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Cary SLI-80 mated with Spendor S3-E

Hello fellow A'goners:

A while back I have switched gears, sold my Dynaudio Contour S3.4s and other front end equipment. I did however, at that time pick up a beautiful pair of Spendor S3e's. I don't want to derail the main point of this thread, which is about cary sli-80 compatibility, so i'll keep my impression of the spendors short: I love them; they have a way of conveying musical realism that still surprises me.

I am currently driving them with a friend's Aragon 8002 power amp, a McCormack TLC-1 deluxe volume controller, and my source is the amazing squeezebox touch (i've had a bel canto dac3 twice along the years, as well as other high end digital players; the Touch with upgraded power supply, while not the last word in sheer resoultion, is immensly enjoyable).

I think there may be a wonderful synergy in the Spendor/ Cary SLI-80 integrated, but I am looking to you to let me know your experiences are with this combo, or close to it (ie other spendor speakers mated to the sli-80).
I don't get the sense that the S3es are power hogs (pretty benign 8 ohm impedance curve) and i don't listen all that loud. The aragon 8002 at 125 wpc into 8 seems more than enough, and the sound is very focused and has good musical presence.
I think that swapping the TLC-1/Aragon combo for the sli-80 would advance the quality of sound in many aspects-- especially in complementing the excellent midrange tone if the spendors (voices are reproduced with incredible realism). What do you think?

Thanks for your time.
128x128dpac996

Showing 2 responses by dpac996

dpac996's avatar
dpac996 OP
676 posts
 
Bob,

Yes you are correct. I meant to say 8 ohm nominal. I do understand that impedance is a function of frequency, which gives rise to the curve. The S5e has an additional parallel driver in addition to a more comples impedance mathcing network. I'm sure that the S55's present a more challenging load for any amp than the S3e's. That being said, i've been surprised on many occasions when, on paper, a given combination seems unlikely to create good sound, but in practice the combo sounds fantastic.

Thanks all for the posts so far.

Regards
dpac996's avatar
dpac996 OP
676 posts
 
Thank you for the responses. Now, how reliable and user friendly is the cary? I have had two arc vt100mkii's over the years. When biased properly those amps sing, but one of them blew a plate resistor that resulted when a new tube arced. Long story short the arc tube amps I had drove me nuts. More downtime than listening time. I just about swore off tube amps for good but I have heard some positives about the cary in terms of ease of biasing, less picky about matched tube sets, not eating tubes as fast as the arc (relative I know),etc. So what is your experience? How does this cary model rank with the rest of the pack? Thank you
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