Thiel CS3.7 and CS2.4 comparisons?

I ended up buying a demo pair of CS2.4 this week. I am enjoying them now and they sound great for the price I paid! I don't feel like I need to move up to the 3.7s but I still want to :).

Maybe next year I will sell my "new" CS2.4 and get a pair of 3.7s but until then I am pretty happy.

PS. I almost walked out with a pair of Magnepans 1.7 but in the end I think Thiel will be the brand for me for awhile. I hope the brand continues to grow, invent, and engineer in spite of Jim's passing last year. They sound good, look good, are priced fair and are made in America! What more could you ask for?

I believe there is around a month wait on all orders of 1.7s. One of my dealers has them on the floor while the other one does not...

They sound very good though. I have never heard the 1.6 so I can not compare them. But I have heard the 3.6R a few times for long demos. I felt the 1.7 had a little more texture in upper bass than the 3.6R and maybe a little more detail in the upper mids too. It is hard to say though because they were different systems.

The highs on the 1.7s were pretty good with nice detail and decay but I did not feel they were as integrated as the preliminary review (Jonathan Valin...) were claiming. They seemed to come from the upper outer edge of the speakers. The power in the bass caught me off guard and was very comparable to the 3.6R (again different systems heard about a week apart).

The mids still had the somewhat larger then life vocal size. Nora Jones sounded about 8 feet tall but siductive at the same time.

Anyway for the price they are a steel, $2095 for the metal trim model.

Velocityofhue,

I am still enjoying them. I have not worked the system around them. I just dropped them into my old system Mac Mini (connected by toslink)-Benchmark HDR-DAC1 preamp/dac-Wyred4sound ST500amp.

My guess is that most people on this site would not like my system but enjoying a system is about knowing what you like and going with it. My system is very detailed and very aggressive for the bottom up. The bass has lots of punch and depth (relative to the size of the speakers/room) and is very good from such a small speaker, mids are sweet but tell the truth on vocals, bad recordings need not apply. Highs are nothing special but still hold there own, in my very damped room the highs are balanced and not bright at all (brightness is common with the 2.4). The driver integration is OUTSTANDING, and soundstage is as good as my room will allow.

I have moved them into a smaller room 12X15X7 and I feel they are a better fit in the smaller room. The bass fills the room better and everything else stayed about the same. I guess I should post pictures of my system sometime.


I really just bought the speakers as a stepping stone but I think they will be keepers for awhile. I have demoed the Thiel 3.7, Sophia 3, B&W 802Diamond (CS2.4 also) again this month in the same system/room. It was my second round of demoing the Sophia 3. I had full intent (still do) to buy new speakers. But the quality of the CS2.4's sound really makes me stop and rethink high priced speakers. I have been looking for a sound that turns out I already have... I guess that is true of a lot of things in life.

The CS2.4 is the first set of speakers that I have had where I do not focus on a glaring flaw. I have over 3000 CDs on an external drive and use my iphone as a remote. I love to change songs/albums/genres on the fly. I like that I can go from a soft Tori Amos album "Under the Pink" to something like Dream Theater at the drop of a hat. So all in all I am enjoying the music and that is what it is all about.

I may just skip mid priced highend ($15000ish) and hold out for a deal on something highend I really want. I am not sure speakers in the $15000 range will yield better results in my current room (still in the small house my wife and I bought in college). Once I move I will upgrade.

I have to agree with Rtn1 and say that refinement is what you gain with higher-end speakers. The issues is not messing up anything else in the process. IMO materials do not over shadow engineering, but when you have both things get very nice.

Audioguy3107,

Now to answer your question directly. "Are our CS 2.4s really that good that they do compare to some of these much higher priced models?" Yes in the appropriate setting.

Consider the room:

What I mean by that is my room is about 1/2 the size of the demo room. So my CS2.4 fill and load my room about the same way a larger speaker (Sophia 3) filled the much larger room. The end result it that my system in my room was VERY comparable to the sound of the Sophia 3 in the larger demo room. Now where I will ruffle some feathers is where I thought my system was better but I will get to that later.

Also when you think about room size, in my smaller room I need less energy created by the speakers to achieve the same loudness of a bigger room. The speaker can play softer for the same volume. This creates less stress on the speakers and build quality (inertness, distortion, etc) is less of a factor.

One advantage of a larger room is soundstage and imaging. Small rooms have too many close boundaries to really let the imaging and soundstage do its thing. So all in all my point is, if you have a large room big expensive well engineered speakers will out perform an over achiever( CS2.4) but if your room is like mine (limited) I do not think many of the pricy speakers are better.... just different. Also we all know the down side of huge speakers in a small room so I will not get into that side of the discussion.

