We should reject hard-to-drive speakers more often

@ bigkidz +1

The theory doesn't always hold true.

I drive my W/P5.1 with Pioneer M-22 2×30 Watt A-Class, sounds amazing.

Speaker designers are driven by their education, experience, practice, and their personal sense of hearing, and they're sometimes also biased by what they or their marketing partners believe is consumer preference at a certain price point. How each speaker designer arrives at his product goal creates a whole variety of synergies, dependencies, and sound profiles. None of those resulting designs are wrong or hard to drive unless the home audio consumer market stays away from the product or the reviewers kill it.

Basically today, there is so much speaker choice in the marketplace at literally all price points that something perceptibly hard to drive is essentially a side issue because there are always identically excellent choices that are ideally suited to someone's existing amplification and room and physical cabinet size preferences. 

Suggesting that "hard to drive" is a no-no implies that development decisions by speaker designers should be limited. I think that's counter-productive. 

Buddy of mine a long time ago owned the TOTL ( at that time ) MBL. He was running them with the TOTL ( at that time ) Jadis gear. Vinyl and cd were used. The system sounded remarkable, as far as tone and spatial properties were concerned. One day, I brought over my Crown Reference ( whatever the " audiophile " home version was at the time, as I no longer own it ). Talk about dynamics and control. MBL / Crown were a match made in heaven. IMO, for what I wanted, that pairing was dabomb. Owning Lascalas at that time as well, my buddie’s system, with the Crown ( fully balanced, 2 20 amp dedicated circuits ), was a revelation. I played my vinyl of Santana’s Amigos album, and when Europa came on, I cried like a baby. Knowing the story behind the song, written by Carlos and Tom, it has always been a deep deep listen for me....but.........I never had that same reaction using my Lascalas, or anything else for that matter. I might say, it was the BEST listening experience I ever had, listening to a system. I give the credit to the MBLs. So, they needed power. I sure did not care. Phenomenal ! Another point. My analog rig did not equal his, and digital did not equal analog ( back then ).My best, always. MrD.

It was more specifically the Crown Studio Reference. It was awesome, back them. I have not heard a GAN amp in my system yet. I have tried other class D, none which did anything new I do not have with my current collection of amps. As I enjoy class A, and I enjoy mosfets, I am sure there will be one coming my way ( Ralph, are you listening ? ). I am behind Wolf in the line....MrD.