As you may find out, these speakers sound their best when great attention is paid to set up. They will sound good out of the gate, but fine tuning will reap high rewards.
Keep listening and keep me posted on what you hear.
The McCormacks, while fine amps, will be extreme overkill with Cornscalas. Keep in mind, you are going from a 4 ohm, 86 db sensitive speaker to one that is an 8 ohm load with 100 db sensitivity. I think even the Mid Monos are more than I need. That said, I think they are a better match tonally for the Cornscalas than the VTL was, as well as in power output.
So in the end, tubes with horns get my vote. Maybe something like a Pass Labs First Watt amp would work, but tubes would be my first choice.
Do you plan to build your own Cornscalas? Keep me posted on what you do.
The CS is more dynamic and play bigger as you might well expect. They also go toe to toe with the GV in imaging and high frequency extension. The GV is a great speaker and is more forgiving of less than stellar recordings. But horns just sound more "real".
It's not the sound for everyone, but I'm digging it.
"I see your recent post on the "Adagios vs Veenas" that you now went toward the high efficiency direction. I am there. Dan's system would keep me very happy:)"
Thanks for the kind words islandmandan. As for the Sonic Euphoria, I have had several preamps in here that were 4-5 times the cost and they didn't hang around long.
Your system too is very clean and elegant looking, bet it sounds great.
When I first got the speakers I thought they might not play quite as loudly as I would like. At the time they had roughly 20-30 hours on them. Now after six weeks I have completely changed my mind. They now play as loudly as I could want, and sound even better than before. I could not be happier with my purchase.
I like them very much. They are even more coherent than the C3s, which is a feat. Tonally, they are neutral, but rich when the recording calls for it. Hard to beat if you don't want to play them insanely loud, which they won't do.
Someone once said they look like "ET sitting on a trash can". I can see that. However, they look much better in person. And the way they sound, I can't fault em' very much for being ugly....
Well in honesty, I didn't go amp shopping. But one of the Canary amps blew an output transfomer. I ended up selling the other one back to them, long story. I bought the VTL on a whim. But honest to God it sounds better and I'm damn glad I did.