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How do you drive 12 Ohm speakers?

Lately I took home a pair of great looking and very impressive sounding Crystalvox (small russian brand) speakers. The speakers are big, use 3 8 inch woofers and have incredibly smooth highs. The problem is that they are rated 12 Ohm nominal and 8 Ohm minimal. With McIntosh the bass is rather loose. I put on my Mac 6900 on 8 Ohm and while I like the sound overall I can't help but wonder - what kind of amps do people usually use with 12 Ohm speakers?
antonkk

Showing 4 responses by atmasphere

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,640 posts
 
This sounds like a very easy speaker to drive! The specs indicate that it favors tubes. You do need some power, as the efficiency is upper 80s/lower 90s.

-Ralph
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,640 posts
 
Bob_reynolds, its pretty easy when you've been doing for a living. If you look at the speaker, it is 12 ohms in the woofers and 8 ohms in the mids and highs. I had to surf their website a bit to figure out what speaker it is and it did not hurt to have someone on staff that knows a little Russian.

Anyway, an impedance curve like that is easy for tubes in general.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,640 posts
 
Agreed! BTW this points to our discussion on the Doubling Down thread...
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,640 posts
 
Macrojack, that resistor likely would be in series with the output of a low impedance amp, not in parallel.

Martykl makes a good point too :)
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