The electronic excitation spectra of unsubstituted linear silanes (n-Si(m)H(2m+2), m = 1-6), cyclopentasilane (c-Si5H10), and neopentasilane (neo-Si5H12) have been studied at the coupled-cluster approximate singles and doubles (CC2) level using Dunning's quadruple-zeta basis sets augmented with diffuse functions (aug-cc-pVQZ). Comparisons with measured ultraviolet spectra for Si2H6 and n-Si3H8 show that CC2 calculations using these basis sets yield excitation energies in good agreement with experiment. The calculated excitation thresholds for Si2H6 and n-Si3H8 of 7.61 and 6.68 eV are only 0.05 eV larger than the gas-phase values of 7.56 and 6.63 eV, respectively. For n-Si4H10, n-Si5H12, and neo-Si5H12, the calculated excitation thresholds of 6.51, 6.14, and 6.87 eV for the lowest dipole-allowed transitions are about 0.4 eV larger than the corresponding liquid-phase data of 6.05, 5.77, and 6.53 eV; the discrepancy can mainly be attributed to solvent effects. The obtained excitation thresholds for n-Si6H14 is 5.85 eV, whereas no experimental data are available for its optical gap. Calculations using the Karlsruhe triple-zeta valence basis sets augmented with single and double sets of polarization functions show that very large basis sets augmented with diffuse functions are needed for obtaining accurate excitation energies. The optical gaps for silanes obtained using the triple-zeta polarization basis sets were found to be 0.4 and 0.2 eV larger than those obtained using Dunning's quadruple-zeta basis sets. Excitation thresholds calculated at density functional theory levels using generalized gradient approximation are 0.7-1.0 eV smaller than the experimental values and by employing hybrid functionals they are 0.3-0.4 eV below the experimental thresholds. By adding the present basis-set correction and environmental effects to the previously calculated CC2 value for the excitation threshold of the Si29H36 silicon nanocluster, the extrapolated absorption threshold is 4.0 eV as compared to the recently reported experimental value of 3.7 eV.