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?
;-)
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?