Speakers with Cary 300 SEI

Hi Lex. You will love the Cary (at least I do). Give us a budget and you'll get lots of good suggestions.

Harbeth P3's are fantastic monitors. Will not knock the walls down and no real deep bass, but very articulate natural bass and very dynamic for its size. Wonderful imaging, resolution and tonality as well.

For a lot less money, the Epos monitors are a very nice choice.

Good to hear from you Swampwalker. I'm thinking I'd like to top out and maybe $1200-1500 (used).

There are lots of choices in that price range. First, try running a search on best monitors or best small speaker. One that is hard to find but is really very good is the Sequerra Met 7s. The would probably be about half that price but are very neutral, do nothing wrong speakers that would leave you with the $ to find a good, non-boomy sub, IF you can find a pair. Merlin TSMs are right in that price range, as well.

What is the size of the room and expected loudness level? This will usually dictate efficiency requirement. Cary 300SEI only has 12-15 watts at 8ohms. So figure at least 89-91 dB flat 8-Ohms speakers for a mid-size room for moderate loudness.

Monitor speakers tend to be rather inefficient with a few exceptions. I can think of only Coincident Triumph Extreme and some single driver speakers that into this description.

I did try early EPOS speakers with Cary 300 SEI about 10 years ago. Certainly very romantic sounding but does clip pretty fast. And this was only in my small apartment living room. Just for fun, I did hook up a pair of Thiel 3.6 as well. Surprising good sounding with string quarter and female jazz vocal. Just have to keep the vol down and make sure there is zero bass in the music.

It just goes to show you that SET will work well depending on requirement.

Eric