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Having heard them all except the 3.7 I truly feel the 3.6 are indeed something special. The midrange is as transparent as any speaker I have heard and the bass is taut, quick an daccurate. The highs seem to go on forever and imaging and soundstaging is impeccable. Has he ever topped this design? I'm thinking the coax just doesn't make it.
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The mids were much like those of my Quad ESL63s. I've never hear better in my room. I felt the mids were the best part of a very fine speaker. That said, sidewall proximity in particular can seriously affect the balance ( I had close to 7' to each side), and equipment matchups are critical, too. Listening at any dealer is always a crapshoot, IMO. And always, your mileage may vary, but I wanted to provide some balance.
I couldn't agree more. They're amongst the most transparent of any dynamic speaker I've heard but ruthlessly revealing of upstream and setup, as they should be. I don't think that Thiel has ever had a better design.
I have not heard them since the mid 90's, but I thought them the worst speakers in the Thiel lineup. I only heard them in the shop, but many times. At various times they were driven by Krell, Aragon, Conrad Johnson, and I don't know now what else, but most often with Krell. Compared to any speaker, I found them quite boxy sounding through the lower mids / upper bass. Sort of like paper driver in a box. And this was every time I heard them (they kept trying to sell them to me). This was very pronounced and noticeable, especially after hearing other Thiels or Apogee models in the same systems. I ended up telling the shop that I would not pay $360.00 for them, much less the $3600.00 they were asking. This was just my opinion at the time.But since then, I have read so many raves and positives on the net from actual owners or other fans of the 3.6. In addition, I really liked other Thiel speakers I heard. In fact, I consider the 7 series the best I have heard, so I must question what I was hearing back then. Maybe I only heard one pair (maybe the shop only had one pair for use as demos over the 2 years or so I heard them) and there was something amiss with them.
Actually I always thought they were the worst speakers in the line-up too. I only heard them a couple of times briefly in the shop before they got rid of the last pair. For the past few yrs. before the release of the 3.7s very few dealers even carried them. I walked into one dealer a couple of yrs. back and they had every model except the 3.6s and the sales guy in the shop said they did not carry it as it was so poor in sound quality vs. the other models. It would be interesting to revisit that now.
Every western reviews back in the 90s raved about these speakers. But a writer for one of Hong Kong's Audio magazine pointed out these issues in the lower mids and upper bass region. He even came up with a solution to fix the problem which involving doing some "surgery" to the speakers.I have my Thiel 3.6 for about 8 years now. They are picky. Mated with right components and they can sound fairly good, but far from "the best". Another way to solve the issue with the lower mids/upper bass is to get a pair of the Soundanchor base for these speakers. I have the older style. Not sure how the newer "low profile" ones compare. A friend of mine borrowed them to try on his 3.6 after trying several expensive (over $1k) speaker cables. He ended up ordering a pair. It brought more improvement than any of those cables.
But at around $1700 used, I think these are hard to beat. Except the fact that you will most likely need to spend more money changing the rest of your system. Then again, that applies to anytime you change your speakers.
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