We should reject hard-to-drive speakers more often

+1 @bdp24. It’s all about the bass. The bass! Not the treble.

Driving speakers effectively that is.

IMO, electrostatic speakers are worth it.  Very worth it.  Like, never imagined recorded music could sound like this, worth it.  Started with Quad63s and now running upgraded Sound Lab M1s. Never going back. But I have had to upgrade my amps. Significantly. Hard to drive.
 

Good news is that class D amps are improving quickly. I’m auditioning a D-Sonic M3a-1200s, based on the Pascal LPro2. Jury still out. But power to price point ratio is so low I had to try it. 

I’m pretty sure speaker designers go for sound quality first and end up with hard to drive speakers. I was a long term fan and owned electrostatic and ribbon speakers (Acoustat, Apogee)… I was happy with the journey… and owned several enormous heavy and expensive amps.

If one doesn’t like hard to drive speakers, it’s pretty easy not to buy them.

Over the last 40 or so years I have found that I gravitate towards low efficiency speakers with silk tweeters. Those sound best to me. Yes, it is sometimes a pain to get a good match for these as they require gobs of current, but at the same time that is where the ‘magic’ lies to my ears.

I also realize that this was most likely click-bait, but a fun topic none-the-less.

It is good that we are now in a time when we have almost limitless choices in this hobby. The downside is that there are relatively few places any longer to go to hear these choices.

Enjoy the music everyone, and have a good weekend.

Since I got the Hegel H390, I haven’t found a speaker it can’t drive, but I really can’t speak for the thousands of speakers I haven’t tried yet.