Concerning the speakers:

Thiel has engineering that other "small" brands could only dream of. The difference between Thiel and some of the other higher-end brands is they design around a price point. Good for me, bad for people will a lot of money. Engineering is easy when price is not limited but when price matters and you still have a good product they have done something very right.

Brands that put as much into engineering as Thiel and also bring unlimited quality of parts will outperform them.

Audioguy3107 I will be more than happy to write you a little review of my demo (with music used etc). I have not demoed may of the speakers you are looking at but as a fellow CS2.4 owner I could give you my take on what I have heard. It will take a little time though. Just let me know if you would like my opinion on any of the following demos and what aspects you are most interested in. What do you feel you are missing with your current system?

I have demoed the following speakers in the same room/system several times over the last year and mixed and matched electronics on occasion.

Sophia 3 vs 802Diamond (Two weeks ago, This time the Sophia 3 was spiked and set up fully with Audio Research/Classe' gear).

Thiel 3.7 vs Sophia 3 (about two months ago... I wrote an over view but the thread seems to be gone now, not sure why??, Musical Fidelity/Audio Research gear)

Thiel 3.7 vs CS2.4 ( two months ago, same room but slightly different systems. Systems were on opposite sides of the same rectangular room).

Soulbrotherjoachim,

Thanks for your comment, I was starting to wonder if I was losing it by thinking my $10,000ish system was out performing $30,000+ systems. I understand that people like different things but sometimes different is not better.

I was listening to the song "Lacrymosa" by Evenanesence on the Sophia 3. This song has a very low rolling bass note from a base guitar throughout the song and on the Sophia 3 I was not even sure I could hear it. But at home it is very defined and clear, down to where I can hear the individual string move. Also on the song "Layla" off Eric Clapton's unplugged album the bass drum lacks some impact on the initial hit of the head (bass is pretty low on this album too) when played through the Sophia.

After many demos of different types of speakers I have come to think passive radiators have real advantages over ports. They simple have a more pistonic movement (air flow) and seem to have more definition over a ports.

Anyway I am done shopping for now and will look again when I have a bigger house. I will most likely move up to the 3.7 (or go for broke with a good deal on something used), it sounded a lot like the 2.4 but with more bass, a more detailed/warmer mid, and had cleaners highs. But all in all more of a refinement over the 2.4 than a giant leap.

Larry,

I enjoy them and it is really that simple for me.

Do they sound like a piano... I have no idea, pianos all sound different, what one do you want it to sound like and in what setting? The question for me is, does the recording sound like a real piano? I play piano for what it is worth.

As for the price question it is a grey area. Would I pay double, triple, or more for better sound? Yes and I will sooner than later. I was just very disappointed with many high-end speakers in the $15000 price range. Where I was most disappointed is I felt many companies just throw money at their designs and get the fundamentals wrong. More money does not fix design issues.

The 2.4 do have some issues but they are not that offensive to me because I feel for the most part they are deductive. The bass could be lower and the highs could be more extended. I am sure a better box would help too but I never listen above 75-80db so it might be less of an issue for me than others. My only real issue with them is I feel voices are thinner than they should be. Sometimes I also like unrealistically larger than life bass and wish I had bigger speakers but just sometimes. Other times the Thiels are just right.

Larry,

I will try and hear the Sound Labs some day. The only electrostatic speakers I have demoed is the Martin Logan line, I thought the CLX was pretty nice but out of my price range. It did many things better than any speaker I have heard but they needed more low-end extension. The mix and match drivers of the lower models turned me off. Ultimately though the panel life of electrostatic speakers bothered me. How long is the panel life on Sound Lab speakers?

I also demoed the entire Magnepan line too. I also liked them but could not get over the build quality. Other panel brands are just a little too exotic and hard to come by.

Ok thanks Larry, I know Quad recommends changing panels every 5 years. Martin Logan was not as direct with my question and said it depends on atmosphere (dust, temp, moisture, etc) but reading though the martin logan forum 5 years seems to be the sweet spot. Some people claim to get 10 years before the sound changes but I would guess they are not listening critically.

Other brands such as sanders have a life-time warranty on their panels and claim they do not wear out but again I do not like the mix and match driver designs (all panel or moving coil please).

Panel life seems to be a grey area with electrostatic speakers. Not sure why it bothered me so much, I have yet to keep a pair of speakers 5 years... but I like to think I could.

Larry,

Thanks for the very detailed information. I do not know a lot about the technical aspects of electrostatic speakers but it appears Sound Labs has has done it's research on the subject. I will make an effort to hear them sometime.