Hi, my name is Nobuaki and I'm from Japan.It's been almost half an year since my CS2.3s came.
In early days, I noticed they sounded very sharp and accurate but at the same
time I noticed the lack of bass sound. But as time went by, sufficient bass
could be listened. Also as someone here once wrote here, I first noticed that
male vocals were very good and now I would say female vocals are very good too.

I can't listen to them for some months from early 2000 because I go to the UK to
study English. How I wish I could bring them with me to Britain! If someone in
the UK read this review, please e-mail me. I want audiophile friends.

I really do not like debates over which speakers to get as it is, in my humble opinion, the most subjective component of all audio equipments. I know that there are a few out there who couldn't live with Thiels, but as for me, I'd live and die by them. And the 2.3 is definately no exception. Incredible imaging and musical accruacy, awesome soundstaging and unfatigueing clear, delineated dyanmics ... well, you know the whole spew. And in my expereince, none of the praise is over exaggerated. The first time I heard a Thiel (CS3.6), I fell in love with the speaker. With the CS2.3s, Jim Thiels has proven once again proven to me that he is and will continue to make top notch speakers. 5 stars. Anything less and I wouldn't own it.

I wish I could could afford to buy these units, an audiophile friend of mine let me spend an evening with his system after a recent upgrade (to Thiel 2.3 from some older B&W units).
Treble is presented with startling clarity, don't buy these if you are afraid to here just what is recorded. Mids complement wonderfully and are startlingly real.

Bass extention is excellent, it is not the kind of bass extension that knocks you over, it is extreamly refined and detailed. Deep bass is a complement to most music, the Thiels handle this very well (listen to some fine Cello music to see just how refined e,g, YoYo Ma inspired by Bach) Many speakers I have heard seem to have more bass but it is so muddy that it overpowers me and is quite exhausting to listen to.

I can't comment on how difficult they would be to set up, my friends were positioned nearly ten feet apart with the listener position ten feet from the front of the grills and of course were well away from any walls. Soundstaging was excellent, especially with small orchestra works and vocals. Larger works were not quite "big" enough and I had a hard time imagining that the soundstage extended beyound the units some of the time (could be the recordings). This did not spoil my evening since the units were so transparent, and presented reallty in every other respect so well.

Construction looked excellent. I could not tell the difference with the grills off or on, leaving them on is a great wife pleaser for my friend.

The rest of the system is a Krell 300i, with a Rega Planet CD player and home made cables (12ga, silver over copper with heavy gold plated interconnects).

I would not normally give any piece of audio equipment 5 stars (for that I prefer live music!) these easily rate 4.5 and since there seems to be a number of low reviews posted here I will give them a 5.

Last year I purchased the Theil cs2.3's to replace my Definitive Audio BP10's. I kept an MK powered subwoofer. When I brought the Thiels home, played a few cuts including "Flight of the Cosmic Hippo" by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, I quickly called my brother (to whom I had sold the BP10 speakers) and offered him my subwoofer to go with his new bp10's. Before the Thiels were even broken in, I knew that I would not need the subwoofer. Plenty of good, tight, deep bass. Fantastic speakers.

Imaging, Clarity, Timbre, Assembly Quality

Unforgiving of substandard upstream components, requires plenty of current to sing

John must simply be joking, or a total fool. Anyone driving these virtuosos with a Sherwood receiver and CD changer needs their head examined and then removed. Too bad John can't find some Mach 1s and zip cord from Radio Shack, and a case of Keystone Light - his perfect system. Back to the review. Properly powered and fed a quality source, the 2.3s rival electrostatics in their total clarity and staging. Near perfect timbre and balance. They offer tight and strong bass and fine dynamics, too. The trick with speakers of this pedigree is plenty of quality current - at least 150 wpc from the likes of Classe or ML. If you can afford tubes all the way through, these can be magical. Look for models with the improved coaxial driver assembly - these models are smoother sounding than earlier 2.3s. They're ruthlessly revealing of inferior upstream components, which might explain John's moronic rant. However, they'll extract all there is from better gear.

