Are all amps being built wrong?

It would be very interesting to learn about the intricacies of the Bakoon amplifiers.They are reputed to be current drive and have high output impedance and yet seem to be able to drive many mainstream speakers without problems although they definitely sound best with genuine 8 ohm speakers rather than 4 ohm.It is surprising what speakers even the base model 15 watt will drive and they sound superb.I have owned every type of amplifier other than an OTL and the Bakoon is by far the best sounding.There is just a fundamental rightness to the sound and that is hard to unhear.
It would be interesting to know exactly how the patented SATRI circuit  works but if that information is available it is probably in Japanese.

re: Vandersteen's being hard to drive.
I had 2Cs and then 2Cis and 2Ces.  They were the easiest, least fussy speakers to drive i ever owned.  Drive them with a 20 W NAD 3020 that could NOT drive Spica TC or SC-50s.  Drove them with a pair of tiny Lux tube amps.  They are very resistive, basically 8 ohms, and modest sensitivity (87 dB???).


Look at the impedance curves for heaven's sake.  Do they like good amps? Sure.  Do they like highly capable, high current amps? Sure, i guess. Do they need them to make music? Nope.

... why are amplifiers not built as a high impedance current source?

Mainly because speakers are designed to be driven by a low impedance voltage source. When amps and speakers are co-designed though there exists the possibility to use current drive - I believe Bruno Putzeys has done this on his actives (Kiis) over at least part of the frequency band.

Mainly because speakers are designed to be driven by a low impedance voltage source.

Aside from what i already wrote, here's also the practical issue.  A low impedance, hgih current amp will drive anything.  Others might (might) sing with speaker A and suck with speaker B. You know, like lots of high end :-)
I'm always fascinated by this. I cam plug my amp into about anything and it will work very well and sound very good. Will it produce some synergistic, euphonic magic effect? Nope.

Aside from what i already wrote, here's also the practical issue. A low impedance, hgih current amp will drive anything.

This isn't quite correct, just so you know. Try putting your amp on a Sound Lab ESL sometime. That speaker is 32 Ohms in the bass and maybe about 2 Ohms at 20KHz (depending on the position of the Brilliance control). Most voltage source amps tend to sound too bright on this speaker; they struggle to make power at bass frequencies. Its MO isn't based on the Voltage Paradigm. Anytime you mix the two paradigms (Voltage and Power) you are at risk of a tonal anomaly.


SETs and other zero feedback tube amps are not meant to be used with difficult speakers (and I argue that no amp should be used with such speakers since the last thing you want to do is make any amp work hard for a living- it will make more distortion which is audible). So no amp can really work with all speakers.