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"This is exciting," says Thiel's new CEO, Bill Thomas

John Atkinson First Published: Jan 27, 2013
Bill Thomas at CES with the ground-breaking coaxial HF/MF unit designed by Jim Thiel (Photo: John Atkinson)

We reported last November that Thiel Audio Products, the Kentucky-based speaker manufacturer founded by Kathy Gornik and the late Jim Thiel, had been had been acquired by a private equity firm based in Nashville, TN, and that Gornik was no longer with the company. At the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, held January 8–11 in Las Vegas, the Thiel display at the Sands Convention Center was packed. I met up with Thiel's new CEO, 55-year old Bill Thomas, and asked him what had led him and his two partners to acquire the company.

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David Manley, Tube-Amplifier Pioneer, Has Died

Jason Victor Serinus First Published: Jan 02, 2013
David Manley, 73, founder of VTL, Manley Laboratories, and the ViTaL record label, died of a heart attack on December 26, 2012, at a hospital near his home in Varrennes-Jarcy, France. Famously described in the pages of Stereophile by Robert Harley in a 1991 interview as expressing "his strongly held beliefs with a passion and conviction that the printed word does not adequately convey," Manley leaves behind a rich legacy that continues to grow under the leadership of, for VTL, his son Luke Manley and daughter-in-law Beatrice Lam, and for Manley Labs, his fifth wife, EveAnna Manley.
Music and Recording Features News

First Time Ever: Mahler Download in DSD

Jason Victor Serinus First Published: Dec 24, 2012
Just in time for the New Year, Cookie Marenco of Blue Coast Records has released the first-ever DSD (Direct-Stream-Digital) download of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra's recording of Mahler's Symphony No.1. Recorded live in Davies Symphony Hall in September 2001, shortly after 9/11, and first released as a hybrid SACD in 2003, the recording is one of the only four Mahler symphonies in SFSO's complete Mahler cycle that were recorded directly to DSD.

The Mahler 1 files, available in four formats, are all derived directly from San Francisco Symphony's master, not from a copy of the SACD. The formats include two DSD formats: DFF and DSF. For those whose computer playback software or DACs are not equipped to play DSD files, 24/96 and 16/44.1 PCM files in WAV format are also available.

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Thiel Audio Acquired by Nashville-based Private Equity Firm

John Atkinson First Published: Nov 29, 2012
Thiel co-founders the late Jim Thiel (left) and Kathy Gornik (right) at the 2009 CES

We received the following press release last night. No more information was available and there was no word when this story was first posted on whether or not Thiel cofounder Kathy Gornik will remain with the company. Since then, however, CEPro.com has reported that Kathy and her daughter Dawn Cloyd, who was director of international sales, will both leave Thiel. Why the sale? Our suspicion is that while Thiel remains a great brand, it is too small a company, with no access to a significant source of capital, to be able to compete effectively in today's market.

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Winning the Loudness Wars

Jason Victor Serinus First Published: Nov 23, 2012
At the 133rd Audio Engineering Society (AES) Convention at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center, a full house flocked to aptly numbered Room 133 on October 27 to hear Stereophile's John Atkinson and four other major audio professionals deliver a two-hour presentation, Loudness Wars: The Wrong Drug? Sharing the stage were the panel's chair, Thomas Lund of TC Electronic A/S from Risskov, Denmark; Florian Camerer of ORF of Vienna, Austria; fabled recording and mastering engineer Bob Katz of Digital Domain in Orlando, Florida; and the equally fabled George Massenburg, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, who engineered, among other things, that audiophile favorite, Jennifer Warnes' "Bird on a Wire."
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Chord Launches the DSX1000 Network Player

Jason Victor Serinus First Published: Nov 12, 2012
Rather than debut its new $13,000 DSX1000 Network Music Player in the UK, where the company is based, Chord founder and chief scientist, John Franks (above), traveled to Mountain View, CA on November 8 for the unveiling. The site was the spacious, extremely attractive Northern California showroom of Audio High, one of the high-end dealers in the US that display Chord's top-end Reference products.
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Burning Amp Sizzles in San Francisco

Jason Victor Serinus First Published: Nov 11, 2012
Nelson Pass in full flight

It was no accident that residential architect Mark Cronander, aka Variac, scheduled the Sixth Burning Amp DIY Fest for October 28, on the same weekend that the AES Convention (Audio Engineering Society) took place in San Francisco. Not only did Cronander attract a fair number of new folks who came into town for the convention, but he also scored, as a speaker, class-D amplification expert Bruno Putzeys of Belgium's Hypex Electronics.

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