Similar Products Used:

Sonic Frontiers, CEC, Tara Labs

Make good doorstop

Cost and quality

My local dealer let me borrow a pair of these for an in-home trial. I hooked these $3,000 babies to my 5-year old, but very reliable Sherwood receiver. Put in a couple heavy metal CDs in my Sherwood CD changer and hit play. Immediately, I noticed that the max volume level was greatly reduced compared to my Pioneer speakers. The bass output was a joke compared to what I'm used to. Even after I turned up the bass to max and pushed the speakers against the back wall, the bass was still very lacking. There was no boomyness. I took them back to my local dealer and asked him for some other speakers to try. He said that he didn't have anything for me. Can you believe that? He said that I should go to his competitor and ask him to try out some Revel speakers. So look for my review on the Revel's soon.

Similar Products Used:

Cerwin Vega, Pioneer, Sherwood

EXCELLENT THIEL DEALER ADVISE AND RESPONSE. THE LOCAL DEALER INSTALLED THE NEWLY UPDATED MID-UPPER RANGE DRIVER INTO MY 2.3s. I HAD BOUGHT MY 2.3s USED.

MY 2.3s WERE SUFFERING FROM HARSHNESS IN THE UPPER MID RANGE THUS PRODUCING ALMOST UNLISTENABLE SOUND IN THAT RANGE.

IF YOU READ MY PREVIOWS REVIEW OF 12/5/99, YOU MUST HAVE HAD SECONDS THOUGHTS IF YOU WERE ABOUT TO ENDEAVOUR INTO THE THIEL REIGN THROUGH THE 2.3s, BUT THANKS TO THE LOCAL THIEL DEALER, ABSOLUTE AUDIO IN PONCE, PR, AS WELL AS MIKE AT JS AUDIO, MY 2.3s ARE ABOUT THE SMOOTHEST, CLEANEST, DETAILED AND JUST SWEET SOUNDING SPEAKERS AROUND. I REPLACED THE DRIVERS WITH THE NEWLY UPGRADED (BY THIEL) MID-UPPER DRIVER THAT HAS PRACTICALLY DONE AWAY WITH THE HARSHNESS THAT HAD ME READY TO RETIRE THEM INTO THE BASEMENT. THE NEW DRIVERS HAVE SMOOTHED THE SOUND TO A SILKY AND PLEASANT DELIVERY OF THE VIOLIN UPPER RANGE AND HAS RETURNED THE THRILL TO MY LISTENING ROOM. THE SPEAKERS ARE NOW SLIGHTLY LAID BACK BUT JUST ENOUGH NOT TO LOSE THEIR EXCELLENT RESPONSE AND CHARACTERISTICS.

IF YOU HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM I HAD, YOUR DEALER CAN ORDER THE UPDATED DRIVERS FOR YOU. BELIEVE ME, THE IMPROVEMENT IS SUBSTANTIAL.

Similar Products Used:

THIEL 2 2, B&W MATRIX, AR303

Holographic imaging,excellent taut and clean mid bass, beautiful male and female voices, beautiful maple finish

Slightly bright, deep bass foundation limited, first order cross over requires more careful setup

When I purchased the Thiel 2.3's, I also seriously auditioned the Hales Revelation 3, Aerial Acoustics 10T and 8B, Dunlavy SC-III, Legacy Classic, Martin Logan SL 3, Quad ESL-63, PSB Stratus Silver, Von Schweikert VR-4, B&W 801 Matrix.

The two most outstanding qualities of the Thiel 2.3's are the holographic imaging (and I'm an imaging freak, measuring all the distances, and properly damping early reflections) and the outstanding midbass. When you close your eyes, you can still see every singer, male or female. Drums have a tautness that has to be heard to be believed.

The speaker has two weaknesses, one which is difficult to overcome. The speaker has limited low bass, which can be overcome with the appropriate subwoofer. The speaker also has a tendency towards brightness which can translate into harshness with many recordings. On a well recorded album you won't notice it. But if you have a CD collection like mine, you're bound to have some CD's that are barely listenable on these speakers. The Thiels 3.6 and 1.5 don't seem to be this bright. If the speakers do not sound bright and you love imaging......this is your speaker!

