Cary 303/300 driving V12R direct

I own both the Cary 303/300 and a pair of V12R Monoblocks. In my experience the 303/300 does a great job driving the V12's directly. Very dynamic and great transparency. When I add my CAT MkIII pre I do get a bit more body and dynamic contrast, but at the expence of some transparency. Both sound great. A lot depends on what cables you are using. Balanced is much superior to single ended with the 303/300 and the V12's IMO. jim

"Hence get a decent Cary preamp and you will gain a lot.">>>>> I also come from the same preamp camp.I tried running my Edge NL-10 amp directly with my Wadia cdp, and though the combo was nice "it didn't float my boat." Inserting my Edge SIG-1 pre back into the system brought me back home,so to speak. Your mileage may vary, but to these ears its a preamp/cdp all the way...

I had the Cary 303/300, AA capitol mk 2 and RA Opus 21 cdps in my system over the past few years and was never never happy driving it direct. My amp was the Mcintosh 275 which has high sensitivity and impedance.
Adding a Mcintosh preamp into the system was a revelation. The dynamics, PRAT, soundstage and overall smoothness of the sound increase by a wide margin.
Hence get a decent Cary preamp and you will gain a lot.

No, but I have heard a Cary CD-308 driving an amp directly and it was very good IMHO.

I was interested in a DVD-6 at one point and contacted Cary about using it to drive an amp directly in my 2-channel setup. They recommended against it. I think there were too few steps in the volume control, so the increments were too big to use for driving an amp directly without a pre-amp with a finer volume control.

I have read that the DVD-7 has many more volume steps and is suitable to drive an amp directly.

My $.02 worth.........

Enjoy,

TIC

It's a good question.

I own a cary DVD-6 with volume control and have always wondered how well it would mate with a power amp directly (perhaps some synergy wih a Cary match or alike).

I'd be interested if any other Audiogon members have any advice or experience. Has anyone discussed this with the folks at Cary?

happy listening in 2007!

peter