Cary CAD 300sei.........underated?
 

I think my 300sei is probably the single most impressive audio component I have ever heard............

I've never heard anything more transparent, and I've heard a lot.

I think, for the dollar, it's a bargain..................

Believe that is true for all of Cary's tube integrated amps. Love my SLI-80.

sitting here listening to Emilie-Claire Barlow through a Sli80 into Marten Coltrane 3's..... simply awesome

i think most Cary gear is underrated ...... Maybe its not dear enough?

You may be right about the price. There is an SLI-80 that was recently updated to F1 for $2K on one of the listing sites. That's cheap.

I had one dealer tell me, "Oh yeah, there's better stuff out there, for sure, are you ready to mortgage your house?" LOL

He said there's nothing even near it for the money......

Definitely underrated. I recently purchased a CAD300SEI for my home office setup, along with Omega Compact Alnico monitors. It sounded so great in that setup that I had some of my audio buddies over to hear it. For that I hauled it down to where my main setup is, and more for fun than anything else connected my main speakers to the Cary integrated. Amazingly, the Cary handled these speakers beautifully. My main system's speakers are Wilson Audio Sabrinas, rated at 87 db sensitivity and, more critically, a nominal 4 Ohm load dipping to 2.53 Ohms at 139 Hz!

After I do some tube rolling (just got some NOS Sylvania 1942 JAN VT-231 tubes for the drivers), I'm seriously thinking of moving the Cary to my main setup and selling my ARC Ref 6 Preamp and D'Agostino Classic Stereo amp! Vocals through the Cary and the Sabrinas were just magical! And the bass was surprisingly tight and musical as well. But I just got a response from Cary Audio that for about $250 they can add subwoofer left and right channel outputs to the CAD300SEI so that I can continue using my JL Fathom subwoofer.

I compared my former F1 upgraded SLI-80 to a more current upgraded version I had upgraded locally. As it turned out once broken in, there was yet another level of amazing sound to achieve with newer and higher quality Mundorf caps, better hexfreds, and resistors. I had a local outfit do the upgrade for me using Cary's more recent recommendations. As a result, Cary ended up buying back my SLI-80 commenting how good it sounded, and I applied the funds to a new SLP-98 preamp with similar upgrades. Then, went back and upgraded other Cary amps with the same upgrades. New/upgraded vs. the vanilla stock product is just not even a consideration for me now. One of the few times a higher end upgrade really paid off...

Deckard,
IMO, if it's an older unit, def worth getting the CAD300SEI upgraded (while its there) with the newer and more recommended caps and such if you send it in for subwoofer outputs to be added.

Hi,
I m the happy owner of sabrina paired with devialet200.
Are those amp you are referring to
How is the dynamic, clarity, details,transparency ?
Thks

Thanks. It's a newer unit. Purchased from Upscale Audio a few months ago after it had been demo'd at one of the audio shows.

The Cary is in my system for a week or so in order to do a longer evaluation. If I decide to proceed with replacing my preamp and amp with it, I decided to send it in for all the available upgrades from Cary in addition to the subwoofer outputs.

Both the Audio Research Ref 6 preamp and the D'Agostino Classic Stereo amp are fantastic.

I directly compared the Ref 6 to the new LS28 and there was no contest between the two:
https://www.stereophile.com/content/...e-preamplifier

And if you've never heard a D'Agostino amp driving Wilson speakers, you owe it to yourself to seek it out.

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/arti...reo-amplifier/

The Cary is definitely more musical in the midrange, and seems to have sufficient oomph to drive the Sabrina's to a good level. What I still need to evaluate is how it compares to the current setup for bass, upper frequencies, and imaging.

I previously had the Classe Sigma AMP5 driving the Sabrina's, and while that's a very good amp, I'm still not fond of class D amps.