We should reject hard-to-drive speakers more often

I’m pretty sure speaker designers go for sound quality first and end up with hard to drive speakers. I was a long term fan and owned electrostatic and ribbon speakers (Acoustat, Apogee)… I was happy with the journey… and owned several enormous heavy and expensive amps.

If one doesn’t like hard to drive speakers, it’s pretty easy not to buy them.

IMO, electrostatic speakers are worth it.  Very worth it.  Like, never imagined recorded music could sound like this, worth it.  Started with Quad63s and now running upgraded Sound Lab M1s. Never going back. But I have had to upgrade my amps. Significantly. Hard to drive.
 

Good news is that class D amps are improving quickly. I’m auditioning a D-Sonic M3a-1200s, based on the Pascal LPro2. Jury still out. But power to price point ratio is so low I had to try it. 

+1 @bdp24. It’s all about the bass. The bass! Not the treble.

Driving speakers effectively that is.

good thing there are so many great speakers out there...no issue to me what other people like, or designers choose to design...if a speaker is very demanding but the buyer is good with that, so be it...

@fikki:  You are trying to drive 3.6:Maggie’s with 65 wpc.  That is never going to work in my experience.  I started with an AR150 amp and it was under powered.  Luckily I found a great pair of McIntosh MC501s (16 years ago).  The sound went from great to amazing.  I use a tube pre amp as I find that is my sweet spot.

IMHO, listen to speakers and find what pleases your ear.  Do not differentiate based upon anything other than how they sound to You.  Then see what is the best way to drive them.  If the cost is beyond your means, then move to the next candidate.  Building a system is a complex algorithm, but keeping an open mind regarding how to get where you want to go is imperative.

Obviously, Maggie’s work for me and the price is having a substantial amp and I accept that.  Others may prefer a different amp and that is cool, but most all 3 series Maggie owners use a beefy amp.

I think you should FIRST try very hard to find efficient speakers you really want, without even listening to inefficent speakers. Don’t even look sideways at them.

Next: listen to whatever appeals to you, even if low efficiency, KNOWING, power needs will go up accordingly.

So, find a low efficiency speaker you truly want? The best efficent ones you found would be a true compromise?

Forget compromise if you can afford it.

.............

IF the difference is slight, then think long: efficient = less power needed = same benefits as listed below, but now also easier to try tubes= less cost; less heat; smaller; easier placement .... add all those benefits to the speakers, combined a great sounding choice? If tubes, less tubes, less replacement/rolling cost ....

@fikki: The MG3.6 can easily be bi-amped (unlike the series-crossover .7 series Maggies, the .6’s have parallel crossovers). Use a brute amp on the bass drivers, your D-70 on the midrange/tweeters. In almost all loudspeakers, the majority of the power goes to the woofers. Take the bass out of your amp (with a high-pass filter), and you will then have far more power for the mids and highs.

Hard to drive speaker requires big macho amplifier.

Hard to process software programs require more powerful processors.

More to buy, more to sell, more ka-ching.

As the Byrds (almost) sang,

To everything, churn, churn, churn.

There is a profit, churn, churn, churn.

This is a bit ridiculous and I assume clic bait. Get what you like and enjoy the music. It does not have to be complicated. Hard to drive speakers require more power, more current. There are high quality amps that can do this???

What does it matter how efficient a speaker is as long as it sounds good? 

I just want a loudspeaker that creates resonances within my abdominal cavity and may crack a window if not careful.. 

But I cannot afford most of those that cost what amounts to a decent down payment on a piece of property or a house.

There are just those days, and just those tracks, where I want to FEEL the music much more than I care about hearing.. fine detail that is.  ;-)

preamp active  crossover to powered subs and biamp loudspeakers, with some eq room and mood correction.. now to just not blow up the speakers I do have..

A good way to make any given loudspeaker an easier load is to remove the low frequencies from both it and the power amp driving them. Yes, a separate woofer/subwoofer for 80 or 100Hz down. Most of the power demands of many loudspeakers is used to reproduce low frequencies. Remove them from the loudspeaker and power amp and both will be happier, and sound better.  

I have never liked an efficient loudspeaker/set amp combo.

