A friend of mine was generous enough to let me borrow his Cary CAD-300-SEI Integrated tube amp for a couple of days to see how it would work with my Summits. The CAD-300-SEI is a 300B Single Ended amp that puts out a mere 15 watts and designed for use with very efficient speakers and is probably one of the best headphones amps around (unfortunately, I don't own headphones so I didn't have the opportunity to check that out). Since the Summits have a built-in amp for the woofer and are rated at 92dB sensitivity I was curious to see if such a low wattage SET amp would have a chance with these speakers.
I hooked up the Cary 300SEI to the Summits and after letting it warm up I turned the volume up past to about the 1 O'clock position thinking it was going take just about all the power the amp could put out. The sound at that level was noticeably grainy and not something I cared to listen to, not even for a minute. I thought, sure enough it's not nearly enough power for these electrostats. My initial reaction was that this amp wasn't going to work, even with the internally amped Summits. I then turned the volume down to about the 10 O'clock position and started to listen. I found it was actually pretty good at that level. The more I listened the more I liked what I was hearing.
Several CDs later (and then some...) I was quite impressed with the 300-SEI and convinced that I could live with these speakers being powered with 300B tubes. It was very musical and pleasing to me but only as long as I kept the volume at low to moderate levels. However, I usually play at low to moderate anyway. Only on a rare occasion do I crank it up. What I would say that was missing the most was that the dynamics were somewhat lacking but the imaging, soundstage and mid-range were great and satisfying to listen to.
You can't biamp Summits or Vantage speakers because they have an internal amp. However, they are literally biamped anyway when you think about it. Any amp connected to them are only driving the panels. The bass was still good with the Cary SEI and I didn't have to readjust the bass controls on the Summits. As long as the speakers are getting a good bass signal they will play very tight and robust bass.
After seeing what this amp could do with the Summits I then tried using the 15w 300B amp on my Ascents. Common sense tells me that this combination won't work. We'll, common sense was right. It will not work with Ascents (or probably any other traditional ML electrostat speaker). It did produce sound through the panels but it was very, very thin with almost no bass what so ever. Obviously, not even close to having enough power to drive Ascents. Maybe if it was biamped it would work but I have my doubts and didn't bother to go any further with that experiment.
I do have a 50watt Jolida 501A Integrated Tube amp with 4 KT-88 tubes and it works well with the Ascents. But, I'm sure it would perform even better with more power.
I was impressed that I could drive the Summits with a 15W 300B tube amp. However, let me caveat that with this statement; The 15W 300B tube will sound nice with the Summits but it's certainly not the best amp to use if you want more dynamics or a more robust volume level. But it did sound good enough to me that I could live with it for a while. The fact that it works at all with a model (or two) of electrostats is very significant in my opinion. I would now really like to hear these Summits powered with Cary's 805 50w mono amps or something similiar.
I hooked up the Cary 300SEI to the Summits and after letting it warm up I turned the volume up past to about the 1 O'clock position thinking it was going take just about all the power the amp could put out. The sound at that level was noticeably grainy and not something I cared to listen to, not even for a minute. I thought, sure enough it's not nearly enough power for these electrostats. My initial reaction was that this amp wasn't going to work, even with the internally amped Summits. I then turned the volume down to about the 10 O'clock position and started to listen. I found it was actually pretty good at that level. The more I listened the more I liked what I was hearing.
Several CDs later (and then some...) I was quite impressed with the 300-SEI and convinced that I could live with these speakers being powered with 300B tubes. It was very musical and pleasing to me but only as long as I kept the volume at low to moderate levels. However, I usually play at low to moderate anyway. Only on a rare occasion do I crank it up. What I would say that was missing the most was that the dynamics were somewhat lacking but the imaging, soundstage and mid-range were great and satisfying to listen to.
You can't biamp Summits or Vantage speakers because they have an internal amp. However, they are literally biamped anyway when you think about it. Any amp connected to them are only driving the panels. The bass was still good with the Cary SEI and I didn't have to readjust the bass controls on the Summits. As long as the speakers are getting a good bass signal they will play very tight and robust bass.
After seeing what this amp could do with the Summits I then tried using the 15w 300B amp on my Ascents. Common sense tells me that this combination won't work. We'll, common sense was right. It will not work with Ascents (or probably any other traditional ML electrostat speaker). It did produce sound through the panels but it was very, very thin with almost no bass what so ever. Obviously, not even close to having enough power to drive Ascents. Maybe if it was biamped it would work but I have my doubts and didn't bother to go any further with that experiment.
I do have a 50watt Jolida 501A Integrated Tube amp with 4 KT-88 tubes and it works well with the Ascents. But, I'm sure it would perform even better with more power.
I was impressed that I could drive the Summits with a 15W 300B tube amp. However, let me caveat that with this statement; The 15W 300B tube will sound nice with the Summits but it's certainly not the best amp to use if you want more dynamics or a more robust volume level. But it did sound good enough to me that I could live with it for a while. The fact that it works at all with a model (or two) of electrostats is very significant in my opinion. I would now really like to hear these Summits powered with Cary's 805 50w mono amps or something similiar.
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