AES Cary Sixpacs and Silverline Audio Sonata III

Call Alan Yun of Silverline Audio and ask him for his advice. I did. He straight out told me for the music I listen to (rock and jazz mostly), anything less than 100wpc in a tube amp won't produce satisfactory results on the Sonata III loudspeakers, and Pass labs or Belles solid state amplification would yield the best results. My experimentation thus far confirms his advice, although there are a hundred tube amps I have not auditioned in my system, and one of them might really be magical.

Alan primarily voices and demos his speakers with a Pass Labs amplifier of significant wattage.

FWIW, my room is 20x16 and partially opens on to a 12x12 room on the back wall. My listening chair is 8 feet from the back wall, and 9 feet from the speakers. I listen nearfield.

I guess loud is pretty subjective. I play music at 85 - 90db when I consider it loud. This is the average weighting (c) on my rat shack sound level meter.

Interesting what loud is to one vs another.

Bill

Sounds pretty loud for me. Thanks for all the advices.
I'm open to different suggestions, so if someone has a great sounding alternative, please let me know.
Peter

Choose your speaker first, and then match an amp to the speaker.

If you're married to the AES Sixpacks, then consult an AES dealer for speaker recommendations.

That's my best advice.

Bauerp

My room is just over 4M wide, and just under 6M deep, with the speakers firing off the short wall. I've two openings towards the rear of the room and one on either side.

There's more than one way to skin a cat, as they say. I'm thinking the IIIs & your amp should do OK. i ran a BAT 60spc tube amp on mine and they sounded fine. Lots of volume. Not a lot of bass though. good punchy bass on tube amps seems an elusive thing generally speaking.

For me in my room, 92 - 94 db (avg), is more than I can handle for extended playing. maybe a song or two, but no more, then I need a break. the BAT vk60 did that on my sonata IIIs.

Consequently, I'd say SS is NOT a prerequsite for the Sonata IIIs to provide you volume. That's easy!

To do their best however is subjective! The real answer is going to be determined by your own tastes and preffs.

As far as I'm concerned the sonata IIIs are great speakers, period. given they're also in the over $7K retail range, having something comensurate to push them with might well be inorder too... I've found I can live pretty well with amps in the $5000 - $6000 range very often. More or less expense there ain't a bad thing either, I suppose, it's just my experience and was said above... "What sort of 50 wpc amp?". they ain't all equal. (also do try the 4 ohm taps off the amp, as well as the 8's if you get the Sonata IIIs... just a thought.).