What is an efficient loudspeaker anyway? 100+db? 95+db? I’m not sure if I ever have had a speaker > 90db, but I have had some 85db stand mount speakers driven by 1000 watt monos that sounded fantastic, most of my speaker/amp combos were around 88db driven by 250-350 watt monoblocks

HTD speakers matter! Come on it’s 2023. I thought that we were supposed to get over this back in the 60s when we had all those speaker riots. 

While I don’t disagree but people want small speakers and deep bass so that in turn makes them hard to drive. They often wire multiple bass drivers in parallel  which drops the impedance too  

I have owned 86db speakers and 91db speakers and don’t notice much difference but use a pretty powerful amp at 450 watts a channel. I am in the camp of but the biggest speaker you can afford and bigger is always better lol. 

MBL is an awesome speaker.  One of the most serious speakers in the world.  MBL can be brutally revealing and difficult to drive.  Bring your A game or keep looking.  I've heard Convergent amps drive the heck out of them, but a lot of really good amps will struggle at some point to keep their composure.   

Interesting subject. I know of a few a'phile friends who bought speakers without first contemplating what amp will work with them. These folk either no longer own the speaker, or they have bought high powered ( and usually low SQ) ss amps to drive their speakers. Then we have the guy who bought a SET amp with 8 watts/ch hoping to drive his Wilson Alexia's. Disappointment might as well have been his name!

Problem is that unless one is listening to basically horn based speakers, then the requirement for upstream power is going to be factor. But, I do agree with you, the needs of a speaker like the YG's, or the aforementioned Apogee's, should be a turn-off to most hobbyists.

Great examples of each but I will say I’ve never really liked any super efficient speakers. I heard some Cornwall 4 when I was buying a sub for a guy and they sounded great for the little bit I heard them but playing music I don’t listen to at not very loud volumes. LOVING my new B&W 801 Matrix. The voicing is just so freaking good for me. Again pigs to drive. 

Erik: Very much agree about Infinities. I had a pair of the RS-1b’s, which so many people think were/are great. Anyone thinking about getting a pair: be prepared to have them reconditioned. Many of the EMIT and EMIM drivers are now unusable, having been manufactured to pretty low standards. Bruce Thigpen’s Eminent Technology LFT drivers made at the same time as the EMIT and EMIM drivers remain in perfect working condition (I have LFT-4’s made back then). And as you say, the crossovers are junk. But that’s true of the crossovers in most loudspeakers! Maggie owners: pull off the plate on the back of your speakers and look at what the signal is passing through!!

When I read about the Apogees I became instantly uninterested; who wants to have to listen to a Krell amplifier? ;-)

You need an amp and speakers to make sound.   As long as the amp is up to the task you are good to go.   Granted many may not realize that their amp is not up to the task. 

Interesting...I'm considering MBL 101E speakers, but I'm hesitant due to them being hard to try.

It’s not a problem practically in most cases anymore with modern efficient Class D amps. Having choices is a good thing. Most people want their hifis as a whole smaller and less obtrusive these days (if they even want them still at all). Smaller harder to drive speakers with practical more efficient amps needed to drive them solves that problem.  To each their own. 

I guess I’m unhappy with speakers being hard to drive... just because they are hard to drive. 😁

And less happy about anyone idolizing that as a feature.

OK, thinking about this this is less about the gear and more about the awe created by hard to drive speakers.  Like we somehow want to make the speakers happy because they are so demanding.  Maybe we should get speakers that are happy with any amplifier instead??

Hey @Bdp24

Well, not saying I don’t l9ike them, ribbon speakers have a reason why they are so low, and they have a pay-off that’s worth it.

Interesting that you bring up the Infinity speakers. Not sure about the IRS, but there were lesser models with crossover designs we’d now consider "naive" at best. You can buy crossover upgrades which maintain the tonal balance while raising up the minimum impedance.

I analyzed a pair of Focal 918 speakers and really had a tough time believing the crossover design was NOT deliberately meant to make it hard to drive. Some caps and resistors in the woofer section dropped the impedance to unnecessarily low values below 100 Hz which could easily have been avoided.

In the case of the Infinity speakers I’m thinking of, they were designed in an era when we lacked the simulation tools we have now, it could have been they got to the right sound and then didn’t want to also optimize to avoid the low impedance.

Erik, guess you don't like Maggies, Apogees, Infinity IRS, or Wilson WAMM?---Eric.