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Listening Room
This is by
far the
heaviest
of the
speakers tested,
at close to 30 kg.
Indeed, we were
dismayed when we
unpacked it. Thiel
is in the habit of booking large rooms
at shows, and we had in fact never seen
a Thiel in a normal-sized room. They
sure make them big, don’t they? Actually,
so does ProAc: the CC-Two is actually
almost exactly the same size, but it
doesn’t look it.
Thiel also sent along a metal stand,
which is a US$400 option for the MCS1
(a stand for vertical mounting also
exists). We took the picture that way,
and we were resigned to testing it that
way too, since surely a speaker like this
would crush our TV monitor to dust.
Wouldn’t it?
No, in fact. Our platform turned out
to be so stable that we had no problem
using it with the Thiel (though putting
it up there was a four-hand job). That
was just as well, since the stand is what
we liked least about the MCS1. Though
its styling is elegant enough, a close look
reveals visible welds, something not
acceptable in a luxury product. Worse,
the stand’s rear crossbeam, to which the
speaker is bolted, rings like a bell. Even
tapping the speaker produced an audible
Thiel
MCS1
ring from the stand. After the photo session
we returned it to its box.
The speaker itself is gorgeous, looking
good with or without its concave
curved grille. The sculpted front baffle
is MDF. The sides of ours were veneered
with a spectacular reddish wood called
morado (sometimes wrongly called
Bolivian rosewood), though there are
many other finishes available. The
workmanship is nonetheless not without
flaw. During the photo session the studio
lights showed up what seemed to be dust
at the mouth of one of the Thiel’s twin
Summing it up…
Brand/model: Thiel MCS1
Price: US$2200, about C$3055
Dimensions: 71 x 30.5 x 25.5 cm
Impedance: 4 ohms, 3 ohms min.
Sensitivity: 90 dB
Most liked: Spectacularly natural
sound
Least liked: Mediocre stand, minor
assembly blemishes
Verdict: The looks may seduce you,
but it’s the sound that will finish the
job
ports. We were
horrified to
discover that it was
actually putty, used to
cover up a rough spot!
When we rubbed it the black
paint came right off.
The two 16.5 cm aluminum cones
have a satin glow that makes you want
to leave off the grille. We usually deplore
visible screw heads, but the brass screws
on the Thiel look rather luxurious. As in
other recent Thiel speakers, the woofers
have a shallow voice coil, which can move
a long way without ever wandering near
the edges of the deep magnetic field. The
woofers are in individual enclosures,
each with its own port.
The tweeter is unusual too. It is
essentially a miniature cone speaker,
which can go down to 100 Hz, with
a metal dome riding on it to reproduce
highs. Thiel doesn’t specify the
crossover frequency, but we assume it’s
low enough to give the woofers lots of
breathing room.
Like all Thiel speakers, the MCS1
has a crossover network crammed with
capacitors (polystyrene and polypropylene)
and air-core coils. Jim Thiel
believes in using the crossover to correct
errors in both phase and amplitude, and
not merely to divide up highs and lows.
The crossover cannot be split, and so
there is only one pair of binding posts at
the rear. Their quality is adequate for use
with bananas, but we would be reluctant
to use spade lugs with them.
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 39