4-ohm setting with 8 ohm speakers


I have the Nightingale CTR.2 open baffle speakers. The manufacturer claims that "the Concentus CTR-02's speakers and crossover are designed and assembled on the acoustic screen following a scheme meant to guarantee that the impedance stays linear as the frequency changes."

However, with every amplifier used with these speakers, a 4-ohm setting sounds more natural and relaxed. Now I am listening them with the Hans Labs KT-88 power amplifier. With the 8-ohm setting, the sound is more tight, bland and stringent, it sounds more like a mid-level SS amplifier. I am wondering how this can be explained from technical point of view?
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Showing 1 response by roscoeiii

And to complicate matters a little bit with what will likely be a footnote to the discussion, it should be mentioned that output transformerless (OTL) amps actually increase their output power into higher impedance speakers. Atma-sphere amps are the most well-known OTL amps although there are also OTLs from Tenor, Transcendent (incl kits) and others.

This makes Speltz autoformers particularly helpful with these OTL amps, although as the Speltz site testimony makes clear the autoformers can improve sounds with other amps as well.