I sold the speaker because I could stand to see my one year old son destroy such beautiful speakers.

Similar Products Used:

Energy C-4 (3 years), Paradigm Studio 20 (1 year), Rogers LS-7 (15 years), Accoustat Spectra 22 (10 years), Boston Acoustics A400, Boston Acoustics A40, Polk 7B, many brands auditioned at stores and at friends

Full-range clarity, astounding transparency, open, well-defined soundstage, wonderful spiking system

None found yet, at least compared with other products that cost less than 10K

OK, I was considering a sub for my PSB's, which I really enjoyed. After listening to velodyne, a few of Carver's cubes and kicking out anything much larger, I wasn't happy with the cost of getting a little bass extension...integration problems and cabling woes. Then Marvin at AudioLab told me to listen to the Thiels. I didn't plan to spend this much, but, wow. Not to be swayed by listening room sessions alone, I did the review and shopping thing. What's not to love in a reputation for ruthless transparency? I listened to the Dynaudio 1.8's on recommendation from another dealer and also did a brief look at the much more pricey Vandersteen model 5 (which had some serious set-up problems at the time, so I can't say they were properly auditioned).

Little did I know that the real beauty of these speakers didn't appear until I got them home. I talked Marvin and Dave into selling me their demo pair, thus dodging the burn-in bullet, which I understand for these speakers to be pretty nasty.

I could talk about what I hear for quite a while, but in short, the level of detail and clarity coming from my system is fabulous. I got most (but not quite all) of the bass extension I'd been looking for, but so much more. The mid-tweet is amazing for it's lack of beaming and crystalline, but not brittle, sound. The midrange down is tight (no surprise with my Bryston 4BST, but important nonetheless) and very clean. The soundstage is broad, deep and uniform, even in my acoustically small and wife/decorator constrained family room. I found placement to be important but not critical, by the way - moving them around didn't change the color, but did move the soundstage. I'm now wishing for a bigger listening room and happily working through my library finding wonderful things never heard so well in each recording.

The spiking system is simply great. After playing with position for 2 days, all I needed to do is tip the speaker and insert the three spikes and I was done. GREAT idea!

Buy them. They're also beautifully made, by the way.

My system:

ARCAM Alpha 8se CD player
Bryston BP20 preamp
Bryston 4BST amp
Cardas crosslink RCA (cd to preamp) and balanced interconnects (preamp to amp)
Audioquest type 6+ speaker cable
Vibrapods (for the ARCAM)

Similar Products Used:

PSB Stratus Silvers, Vandersteen 3ce, Morel 202a, DCM Time window (1978 vintage)

clarity from top to bottom,deep soundstage, solid construction

need lots of clean current,

after a long search for speakers, I am glad I finally bought the thiels.

with the proper amount of clean current, these thiels can really sing with great clarity and realism.

As i was auditioning these speakers, I heard them with a krell 300i, with a bryston 4b-st, and proceed hpa(250w into 8 ohms). With all these amps they produced cleaner, more articulate bass than any of the following speakers--
aerial acoustics 7bs, B&W 803's, dynaudio countour 3.0.
And not to take anything away from these other speakers, I think they're also great. The only speakers that I thought sounded cleaner are the Martin logans, but these don't go down quite as low.
I also think that that the thiels produce a lager soundstage than these same B&W's and dynaudios.

It was a close decision between the aerial acoustics and the thiels. The aerial acoustics although having a wider soudstage, don't paint the 3-dimensional realism that the thiels do.

If you're going to go with the thiels, make sure that you have a strong amplifier. If you have a Bryston,krell,proceed with 200w or higher (or anything else along this line), I think you'll be OK. Personally, I like the proceed/thiel combo, I think it sounds a little bit richer than with the other amps.

Finally, these speakers don't play quite as loud and are not as forward as other similar speakers, but what they do offer is a very controlled tonal balance and a strong sense of realism.

Similar Products Used:

aerial acoustics, dynaudio contour 3.0, wilson cubs