I bought Thiel 22 about 3 years ago for a 1000 dollars. the pith was damaged in shipping so i sent them to Thiel to be repaired n/c by seller.
they came back in mint condition. My front end is Levinson
39 CD player, 380S pre, 332 amp.
Cabling is tricky, right now my best sound is with Audioquest Clear speaker cable, CZ gel pre to amp, Signal cable CD player to preamp.
I bought Cardas Golden Cross hoping for audio nervana , but its not for my system. I have to sell them one day.
I also owned Audioquest Sterling, which i tried with the Thiels and B&W 801 but they never sounded right. I sold them to someone using tubes and they said they were excellent in there system.
Recently i have added a Mirage small sub ,,a sealed box 2 6inch drivers opposed,
I like them with the sub as my previous speakers were B&W 801 S3
which were nice speakers but leaned a bit too much in the studio sound direction, B&W always had some high end glare , they seemed to lack rhythm and pace also, and when i compared, because I owned both speakers at the same time, the Thiel outperformed the B&W.