Levinson No. 23 with Thiel 3.6?

The only amp that managed not to drive the thiel speaks was a air tight 8 watts per chanel into 8 ohms. they damaged the surrounds of thiel 2 2 customer. I have also auditioned pass labs x-150 w/thiel 7.2's in a dealer showroom. the room is 20' x 60' x 22' ft high no problems at all beautiful sounding. thiel recommends at least 50 watts per channel for any of its speakers. while waiting for my amp and other components i was burning in my thiel 2.3's with/a 35 watt denon receiver. was fine no problems.

my system thiel 2.3, pass labs x-350, x-2, sony scd-1, theta gen5a

dave

Whoaru99

I would say you are ok with your levinson amp given that you are not going to be listening at high volume levels most of the time. Thiels love power but more importantly they love quality power, which levinson is, and will let you know if something upstream is not right. Also your room sounds in good shape both in size and accoustics so you should be good there. If you are looking for detail, soundstaging and imaging the Thiel 3.6's will do that in spades.
I do not know what your pre-amp is but sometimes Thiels can be tilted toward the bright side. I use a Conrad Johnson premier 16 tubed pre-amp along with a CJ ss MF2500 amp and have no issues with brightness. My soundstage is wide and deep with loads of detail. Hope I could help. Good Luck

Chuck

A nice high powered VTL tube amp with enough power in triode mode...

Chuck,

The Levinson is 200 w/ch @ 8 ohms and 400 @ 4 ohms. I don't see a 2 ohm rating, but it seems to me I've read somewhere that it will do 700 or 800 watts at 2 ohms - could be mistaken though on the 2-ohm stuff.

My room is about 12' x 20' with 8' ceiling. I would say the room is perhaps slightly live - plaster walls and ceiling, carpeted floor and some heavy drapes on two wall.

Music is for the most part A-Z. What I listen to depends largely on my mood at the time. Mostly I would be listening to these speakers at moderate levels, with an occasional foray into the loud side (+100 db). I have (pardon my language) some Cerwin-Vega D9's (101 db/watt) left over from my earlier days that I fire up if I really want to crank it.

Not really looking for loud, more looking for the details, soundstage, imaging, etc.

I used a Levinson 23 with Thiel 3.5's several years ago.
I never could tame brightness or harshness in the system,
which I think was due more to the speakers than the amp.
The #23 is a fairly neutral solid state amp (some say
"dark" but I did not find that to be the case). Thiels
tend toward brightness and require careful amp matching.
They also require lots of power to sound their best. I might
consider a high powered tube amp.

How much power does the Levinson 23 put out? What kind of music do you listen to and how big is your listening room? Also how acoustically live is your room? How loud do you listen to music?

I drive a pair of 3.6's with a conrad johnson ss MF2500A (240w/ch) in a room that is about 18'x24' with a 15'cathedral ceiling and is moderate in its acoustical dampening. I listen to classical pieces (symphonic/orchestral) some chamber music and female jazz vocals at moderate to high levels and find the amp has no problem driving them.

Chuck