![thiel cs 1.6 thiel cs 1.6](http://www.audiocostruzioni.com/r_s/diffusori/diffusori-5/thiel-cs-1.6/fianco.jpg)
Maybe it's Thiel's dense, rap-your-knuckles-till-they-hurt cabinet at work here, but the CS1.6's rendition of vocals was box-free! Kevin Mahogany's voice is a rich, deep, velvet even when he's reaching for those inspirational high notes, and the Thiel presented it with none of the cupped-hands quality frequently encountered in conventional speakers. If anything, the bass was one of the most evenhanded performances I've heard from a 2-way speaker, subjectively lacking the characteristic midbass "hump" that seems to be the bane of such designs. Run without the aid of the subwoofer, a pair of CS1.6s fully re-created Melissa Stocum's finger-plucked double bass on "My World is Empty Without You," with no sign of that published 48Hz limit. Jazz vocalist Kevin Mahogany weaves a little Motown magic on the CD track of his new Pride and Joy (Telarc SACD-63542), covering past hits with his own fresh approach.
![thiel cs 1.6 thiel cs 1.6](https://data2.manualslib.com/first-image/i7/33/3280/327994/thiel-cs1-6.jpg)
After living with the CS1.6s for a few months, I'm still glued to the musical web they weave. It was with music that the Thiels snared me at CES. Conventional dipoles may be okay for the surround channels with movies, but with the advent of multichannel music, a quintet of reasonably priced high-end speakers like the Thiel CS1.6 is the proverbial chicken in every pot. If you can make it work, I advocate identical speakers all around.
Thiel cs 1.6 tv#
If you have a more conventional arrangement in your home theater, meaning just about any TV in a box, you'll have to go with a traditional, horizontally oriented center-channel speaker like Thiel's SCS3. When it comes to perfectly matched timbre across the front channels, there's no center speaker like. Placed on the center speaker, the spikes raised the speakers enough that they came dangerously close to blocking the picture. But it was close, and even in my case, I could use the provided spikes only for the main left and right speakers. With their relatively short stature, a single CS1.6 just fit beneath my drop-down Stewart screen without blocking the image, making a quintet of matching Thiels a natural choice. One of the reasons I wanted to review the CS1.6s, besides the fact that I'd loved what I'd heard at CES, is one of the reasons you may not. Of course, a big Velodyne subwoofer was only a button away if I panicked. I first heard the CS1.6 at CES last January, with a pair of Thiel's new SW1 subwoofers (not available in time for this review), yet at home I was comfortable enough listening to 2-channel music with only the CS1.6s at the wheel. Still, this is a relatively small speaker, so what the reflex slot adds falls in the midbass the CS1.6 is rated as being down -3dB by 48Hz. Starting at the bottom and running half the height of the front baffle is a narrow, gently beveled bass-reflex slot-a big change from the more conventional round ports and passive radiators. Perhaps the most visually interesting aspect of the CS1.6 is viewable only with the speaker's grillecloth removed. The short-coil/long-gap 1-inch aluminum tweeter is an all-new Thiel design. The 6.5-inch woofer uses a relatively huge 3-inch voice coil to propel its metal diaphragm. Joining a 2-inch-thick, highly carved front baffle to the 1-inch thickness of the remaining cabinet walls, the CS1.6 presents the same sloped face as the rest of Thiel's Coherent Source (CS) series, and so lays claim to like benefits in time and phase coherence. While Thiel's new speaker may be comparatively affordable-I can't say "inexpensive"-they're still all Thiel. For only $2390, you can get a pair finished on five sides in a wood veneer, like the beautiful natural-cherry ones I used for the front channels-or, if you want to save a cool grand on a quintet, the $1990/pair matte-black models I put in the rear are all the color you'll need.
![thiel cs 1.6 thiel cs 1.6](https://www.on-off-hifi.de/Produkte/Thiel+CS+1.2+schwarz%2C+gebraucht/index.php?rex_media_type=IMG980&rex_media_file=img_4182.jpg)
One color particularly notable by its absence is green, as in the minimal amount of greenbacks you'll have to peel off your roll-the CS1.6 is one of the more affordable floorstanding speakers in the Thiel line. In this case, Thiel isn't a color, it's a lack of color, and nothing impressed me so much during my time with these five Thiel CS1.6 speakers as their colorlessness.