TAS: When did you discover high-end audio?

Jim Thiel: I was an enthusiast from the engineering point of view since high school in the early 1960s. There was always an appreciation for music in my family. My father was a musician and I took piano lessons at an early age.

TAS: Why did you decide to specialize in loudspeakers?

Jim Thiel: Although I always built loudspeakers, I was actually more experienced with electronics. However, I wanted to start my own business, and rightly or wrongly I thought it would be easier to build a successful audio company in the speaker industry than the electronics industry. I thought I could build speakers that were better enough that the average enthusiast could easily hear the difference

TAS: What were you hearing that you thought you could improve?

Jim Thiel: I was always interested in the sonic truth, and I was often disappointed with many speakers that I heard. Others I found very inspiring. The original Quads caught my interest and that started a whole series of experiments with electrostatic speakers. I also admired the original Dahlquist speaker. I thought to myself, “Wow, how realistic could you really make a speaker?” It just sounded incredibly challenging.

TAS: Ultimately, you decided to stay with cone technology.

Jim Thiel: I went through a mental exercise and started listing the advantages and disadvantages of both electrostats and cones. And what I realized is that for the most part the limitations of electrostatic speakers are very basic properties of physics, whereas most of the problems I listed for dynamic speakers—like cabinet resonance problems, driver diaphragm resonance problems, crossover phase-shift problems–were not necessarily inherent. That became very exciting because these were issues I could try to develop
solutions to.

TAS: Thiel speakers have one of most recognizable silhouettes. How did that come about?

Jim Thiel: I was working on one of our original prototypes using a stepped-back sub-enclosure method. I was measuring the diffraction problems caused by the steps and puzzling over how to solve those sonic reflections while still maintaining the alignment. So we got the idea of a slope being a perfect solution—it has no steps and it still aligns the drivers. That was a thrilling day.

TAS: What inspired the new provocative woofer diaphragms of the CS 3.7?

Jim Thiel: I’ve always worked on ways to make driver diaphragms stiffer, because that is a way of achieving fewer resonances in the operating bandwidth of the driver. At the same time I wanted it to present a flat shape to the tweeter that is mounted in the center of the midrange diaphragm, so that the shape of the midrange would not alter the energy radiated by the tweeter. It was a step-by-step process over the last two years that led to this corrugated geometry. I’m not sure if it’s a bonus or a detriment that it looks so different.

TAS: What type of music do you use to voice your speakers?

Jim Thiel: Most of the time I listen to female voice. It is the most difficult instrument to reproduce realistically because we are so keenly sensitive to what voices sound like. If you get it to sound realistic, you’ve covered a lot of what the speaker has to do. Also, piano is very useful.

TAS: Does the idea of an active Thiel speaker appeal to you at all?

Jim Thiel: I’m interested in the idea and appreciate the technical advantages. But it creates serious marketing problems because ultimately you have to decide how good an amplifier you’re going to put in the speaker. If you put in a super, super good amp a lot of people won’t be able to afford it. But if you put in an average amp, then you’re cutting off all the people who would have preferred a better amplifier. So I think it’s a decision better left to each customer.

TAS: What advice would you give to an audiophile about to make a purchase?

Jim Thiel: The best place to spend money is where it makes the most sonic difference. Too often an audiophile will evaluate a component using the criteria of “does it make my system sound better at all, even a tiny bit.” I think the audiophile serves himself best when he evaluates components based on sonic improvement per dollar spent. I think that if more people took that approach they would end up with more musical enjoyment and satisfaction.

TAS: What still inspires you?

Jim Thiel: The idea of making a product that sounds better. What really inspires me is thinking about technical solutions to sonic problems. Always trying to find a better way to do something, that’s what’s fun for me.