These speakers sound ok in general, certainly not in the high end league but the biggest problem I have at this point is not being able to turn the volume dial past 3 on my preamp. That's basically as loud as I would listen and though I don't have a decibal meter it's pretty darn loud for normal rock. I know I'm losing the efficiency of my amp, not getting the most out of it. I tried my little homemade passive preamp thinking the gain of the preamp was just too much but that was even worse, and it didn't sound nearly as good as with the Canary pre in place.

So my question is in regards to sensitivity, Should I go with a less efficient speaker in general, I believe the Klipch sensitivity is in the 98 db range. I want the bass extension and slam and these speakers are good at that, but I haven't had anything else in my system in several years and I've had the 300b amps about 6 months.

I stayed away from SET thinking they wouldn't have enough power, my old Dynaco MK III's had 35 to 60 watts per channel and I could crank the volume control with those. Obviously the 300b's are a different beast all together but I assumed 24w a channel would be a great fit.

Brian

To find the answer, post the output in volts of your source (CD player?), the output of your pre-amp in decibels and the input sensitivity of your amp.

I mostly listen to LP and don't have a CD player at this time. My phono pre is a Hagerman Cornet and I'm running a Dynavector DV 20x HO cart. I have a Cornet 2 kit here that I haven't had a chance to build yet but that will have a step-up for low output carts.

I could always sell the Amp and go SET but that really isn't something I'd like to do at this point. The low power of SET would certainly limit my choices as far as speakers go and though I'm not one to crank the volume all the time I do like having that headroom, now I just seem to have way too much of it.

I've been to the Pi site in the past and obviously price is an advantage to these speakers/kits. I would go with the Pi 4 or 3 I'm thinking. Again I mostly listen to 60's, 70's and 80's rock, Stones, Who, Doobies, Beatles... I want the slam and kick but also just great sound overall. I also listen to jazz and some classical.

Brian

I am going to check with Canary and see if there is anything I can do to drop the gain. I don't know anyone around here that I would be able to listen to there setup, I live way out in the sticks outside Chicago.

Brian

Brian

There are also a ton of posts on the Bottlehead forum on this very subject because of the high output of the original Foreplay pre-amp. Paul Joppa has written extensively about using resistors 'tween pre-amp and amp to attenuate the source output. Check it out.