Amp more important than speakers?


The common wisdom seems to be the opposite (at least from speaker makers), but I have tried the many speakers that have come thru my house on lesser amps or my midfi A/V receiver and something was always very wrong, and things often sounded worse than cheap speakers.
On the other hand, I have tried many humble speakers on my my really good amps (& source) and heard really fine results.

Recently I tried my Harbeth SHL5s (& previously my Aerial 10Ts, Piega P10s, and others) on the receiver or even my Onkyo A9555 (which is nice with my 1985 Ohm Walsh 4s, which I consider mid-fi), and the 3 high end speakers sounded boomy, bland, opaque.

But when I tried even really cheap speakers on my main setup (Edge NL12.1 w/tube preamp) I got very nice results
(old Celestion SL6s, little Jensen midfi speakers).

So I don't think it's a waste of resources to get great amplification and sources even for more humble speakers.
My Harbeth SHL5s *really* benefit from amps & sources that are far more expensive than the Harbeths.

Once I had Aerial 10Ts that sounded like new speakers with vocals to die for when I drove them with a Pass X350 to replace an Aragon 8008.

Oh well, thanks for reading my rambling thoughts here...

So I think I would avoid pairing good speakers with lesser amps,
rgs92

Showing 1 response by johnnyb53

You know what they say in baseball: Great pitching will always beat great hitting, and vice-versa!

The right $1K amp (e.g., Odyssey Khartago) could sound fabulous powering Wilson Sasha WPs, but then so could Cary tube monoblocks powering some Paradigm mini-monitors.

Every time I think I find a good rule of thumb, there's always something else to discredit it. Right now I'm enjoying the sounds of a 1981 Heathkit AA-1600 amp (bought today for $219) powering a $2500 pair of Mirages. HOWEVER, this Heathkit is not your ordinary $200 amp. It performs at least like a $2K power amp, maybe more. Definitely a notch or more above a new Adcom.