Will Creek 5350 SE drive Magnepan 1.6QR?

For about $800 you can get a CarverPro ZR1600 (digital) amp that puts out 600 watts/channel into 4 ohms, and is designed to work with 2 ohm loads. My MG 1.6 sound great with them, and others have had the same experience. I am sure the Spectron would also sound great but the price difference is absurd.

OK. I admit that my MG1.6 (set of three) rolls off at about 40 Hz (measured in my room). To play organ music with trouser-leg-flapping authority, I have an elaborate subwoofer system.

However, for most music, when driven with a powerful amp like the CarverPro ZR1600, the MG1.6 has subjectively excellent bass response, so that the 40 Hz rolloff would be hard to believe if I had not measured it myself. I think that the reason is the extreme smoothness of the bass response, and lack of room resonances: the result I think of the large area diaphragm sound source

When distortion gets below about 1/2 percent, its significance is small compared with other amp specs. The kind of distortion matters too. IM is the worst, and is usually the one quoted. Harmonic distortion can be indistinguishable from the harmonic overtones that musical instruments produce. Any THD spec better than 0.1% is just playing a numbers game.

All equipment specs are insignificant compared with the characteristics of microphines used to make the recording. I have a test recording where Julian Hersch reads one of his columns using several dozen different microphones, all of them well-regarded models. The differences are astonishing. And it is really hard to say which model is "best".

With a distortion spec of 0.005%, it can only be a Bose.