Tube-friendly speakers

I agree that Merlins are very tube friendly, using them with 845 triode amp, sounds better than various push pulls I've tried. Still, I maintain the Alons/Nolas soundstage very similarly to planars, if this is important to you Alons/Nolas could be your answer.

Thanks for the recommendations, Gentleman :)

I am not at all familiar with some of these brands, but now I have a range of speakers to look into.

Atmasphere: I see that you listed the Vandersteen as being a possible candidate. I've heard mention of the way that they soundstage (planar-like?). Would the 2C (7 ohm / 86db) be a good mate?

How about the Dali's?

I have the 3.6, did have the MMG for a short time, and the 3.6 is soooooo much better from top to bottom. I used the CJ MV55 for the4 3.6 and it worked well, just don't expect it to play very loud. I used the RM9MKII by Music Reference for 125wpc of tube power and this was a thicker, rich sound. The Quicksilver v4 at 120wpc drove them very loud and a little more neutral. Next the Bryston 4BST, rated at 250wpc, but putting 400wpc into the 4 ohm load and this was just too thin. Next the 500wpc or so much-raved-about Spectron digital amp. Too thin, sounds like transistors, a bad thing. I returned to my favorite, the modified Quicksilver Silver Mono at 90wpc....just destroyed everything else by a large margin in my room, with my speakers. The audilophile group listening voted unanimously for the Quickies. They were disappointed with the Bryston and Spectron. I have heard the Bryston sound great with the Aerial 10T's, so I know the amp is good, not here though. The Spectron is said to be great with other speakers. Try before you buy....Tubes amps are very high voltage devices, not high wattage typically. SS is lower voltage per watts produced. I always say that if your amp doesn't have lethal voltage, music is likely not going to emerge as you like....well as I like. Biased I am, and I have owned many SS pieces. Incidentally, the Quickies are also great with Vandersteen speakers, but terrible with Legacy Whisper....dull, lifeless.....got to have the magical match. jallen

You might also want to put Gallo Ref3's on your list. I drove them fine with 50 tube watts, and they have a planar-type sound.

Roblanger, all the Vandersteen 2 varients are tube-friendly. I know the Dali Mega-line is but I am not familiar with their smaller models.

Tvad, in the case of the Merlin, the impedance swing is well within the capabilities of almost any tube amplifier, even our S-30, which can be quite sensitive to lower impedances. I don't consider 6-8 ohms to be challenging for our amplifiers at all- that sounds easy to me.

As far as 'high enough'... this has to do with the maximum power transfer of the tube amp in question, which is usually a function of the output transformer and the load of the speaker. For example if you load the 8 ohm taps of a tube amp with a 4 ohm load, the load presented to the power tubes by the transformer will be significantly less than the intended design- the amp will make less power. In some cases it could cut it in half. A speaker designer can take advantage of this phenomena in crossover design. I think a classic example is the old Wilson Watt.

The Watt had a reputation for being detailed but bright in the old days. This was because of a tweeter resonance. Wilson had a substantial trap that measured about 2 ohms at the resonant frequency of the tweeter. When you put a transistor amp on that, the amp simply made more power to deal with the 2 ohm load. So this did exactly the opposite of the intention of the design. But when you put a tube amp on that same load, the tube amp made no power, thus preventing the resonance from being a problem. IOW, the reputation of the speaker came from transistor amplifier users, not tube amp users.

Once the inpedance of the load is high enough, the amplifier will exhibit a sort of 'constant power' phenomena- it will be a slowly decreasing amount of power as the load is increased; the power curve looks a lot like an airfoil curve in profile. With OTLs the effect is increased; once above the maximum power transfer point the load can be tripled without significant power loss. All that is required of the speaker designer is to understand that this phenomena occurs, thus my paradigm conversation:

http://www.atma-sphere.com/papers/paradigm_paper2.html