Wilson Sofia 2 vs marten dajango L

They might have 2ohms taps but can they deliver big current??

An amp that "almost" doubles it’s wattage for each halving of impedance, is what’s needed to get the "very best" out of the bass of these hard to drive speakers. Sure amps that can’t do this sort of current will work, but you’ll never hear the bass for what it can really do.
EG: This is the perfect non-existant amp that can do perfect current delivery, in practice they can never excatly double.
100w into 8ohms
200w " " 4ohms
400w " " 2ohms
800w " " 1ohm
Cheers George

The big'ish flagship ones I looked at have very hard to drive low bass similar to the Martins.
Just go into Stereophile and look at the impedance v phase graphs of all the speakers they have reviewed. And look for something like the 4 I posted 2 posts back. 

Cheers George 

shadorne

Easy. Stay well away from Marten ceramic drivers (accuton I believe). Get the Wilson. The sound of the Wilson Sophia 2 is extremely realistic - especially in the all important mid range.

Ceramic or rigid drivers suffer from the "ring like a bell" issue - lots of unrelated harmonics. Think about it - a drum set has cymbals - thin round rigid discs of hard metal - they sound great and have a long sustain with a multitude of vibrations after the initial hit - do you really think a cymbal would make a great speaker driver????

You've got the physics of that all wrong, what they're trying to do is get a pure pistonic  behaviour without any cone flex, this is the ideal for pushing air without any "ring like a bell issue" that you get from cones flexing. 

Cheers George 

Tyler Acoustic Linbrook

Can’t find anything in the way of impedance vs -phase angle graphs on these, so I can’t even comment.

Cheers George

George what speakers do match the phase of McIntosh ?

Here are just some in the same’ish price range class that the OP mentioned, from Stereophile impedance v -phase angle graphs that transformer coupled amps like push/pull tubes and McIntosh should have an easy time with.
There are many many more, it’s all about doing your homework, understanding what amps are capable of doing by their measurements/topology, by reading about them and understanding graph of speaker measurements.

http://www.stereophile.com/images/416Van7fig1.jpg
http://www.stereophile.com/images/714R208fig1.jpg
http://www.stereophile.com/images/713YGS13fig01.jpg
http://www.stereophile.com/images/615KEF2fig01.jpg

Cheers George

I am staying with all McIntosh ...what speakers do you feel are a good match with the MC501s ....any suggestions ?

You should treat them as you would a good tube amp, as the output transformers are the limiting factor to how nastier load they can handle.

I would say look for speakers that don’t dip below 4ohms and have less than -30 phase angle with that 4ohm frequency.

As in the Martins case above at 65hz a combination of 5ohms with -45 degree phase angle could represent an EPDR load to the amp of around 2ohms. And 65hz is the power area needed for bass.

EPDR= equivalent peak dissipation resistance
Wilson Alexia’s have an EPDR at 65hz of .9ohm!!!!!!!! Notice the simiarlity with the Danjo graph at 65hz?
http://www.stereophile.com/images/1213Walexfig01.jpg

Cheers George

In my opinion the zero’s are an interim band-aid fix for something that can’t drive it properly without them.
I’ve played with them and found that with an amp that IS very capable of doing the job properly, and then inserting them even though they weren’t needed it was a definate step backwards.
Your far better off getting the right amp to start with.

Cheers George

http://www.stereophile.com/images/912marten.fig1.jpg

http://www.stereophile.com/images/211Wilfig01.jpg

They are both very hard to drive in the bass with impedance and -phase angle for a transformer coupled amp as the MC500, it will work but you may not get what they’re "really" capable of in this area.

Cheers George