Listening to the Thiel 3.7s again last night...boy I don’t know if I can give these things up! It’s amazing the degree to which you can dial in a speaker (especially like the 3.7) to one’s taste - far field, near field, toed in, toed out.
As I’ve said the 3.7’s wide, even dispersion allows me to have them very wide apart, quite close to me, and faced almost straight ahead. The balance I get is lush and warm, with an utterly massive width and depth to the soundstage, yet with perfectly dense, focused imaging of all the voices and instruments across that span. Anyone who ever doubted that the Thiels could sound warm, lush and inviting hasn’t heard what they can do when set up that way. I listened to some live Everything But The Girl - they do lots of quiet, solemn music with one or two guitars being played, and the voices and acoustic/electric guitars were just astonishingly warm, human and clear. I played some Joanna Newsome (talk about an acquired taste! Her voice! But that harp playing!) and her harp simply "appears" a out 4 feet behind the speakers, as if she has just beamed down into my room to play for me. At least in my experience, certain instances like this are probably the most tactile sonic reproduction I've ever heard from an audio system. (I'm not saying other systems can't do it - of course they can - but simply in my own experience with many speaker systems, and hearing many show and store systems, it's among the best I've heard with certain recordings).
I have an audiophile pal - who writes for an online audio mag - who said the first time he heard the Thiel 3.7s at an audio show it sent him running from the room - too bright and aggressive! But when he comes over to listen to my 3.7s he is thoroughly pleased by completely smooth and gorgeous they sound. I’d told him that (due to ergonomic issues I’ve mentioned earlier) I may be looking to replace them with a smaller speaker, but after he heard a couple of cuts played on the 3.7s he turned to me incredulous "And you intend to get better sound than THIS...how???"
I told him, I don’t intend to get better sound. Not for anything remotely close to the price and I’ll probably never have better sound than I have with my current Thiel set up. That’s just a pill I’ll have to swallow (IF I sell them...)
