Rockport Atria II or Magico A5

I asked this question on another forum and was immediately flamed...so I will put on my flame suit and ask it here...How much power is required to truly drive the new A5's? IOW, for those with SET's or low powered amps...say below 50 watts/ch, are they a non-starter?

I think the philosophy of finding the speaker first and then trying to acquire the appropriate amp could lead to an expensive mistake. Take for instance the pricey YG’s  ( which I think are excellent speakers), here we have a good example. One of my friends buys the YG’s, which takes up a chunk of his budget ( a BIG chunk); he now attempts to find an amp that works well with these YG’s, given his budget...lets just say that he is more than disappointed at the results!! So, what to do, increase the budget significantly ( not always possible), or live with the result of having an amp/speaker mismatch and not getting what he paid for with the speaker, or lastly--sell the YG’s and get a speaker that will fit his budget and be well driven by an amp that will will allow said speaker to give off its best. Again, the latter is probably an expensive endeavor. OTOH, if one is very familiar with the amp that one is going to be using, then matching up a ’synergistic’ speaker to this amp- will probably result in a more ’appropriate’ result.
Bob, I appreciate your thinking--and certainly the more efficient horn type designs are going to be easier to drive than the dynamic/cabinet speaker, BUT shouldn’t the consumer of the YG/Magico/Wilson/Rockport type design be very aware of the drive requirements of these type of speaker...and their limitations? I am sure you are one of the dealers who is going to take this into consideration before suggesting a speaker for purchase ( and educate your customer), but you would be surprised how many dealers out there have no clue about this issue!! ( or, do know, and don’t care anyhow, just so long as they can make the sale!!)

@rhapsody  Thanks for your information on the required amp to drive the A5. I think this would rule out a lot of great sounding gear. I also believe that very careful amp/speaker matching is going to be required with the A5's, given what you posted. Pity that so many manufacturer's of speakers still require one to acquire a more powerful tube amp or a brute of a ss amp in order to properly drive their design. IME, the more powerful the tube amp...the worse it sounds. YMMV.

Harbeth’s seem to like some power upstream. But, I suppose from Alan Shaw’s perspective 25 watts is enough to drive them. There certainly does seem like there are folks who like to listen at low levels in small rooms, and those that like concert hall levels in large rooms...each will have a different power requirement for their speakers. Used to be back in the day that the saying was: 15 watts will fill a church! While this is probably true, they forgot to say what the church will be filled with, LOL!

Looking at the remarks in the measurement section of the Stereophile review of the A5's by JA, I see that he mentions that the speaker needs to be connected to an amp that has no problem driving a 2 ohm load! I wonder how many amps this rules out??