Thiel Owners

To answer a direct question to me my Thiel are CS1.2, one speaker sounds great, the other one sounds blown, when I removed the grill found the tweeter was crushed, so have to replace both, not currently in a hurry for that.

To follow along with OP thread, and ideas, I went first with ProJect streambox S2, quickly returned it, ordered a ProJect Streambox Ultra, currently using it with a USB hard drive directly connected to the Ultra (which is really a raspberry pi running volumio), the audio is, so to speak crystal clear, since it is early in the morning I have not played audio too loud, don't wish to disturb neighbors, but I now have the audio quality I was seeking for a relatively low cost, well, compared to some.

I just thought I would post since my current setup is sort of along the lines this thread took.

To qualify I do have some Thiel speakers, but the previous owner ran them with too weak an amp and now they only sound good at low volume, they are awaiting new tweeters.

To get to the gist of it, I am now using Von Schweikert Audio VR2 speakers, driven by Bryston PP120 amps. My Bryston preamp is currently sitting in its box with a label on it to go to Bryston for a repair, I attempted to go from my DAC, straight to amps, this was a bit, well, a lot too loud, so I bought a cheap passive pre off of ebay, It cost less than fifty dollars, so now my cd transport, and computer connect to my DAC which connects XLR to the pre, then six foot XLR to each mono block.

The sound is so to speak delicious, the best audio I have experienced in many years. Since my Ohm Walsh days anyway.

Not really, in a past life I was a Unix/Linux sys admin, though I was also a network tech, hench the oldtechguy. I did go through this lengthy thread, got rather interesting in a few places.

My music taste is really eclectic, currently Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats are playing, the previous album was by The McDades. I will listen to just about anything musical.

A bit of an update on the ProJect Streambox S2 Ultra... I spent a good part of my morning attempting to disable the bluetooth connection as it was not secured. I eventually gave up and reflashed the Streambox with dietpi, I wouldn't recommend this task if you are not comfortable with Linux, but there's plenty of help available in various forums.

Now my custom box is running dietpi and my music collection is accessed with emby, a very slick interface. Audio quality is superb, temps of the box are lower. 

Most of my music files are flac's with some dsd thrown in as well, all sound great. Now to rip my remaining cd's.