When people upgrade from Thiel

I wouldn't say that I upgraded from Thiel but I would say that I augmented my available speakers by buying a big pair of active ATCs.  They don't make me like my Thiels any less but they do some things that the Thiels wont, like play very loudly.  They are a bit more satisfying on large scale orchestra or meaty hard rock than the Thiels.  The Thiels are better with small scale stuff and at lower volumes. 

I had B&Ws for a long time.  First the N804 and then the N802.  While I had the 802s I bought a pair of used, old Thiel 2 2s to try them out.  I really liked them so a couple of years later I replaced the N802s with Thiel 3.7s.  In my opinion the Thiel 3.7s are superior to the N802s in almost every way.  The B&Ws will play louder and have more bass but the Thiels have more defined, better bass, clearer midrange, better off axis response leading to less room sensitivity, better midrange intelligibility and a smoother tweeter.  It's not that the B&Ws are bad, just that the Thiels are better in every area I care about. 

I was surprised by this since B&W is a much larger company with a far larger research budget and all that.  I decided that I think B&W, like a lot of producers of high end products, is more concerned with marketing talking points than they are with performance.  It's fun to talk about all of the characteristics of B&W speakers.  The big black head, the Kevlar midrange, there are a ton of things to talk about.  This reveals, in my opinion, how performance can take a back seat to talk and aesthetics in high end audio.  Whenever a company's marketing material starts talking about a lot of fancy manufacturing techniques and exotic materials I tend to lose interest.