Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

That's right, that's no typo; the name of this speaker is the Thiel CS.5—not 1.5, not 8.5, just point five. The CS.5 is the smallest of Thiel's floorstanding CS (Coherent Source) loudspeaker family, and is likely to remain so—a name like CS.125, for example, is a bit unwieldy. If you're familiar with the rest of Thiel's CS line, then you can imagine what the CS.5 looks like: it resembles the other CS speakers, except it's smaller (footnote 1). And, being a typical smartypants 'ender (as in "high-ender"), I bet you think you know 'zactly how these sound, too, don't you? Well? I thought so.

Kentucky manufacturer Thiel has acquired a reputation for the coherence of sound presented by its range of distinctive, sloping-baffle, floor-standing loudspeakers. Designer 221/index.html">Jim Thiel gives a high priority to linearity of phase response; as a result, he chooses to use phase-linear, first-order crossovers in his designs, the target response being the combination of electrical and mechanical filtering. As the out-of-band rejection is then only 6dB/octave, it places demands on his chosen drive-units to be well-behaved, not only in their passbands, but also outside of them. In effect, the loudspeaker has to be designed as a whole system, the interaction between the drive-units and crossover being considerable.

Thiel Audio, headed up by Jim">http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/221">Jim Thiel (President and chief designer) and Kathy Gornik (Marketing Director), sets itself apart from other speaker manufacturers not only by making what I feel to be almost uniformly excellent products, but also by serving as a kind of hallmark for the good dealer: Although not all good dealers sell Thiel, just about every Thiel dealer is a good one. This comes about because, in spite of just about uniformly positive reviews and excellent customer relations, Thiel (primarily in the person of Ms. Gornik) has insisted on limited distribution through retailers they know will give their product a good demonstration. There are a few other such companies performing this hallmark function, though only Mark Levinson Audio Systems readily comes to mind. Most other successful companies prefer as wide a geographical distribution as possible, in spite of the occasional necessary compromises in dealer quality.

In the past year, Stereophile has reviewed a number of cost-no-object flagship loudspeakers. B&W's">http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/600/">B&W's Signature 800, MartinLogan's">http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/390/">MartinLogan's Prodigy, Burmester's">http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/601/">Burmester's B-99, Snell's">http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/556/">Snell's XA Reference Tower, Krell's">http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/382/">Krell's LAT-1, Linn's">http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/555/">Linn's Komri, Dynaudio's">http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/501/">Dynaudio's Evidence Temptation, Sony's">http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/391/">Sony's ES SS-M9ED, and Rockport's">http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/644/">Rockport's Antares have all passed through the review mill. Manufacturers like to submit their flagships for review for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the pride they take in showing what their engineers can do when given a blank check. However, while all these models do indeed provide great (if different) sound for the tens of thousands of dollars they demand from their owners, they are out of reach of the majority of audiophiles. It is important, therefore, for reviewers to spend time with real-world designs; when I heard the $1990/pair CS1.6 from Kentucky's Thiel at the 2002 CES last January, I requested a pair for review.

"Well, Sam, are there any speakers you are really excited about?"

On the occasion of a recent major birthday, my significant other, Bonnie, gave herself a "mid-life crisis" present—a beautifully restored, bright yellow Porsche 911. She'd spent the previous several weeks wading through reference books to figure out exactly which year and model she wanted, and each night we'd discuss the pros and cons of various models, options, and points in the 911's +30-year evolution. Bonnie explained to me that, throughout its production run, the 911 maintained the same basic design and a consistent set of engineering goals, but was continually updated and refined. In her mind, the 1973 Targa was the one to have, the last and fastest of the lightweight 2.4-liter models.

Jim Thiel sounded almost bored. "Almost everything about the CS2.4 is pretty standard stuff—short-coil, long-gap, low-distortion drivers, aluminum diaphragms, polystyrene capacitors, spatial coherence, time coherence, reduced diffraction baffles, reduced cabinet vibration, etc., etc. Of course, I think the execution of the 2.4 is more successful than our previous models, but in terms of what's really different, that mechanical crossover is what's special."