Thiel Audio was established in 1977 by Jim Thiel. The design principles in the top-of-the-line are trickled down to less expensive models. 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. Thiel values flat frequency response, low distortion, wide dispersion and preservation of phase and time information. www.thielaudio.com. Locate a dealer