Cary SLI-80 vs Cary 300SEI

Art,
I had owned your speakers and both Cary amps in the past. I still have a 300SEI amp in my bedroom system.
It will definitely be an upgrade path for you, since your speakers are very easy to drive.

The 300sei will be better in the following ways:

1. Pure Class A design.
2. 300B tubes.

And don't let the 15w fool you, it sounds more powerfull than my 200W HT amp!

Nick T.

Thanks Nick. I understand that the 300SEI is pure class A and uses 300B tubes. I surmise that you found the 300SEI to sound substantially better than the SLI-80, although it seems that you liked both. If you would like to present more detail on the sound comparison that would be great. Of course now you have me curious to know what's in your regular, non-bedroom system!
Art

Hi, Just intereted in how do you get the best out from SLI-80 by chossing the right tubes. I got mine today to drive ProAC2.5. (86db).(which is not so good with CAV50, although CAV50 is so good and I hesitated to replace it with SLI80.). so, if I am not deviated off the topic here. I would like to have your opnions on CAry SLI80 and CAV50 as well. (300B may be not enough for proAC)

Cheers
Derick

Your system is just like mine, 3 years ago I started with Sonatina II and SLI 80 then a year later I added 1 Rel sub (I believed it is series 1) then last year I switched from SLI 80 to 300 SEI LX20, using KR 300 bxls tube, 20 watt/channel, it sounded really great, quiet, powerful and has many details of sound coming out from the speakers, I strongly recommend this changes. Now, I am in the process of adding a tube pre-amp and use my integ. amp as an amplifier and hopefully later on moving to monoblocks and also I've heard adding a s.s. amp to drive the lower freq. will be a big plus, what do you think?
Ron.

Yes, I recently added the REL sub, and it's a jaw dropping combination : - ) I thought the 300 SEI LX20 was an amp, not an integrated, no? Anyway, great to hear that this change was worthwhile.

As to maximizing sound of SLI-80, I have been playing around with SED KT-88's vs Svetlana EL-34s (love both, actually). I experimented quite a bit with triode vs ultralinear - now I use exclusively triode - and also tried both Ohm setting on the back. I also experimented with various settings on the bias. I now keep it between 75 and 79 ususually. It's amazing how even a small bias drift can affect the sound. I thought sounded soft last week, turned out the bias had drifted to 71. Fixing it tightened up everything. Then there are cables.... I ended up with a mix of Quattrofil and Audience AU24. My old Cardas Golden Ref, which were fantastic with everything I threw at it, seemed a bit too laid back for this already laid back gear.

Art