High eff speakers? Sonata III, Super III, OR ???

Any of the klipsch Heritage series

If vintage doesn't scare you, you ought to consider Altec Lansing Models 14,17,18,19. These can be bought for $2000 or less. I own Model 17s with the 604 duplex and have been enjoying them for over 18 months with no thoughts of selling them. Mine are from the mid 70's, but they do lots of things very well. Most range from 96-103db/watt/meter.

Newbee, thanks for the vote of confidence... even if you did "out" me about those dirty posts of mine.

;-)

Okay, both the Silverline Sonatina III and Coincident Super Eclipse III are probably excellent. I say "probably" only because I can't recall for sure whether I've heard either model, but I do like both brands.

Coincident tends to have smoother impedance curves than Silverline. I have't seen impedance curves on either of these particular models, so that's a generalization. But the Silverlines usually have impedance curves that "zig" where the frequency response curves "zag" - so that if there is any rise in response at the impedance peaks due to amplifier/speaker impedance interaction with a low damping factor SET or OTL amp, the frequency response curve will be nudged in the direction of being more, rather than less, flat.

Silverline speakers tend to be on the warm and forgiving side. Coincidents tend to be more neutral, more likely to "out" a bad recording like Newbee with my dirty posts.

Now my personal prejudices lead me to place a higher priority on radiation pattern uniformity than most people do, and eyeballing these two the Sonatina III looks to me like it would have the edge in that area.

Somewhere I stumbled across a rule-of-thumb regarding high efficiency speakers and low power amps - to the effect that you want enough power to get a good 102 dB out of the speakers on peaks. So with 92-93 dB speakers, that's 8-10 watts. You must have done your homework, Blindjim.

The Altecs mentioned by Wwwrecords are also very good speakers. I'm more familiar with the Model 14 and Model 19 than the others, and in my opinion they're very competitive even today.

I have a 92 dB, 8 ohm floorstander that might interest you. Shoot me an e-mail if you'd like details.

Best of luck to you, Blindjim.

Duke

ps - Tvad, what did you end up with?

Tvad - I think I saw that one already, maybe not. I did see one wherein Duke was telling you stuff about matching the amps impedance or something... I've read so many things these past few weeks my eyes are rectangles... and my ears are worn out... and both PCs are in critical care units.

Duke. "sonatina" or Sonata?

I got the impression from what i've read the Di applito config gives a great dispersion, laterally, and vertically. If done right. but it's a tricky thing to do right. I'm assuming Mr. Bloom figured it out.

Like I said above, neither Alans' nor Israels' units are ones I'm strickly looking at.. just there's some press on each. More on Alans. Bill Cowan who did the review on the coincidents and I e'd some on that topic and given my tastes he said to ensure I stuck with the fabric dome tweets. Suits me. Though I know even fabrics can be tuff just like metal ones. sometimes.

RE: impedance matching of amps
What's what there? I mean how can anyone really know what numbers to look for on amps output impedance when you ain't sure if 'EVERYONE' measures those numbers the same? Some amp makers don't even post those numbers.

...and if they are posted, how do you choose one vs. another given speaker makers aren't all measuring the same either...??? Should I send everything to John Atkinson first?