Outliers can be cranks as much as the ones on the middle, but the outliers tend to stick out more. They can be wrong, but they can be right. Only time tells, if anyone is still paying attention by then. Normal is for Average. The middle of the herd is almost never paying attention, unless the signaling is gross and overwhelming. Human nature.
My particular point to make in all of this, panel speakers being excepted to some degree due to fundamentals of the technology, is that complex expression low impedance speakers are just bad design, IMO and IME. If it exists at all, it is generally there to make some specific kind of point about some aspect of audio quality, or it is just ignorance/illiteracy/incompetence dressed up in marketing - gaming you for some money, in an aura of self importance. And that was pretty well the peak of the pairing of high end solid state and high end speakers in the 90’s, in a nutshell....where most of the peak speakers of that time, the big monstrosity speakers... had impedance plots/curves that looked like a seizure victim trying to draw a earthquake seismic record out for you on a sheet of paper. A downright human embarrassment.
Where they had the gall to almost have this complex curve as a badge of honor, which is even worse, as it propagates the mess to some given next level, where the next domino of foolishness comes into existence and is knocked over: The super high current amplifiers of very dubious sound quality due to the designs being too robust, like tractors being used at attempts in subtle deft motional finesse.
Where we need a true current unlimited voltage source type of amplifier to drive these low impedance designs and that is very tricky at best. Bad combination to have to deal with. One that tends to exacerbate the differences in amplifiers due to the amplifier stressing playing out openly, due to said complex impedance load presented by the given speaker. This empathically does not say if the low impedance speaker is actually any good or not.
But, tellingly, Mr middle of the road hearing ability, who happens to have lots of money, gets to play dress-up, and play golden eared audiophile, as the differences in pairings... are easily heard. And that was, again, the peak audio world of the 90’s to mid 2000’s. It still happens but the money was more free then, and the time was right. So it spun out of control. Eg, Stereophile magazine was closing in on 300 pages in some issues in that time period, with advertising revenue to die for.. In my experience, marketing trumps innovation, every single time.
Getting to a better place in audio can be a complex path, but that’s the name of the game for the folks here, so have at it...
