I've had the Crescendo 2's for about 8 months and love them. My Ayre V-5xe amp was a real mismatch - glare, over detailed harmonies and light bass. I was scratching my head on where to look first, cables or amp (It turned out to be both). I then home auditioned a Pass Labs XA25 (as in 25 wpc) and never looked back. It's a terrific amp with this speaker. Stereophile recently reviewed the XA25 and bench measurements show clipping occurs at 80 wpc @ 8 Ohms and 130 wpc @ 4 Ohms. ! Their definition of clipping is when THD + noise equals 1% distortion.
Changing out the tonearm cable was the icing on the cake.
Changing out the tonearm cable was the icing on the cake.