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General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

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RE: Amp for Thiel CS 3.6

Posted by FrankC on November 21, 2007 at 10:46:22:
I've just recently "graduated" from the Thiel "school" after spending 15 years with Thiel speakers, first with a pair of 2.2 then a pair of 3.6. I had played with several amps from Forte, Krell, Levinson, and Pass with these speakers. The most memorable was when I had paired the Pass Aleph Os w/ the 2.2. When I upgraded to the 3.6, I tried the Aleph Os, it could play, but not very loud in the room I had. So I searched on for amps, first with an older model Krell which didn't work out, and ended with a Levinson #333. I thought that was the end of my amp search. The combo sounded good. But then the #333 started having these problems with capacitors blowing up. According to their own technician, it was partly due to a design flaw, and partly due to capacitor not up to standard. On top of it, I had a really bad experience dealing with Harmon trying to get it fixed. After they took my wallet to the cleaners, I got fed up and decided to trade it in for the Pass X350.5. I had heard the X350.5 at a friend's and was pretty impressed.

Well, to keep the story short. The X350.5 was nothing short of impressive. For the last few years, I had been thinking that the Thiel 3.6 was the weakest link in my chain. But the X350.5 brand new out of the box took the 3.6 to another level that I was totally not expecting. With the old Levinson's (and the rest of my system), I've heard comments from other X-thiel-3.6 owners that "they had never heard the 3.6 sounded this good", "best 3.6 setup I've heard", "Wow, we are listening to thiels?". A good friend of mine who had been listening to my setup several times a month came by the week the X350.5 arrived for a listen. He went back and dumped his #432 and bought one the following week.

He was driving a pair of B&W 802s, and now a pair of Dynaudio C4. As for me, I've just bought a pair of Verity Parsifal Encore. Any regrets? Not at all. The Parsifal offers what the Thiel 3.6 offers and much more. By the way, I would recommend pairing the SS amp with a tube preamp.

FrankC