Amp Designs That Are Able To Drive 4/2 Ohms Load

One thing that came out at the recent CES is that there really is no longer any argument for low impedance speakers anyway. It turns out that transistor amplifiers, while easily able to *drive* a low impedance speaker like 4 or 2 ohms, actually sound their *best* driving 16 ohms.

Steve McCormick, as one example, makes transistor amps that have no problem at all driving 4 ohms and less, but he discovered that the amp *sounds better* when using a set of ZEROs to drive 4 ohms, rather than directly, much the same way MacIntosh did years ago (the ZERO was loading the amp at 16 ohms). By better: smoother, more detailed, more authority, and something easily heard.

So Eldartford and Bob are right- there are many amp manufacturers that don't care if their amp 'plays' a 2 ohm load- more likely is what they are really interested in is how the amp plays 8 ohms.

Ryder, take a look at
http://www.atma-sphere.com/papers/paradigm_paper2.html

In a nutshell, 'Doubling power' as the impedance is cut in half says nothing about how the amp sounds, in fact there is nothing in the rules of human hearing to suggest that this is helpful.

The result is, there are amplifiers that don't/can't double power as impedance is halved that nevertheless sound better than many amps that can double power, because the former are designed to the rules of human hearing.