Anyone With A Class 'D' Amp Play A 4 or 2 Ohm Speaker?

How about a subwoofer amplifier for the Low Pass and your favorite amplifier for High Pass in biamp configuration?

When a good solid state amp with good current ability, drives a wild impedance curve, like many esl’s have, and speakers like Wilsons have, it will stay close to flat across the frequency range, giving least colouration.

Where a many a tube amp and some mosfets will start to behave like a tone control giving a far from flat frequency response, giving more colouration to the sound.

This is why with Martin Logan ESL as I have, which go down to 1ohm in the high frequencies can sound recessed in the highs with tubes, but with good solid state with good current drive the high are better defined not recessed and extended. Same applies to the bass if low in impedance.

This is proved many times by Stereophile’s amplifier tests into simulated speaker load conditions.

Cheers George

When a good solid state amp with good current ability, drives a wild impedance curve, like many esl’s have, and speakers like Wilsons have, it will stay close to flat across the frequency range, giving least colouration.

Because of the inclusion of ESLs in this statement, it is false. The coloration of solid state and ESLs is brightness, and often accompanied by a lack of bass energy although the extension is usually there.

Because of this fact, for best performance the match of amp to speaker is something you have to be careful about with ESLs.

This is proved many times by Stereophile’s amplifier tests into simulated speaker load conditions.

There is an inference here that a simulated load pertains to an ESL; it does not. It pertains to a box speaker; Stereophile is not claiming that the response on a simulated load translates to anything regarding an ESL. The simulated load does not represent an ESL panel in open air. Its an entirely different technology! As I pointed out earlier, in a **box** speaker the impedance curve is also a map of its efficiency at any given frequency.

This is not true of ESLs which do not have a resonance of a driver in a box.

Now in the case of Martin Logan, they are trying to capture the largest market possible for their speakers. To this end they have set the bass impedance of their speakers at 4 ohms, which means they are in the neighborhood of 0.5 ohms at 20KHz. Naturally no tube amp can play that properly, neither can most solid state amps. At this impedance, the speaker cable becomes a significant portion of the output impedance of the amplifier. Most solid state amps can't continue to double power as impedance is decreased to this low level; the idea is to prevent the constant voltage character of most solid state amps from actually working.

It sort of works IMO, but not very well. There is no point in making any amplifier work hard as distortion is the result, and ESLs are pretty transparent. The type of distortion likely to show up is higher ordered harmonics, which will contribute to brightness and harshness. So while there are some benefits from this approach, it is not without tradeoffs.

Ralph, since since the 70’s I have had nothing but mostly ESL’s, Stax F81, F83, Acoustat 2, 6, 2+2, 1, 1+1, Martin Logan CLS, Monolith, Monolith III.

Tube amps I’ve had Triode, Ultra Linear, Pentode, Tetrode, SE, Paralleled SE, massive Push/Pull, some built by me some not, but heavily modded.

Nothing drives these ESL’s as well as a good bi-polar solid state with good current ability, period sorry.

And please don't start with the Zero stuff on OTL's 

Cheers George

Sounds to me like despite all that time, you've still not unlocked all the performance available.

What you're not taking into account is how variable ESLs are! Old Quads are higher impedance as are Sound Lab and certain Acoustats. Other Acoustats are low impedance and Martin Logan a bit lower.

My point is no one single solution is correct and the math bears it out. FWIW, about 80% of our MA-2 production is on Sound Labs and I too have been working with ESLs since the 1970s.

Please don't put it down to one way and one way only. Such generalizations are simply false.