We should reject hard-to-drive speakers more often

"@ricred1 MBLs are easier to drive than they might appear. That is because they are omnidirectional and when measured, the microphone is placed 1 meter away from the speaker. Most of the output of the speaker is thus not picked up. Effectively in a room you can add 6dB to their rated sensitivity. So they can be driven be amps of much less power than you might expect!"

Please suggest a couple of integrated amplifiers that can drive MBL 101e speakers.

Please suggest a couple of integrated amplifiers that can drive MBL 101e speakers.

My experience is limited to the mbl 101e. It was rated at about 81 dB which you would think is crazy inefficient. Its also a 4 Ohm load, climbing to 8 Ohms in the upper midrange. But it does not have any weird phase angles so there's that.

So add 6dB and you're at 87 which still isn't great, but that's a lot better than 81!

Now you have to figure the size of the room. In a moderate sized room most of the time a 100 Watt amplifier would do the job fine. So there you have a bit of info as to what to look for. I can't say more without knowing the room size and liveliness. 

atmasphere,

My room is L-shaped...front wall is 20’ wide, length is 26’, rear wall is 26’ wide, and 9’ ceiling. My room is rather "neutral", not too lively and not dark.

As @bdp24 noted, if you can drive the bottom 2-3 octaves with a separate amplifier, it provides many more options for the rest of the range.

I have planar-magnetic dipole line arrays which are ~98db/w sensitivity, nominally 8 ohms with a minimum impedance of about 5 ohms. I'm driving these with a 300B SET amp and they sound glorious, but they only play down to about 170Hz.

The woofers for the bottom few octaves are considerably less efficient and driven with their own 370W class A/B amp and provide plenty of output to below 20Hz.

The combination can play full-range music louder than I want to listen in my 27' x 17' listening room. 

Obviously a bi-amped system is not for everyone, but by splitting out the bass, the rest of the range can be much more efficient without sacrificing sound quality.

I have owned several of both types, 86db to 100db efficient and I have found that the more efficient speakers play more effortlessly without sounding forced…more relaxed with better dynamic scale.