High value, high efficiency speakers for SET amps

Hi Rob,
You asked the pertinent question, how loud do you listen?
My Coincident Total Eclipse II are 94 db at 14 ohms. I initially drove them with my 100 watt push pull (60 watt in triode) KT 88/6550 tubes. This was a really good sounding match. You know what? The 8 watt 300b SET is even better sounding with these speakers. The SET relegated the higher power amp into the inactive components closet! The bigger amplifier can ultimately play louder but this is irrelevant. I would never listen at the levels high enough for this supposed advantage to materialize. The 8 watt amp is more than enough and after 6 years of blissful listening I appreciate this amplifier more than ever.

I listen at SPL of 75-85 db c weighted, this is plenty of volume for my needs. I on rare occasions listen at 95-100 db and even then the sound remains composed and un strained. The SET is better in virtually all musical parameters that matter most to me. Rob are priorities seem the same. My experience is that a good quality lower powered amp will drive 92-95 db speakers wonderfully. It's a question of desired volume level, room size, sonic/musical priorities etc. Rebbi you'll do very well with your current 8 watt SET IMHO. The realism and naturalness of music reproduction is better with the SET than the higher power push pull amplifier.
Charles,

From Jeff Day Wordpress Blog, as Reviewer for Posive Feedback/6moons his listening bias which exactly matches my own:

I thought it might be handy for those following my writing at Positive Feedback Online to know what my listening biases are to aid you in interpreting and decoding my reviews. Just to alert you, my listening perspective is somewhat of a minority opinion in the Hi-Fi community of North America, but will be more familiar to those listeners in Turkey, Africa, and Japan, who tend to be more familiar with timbral ways of listening. My hierarchy of importance is aligned more closely to how well a Hi-Fi rig plays the musical content of recordings (I know, it’s a heretical concept), rather than how it ‘sounds’ in the more traditional audiophile ‘sonic’ sense.

As a result of my being drawn towards the musical content of recordings, I tend to be a bit more of a timbral listener than is typical for a lot of Westerners, meaning that the reproduction of the textures, colors, and tones & overtones in the music are really important to me. To this end I look for timbral realism at the band level (the band’s signature ‘sound’) and at the individual instrument level (the unique ‘voices’ of instruments). I want them to sound recognizably like themselves in tone and texture, so that their full tone color can develop, which I think helps lend a feeling of beauty and expressiveness to the music. I like the melody (the tune you ‘whistle while you work’), harmony (treble & bass accompaniments to the melody) and rhythm (the steady beat that determines the tempo) to have a life-like flow and connectedness in how the musicians interact—just like in real life. I want dynamics (variations in loudness) to evoke that which I hear in life for an emotional connection to the melody and rhythm. For loudness I like my music playback to be similar to live loudness levels, which for the kind of music I listen to the most, jazz, usually means 80 dB or louder. Finally, I want tempo portrayed so that both the mood and speed of the music are conveyed through it, just like it is with music in real life.

I consider the sonic performance of a Hi-Fi rig on the non-musical artifacts of the recording process to be of value, but of less importance to me than the performance on the musical content of recordings (as above). So things like transparency (being able to ‘see’ into the recording), soundstage (the three dimensions of the recorded space in width, height and depth), soundspace (the acoustic ‘space’ of the soundstage), and imaging (the feeling of solidity and localization of instruments & musicians on the soundstage) are important to me, but they are not my primary focus – the musical content is.

So I like my cake (the musical content of recordings) with a little frosting (the sonic artifacts of the recording process) for a balanced taste treat. Too much frosting and not enough cake puts me off. So that’s me, and you might be different, but at least now you know how.

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Rob,
My budget is whatever I can get for the De Capo's! (Seriously.) I've got nothing else to throw at this other than what they sell for. Now if someone wants the stands, too, that may help. They're the Osiris stands by the long defunct Audionics. Probably one of the best 24" stands ever made. So if I get lucky, I'm looking at between $1700 and $2000, give or take.
My room dimensions, FWIW, are actually about 16 x 13 x 8, but due to a slightly odd shape at one end and placement of furniture (it doubles as a guest bedroom) I only have about 11 feet of the long wall to play with. I sit about 9 feet from my ears to the front plane of the speakers. Maybe that makes things clearer.
I don't listen at very loud levels, especially for extended periods.

Zu Omen Mk II?

Charles,
You are right on.

As you can see from my post from Jeff Day Blog what my values are. In that spirit I want to pass along some other info that Day wrote about. While doing a Review of the SPEC SS Integrated for Positive Feedback, build by a Japanese 300B aficionado, Yazaki-san, Yazaki-san suggested to Day that he try NOS Western Electic 16ga stranded tin copper wire for speaker wire on Day's Tannoy Westminster Royals ($1.39 foot) as well as Belden 8402 microphone cable as interconnect (about $3.25 a foot) and to terminate them with Swichcraft SWC 3502AAU RCA, which Day did with great success. He had industry friends over for a shootout between this stuff and Sablon. 2 voted Sablon, 2 voted WE and Belden, Day said equal but different presentation. Reading between the lines and subsequent posts later I think he gives slight nod to Sablon. Yazaki-san has been using this combo for about 10 years and compares the sound to the ancient NOS 40s 274b tube, not the later iteration. Yazaki-san calls it an artistic tube incorporating all the values I mentioned above in "Listening Values". With the Coincident Dynamo I changed out my PS Audio Statement/Kimber 8TC/Silnote speaker cables as well as Goertz silver/Kimber Hero/Silnote interconnect and was floored. Of course, not many here believe me I suspect. But about 600 folks on Day Blog/Cable Asylum/Decware site seem to be buying this We and Belden. I only heard one person grumble, then after more break-in he became a ”believer”. Best, Rob