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Old 04-30-2021, 03:49 PM
mulveling mulveling is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2013
Location: Atlanta, GA
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Originally Posted by tano.longo View Post
From what I understand you got the S.E. exactly like mine.
What differences did you find between Caterbury SE and Ken SE.
You advise me to switch speakers from Ken to Canterbury. Do you find that the Canterburys are difficult to manage and demanding when it comes to amplifiers?
With the Kensington SE, I was heavily choosing warmer balanced upstream gear & tubes (e.g. RCA, Mullards). This was to even out the balance of its treble vs. bass in my room. With the Canterbury SE it was almost the opposite; I went towards more neutral, highly detailed, even slightly bright gear (e.g. Mazda silver plates). When you do get it right with Canterbury, it will reward you with a more powerful, lifelike sound and image size than the Kensington can offer. BUT I did seem to spend more time chasing "just right" system balance.

I now wish I'd experimented more with amps when I had the Canterbury SE. All I ever ran on those was Rogue Apollo high power tube amps. It sounded great - they're good amps but now I find better options. And it's inevitably clear now on the GR, that different amps can result in very different presentations for the Canterbury! The 50 Watt tube amp should probably be very very lush on Canterbury SE. It might sound great, but will be very much warmer than neutral. That's why McIntosh option would be intriguing to me; that might be a great neutral-ish amp to pair. The GR are more detailed/neutral than the SE model and even here on GR I have recently found myself preferring a less warm / more detailed SS amp!

I don't think the Canterbury are necessary demanding of an amp with regards to power, it's just that amp pairings to them are very sensitive towards system balance/matching and personal preferences.

Last edited by mulveling; 04-30-2021 at 03:53 PM.
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