the AIIIs were hard to beat. I owned two pairs at one time. an original A3, and the later A3i. A3i was more refined sounding with the tweeter and crossover upgrades.
There were four disadvantages to them.
1 you needed a big room to really let them come alive.
2. you needed a ton of power to drive them, the more the better. most tube amps need not apply.
3. to really hear them you needed to biamp them, vertically preferred over horizontal biamping.
4. the woofers are not replace-able, so you really need to take care of them.
Peter Snell hand selected these, and there are no off the shelf replacements.
I drove mine with a quad set of JC-1s. They sounded tremendous. Big and dynamic if the source was. One of the best sounds I had ever heard where the A3's playing 15 ips master tapes. That is the sound most 'philes would die for.
But do think that curved front baffle had a lot to do with their sound quality.
I also tied driving them with a quad set of dyna M3s. the dynas are ok amps, but the snells just yawned and said no thanks.
There were four disadvantages to them.
1 you needed a big room to really let them come alive.
2. you needed a ton of power to drive them, the more the better. most tube amps need not apply.
3. to really hear them you needed to biamp them, vertically preferred over horizontal biamping.
4. the woofers are not replace-able, so you really need to take care of them.
Peter Snell hand selected these, and there are no off the shelf replacements.
I drove mine with a quad set of JC-1s. They sounded tremendous. Big and dynamic if the source was. One of the best sounds I had ever heard where the A3's playing 15 ips master tapes. That is the sound most 'philes would die for.
But do think that curved front baffle had a lot to do with their sound quality.
I also tied driving them with a quad set of dyna M3s. the dynas are ok amps, but the snells just yawned and said no thanks.