October 1999

Thiel Audio Factory Tour
by Marc Mickelson

Introduction

As I flew in from Chicago over the large and lovely horse farms that seemingly surround Lexington, Kentucky, I wondered how many times Thiel speakers had been referred to as thoroughbreds. This was one of the first questions I asked Kathy Gornik, president of Thiel. "A couple of times," she told me. Still too many for it to be anything but trite, so I added "horse references" to my mental avoidance list for this factory-tour article, not knowing then that even such an exalted moniker as thoroughbred underestimates the quality and ingenuity of the work done at Thiel.

I spent an entire day at the Thiel factory, not only touring the manufacturing facilities but also talking with Kathy Gornik and Jim Thiel at length about their company, and learning a bit about both of them. Begun in 1977, Thiel is much more than a going concern in the high-end-audio community, employing 35 people and producing nine speaker models ranging in price from $1450 to $13,500 per pair. But it became clear to me very quickly that Thiel does not buy into its own success. This is not denial or a form of self-motivation. It is, instead, a respect for the products and the process by which they are made. In fact, constantly improving the process was a theme that emerged throughout my visit, one that was addressed with creativity and even some stubbornness. As you will read and see, resting on its laurels -- the meticulous design and testing procedures, the high-quality workmanship, the custom-designed and -manufactured drivers -- is contrary to the way Thiel does business, and this commitment to improvement is clearly at the heart of its success.

The thinking behind Thiel’s products is refreshingly logical, or maybe I just found it that way because it appeals to my sense of logic in the often strange world of high-end audio. Jim Thiel believes that the creative forces should be in the hands of the musicians, and therefore his job is to create loudspeakers that reproduce their work as faithfully as possible. Hence, Thiel speakers are thoroughly designed and engineered products -- cabinets, drivers, and crossovers -- that are meant to be windows on whatever signal they are fed. This involves making plenty of measurements to be sure, but it also involves listening, which Jim Thiel does extensively during the creation of new models and technicians do after finished speakers have passed their anechoic testing.

In terms of building a speaker line, Thiel wants to hit a price/performance plateau, that point where the sound a speaker produces has reached a peak based on the price that Thiel charges. Jim Thiel admits that people have requested "signature" versions of his designs, but that creating these would not add commensurate value to offset the added cost. Thiel’s short-coil, long-gap drivers are more expensive, but "a worthwhile place to spend money." Some audiophiles have questioned the hook-up wire Thiel uses inside their speakers, wondering why it’s a simple solid 18-gauge  99.9%-pure copper wire and not some audiophile-approved brand of cable. As Jim Thiel explained, the extra cost of branded wire could be better spent elsewhere to produce greater sonic improvement, and the wire inside a speaker has very different requirements from that used between the amp and speaker anyway.

Thiel speakers are priced only according to the cost of producing them, which explains the somewhat odd $2190 and $3600 per-pair prices of the CS1.5 and CS2.3. Kathy Gornik told me early on, "From the beginning, we felt it was not appropriate to make consumers pay for our inefficiencies in manufacturing." Additionally, all of the design principles at work in the top-of-the-line CS7.2 are also part of less expensive Thiel speakers. The ideas are downscaled, producing a reduction in quantity but not perceived quality. Jim Thiel believes that his bigger, more expensive speakers should be "better in every way," and maintaining the consistency of principles from model to model helps achieve this in an objective way.

To find out more about Thiel Audio,
visit their website at www.thielaudio.com