the recording spaces to make the listening experience more authentic.

I am late to this thread, but the last few posts got my interest as I am a Vandy owner.
I have no experience with Thiel, but would using Vandersteen subs be a way to get a more 'seamless' integration?
By handing off the low frequencies to the subs via the external crossover, it should preserve the time/phase coherence, as well as freeing up the amp from power draining low frequencies.
B