What kind of power wakes up electrostatic speakers

Respectfully disagree, but no flack. The InnerSound seems to need major break-in. Now usually I'm a little skeptical of all this break-in bidness, but, I personally experienced a break through with the InnerSound after a minimum of about a hundred hours, plus, you need to drive the s**t out of it to get the goodness. Warmer is better. Soon I will carry by InnerSound over to a SoundLab UL-1 owner and we will compare it to some Boulder mono-blocks. Could be interesting.

Try tube amps. The previous owner of my Acoustats commented that his Acoustat seemed more at ease with tube amp of decent size and power. I've tried my Acoustat Model 3 with an Audio Alchemy OM-150 (150wpc) and an Acurus A150 2 stereo amp. The 'stats were more at ease with the OM-150, since it was quite a buiser. I tried my Quicksilver silver mono 90's, and even thought I had less power (some 90wpc), that 'stats were driven with even more ease. No sure if it's the volts, current, or the fact the tubes can just deal with load the 'stats present (better overloading?). I think this helps drive home the point of Jim Strickland's direct drive tube amps.

I you're looking for a big tube amp, try the Wolcott. It was designed for drive ESLs, in particular the Soundlab models.

I have owned stats for 14 years now, Beveridge and Martin Logan. I have made the switch over to tubes and am currently running a Decware Integrated SET @ 7W. Yes, 7W! Gets much louder than it has any right to, not to mention sounding infinately more engaging than the 150W SS amp it replaced. One factor to keep in mind is that most tube amps (Deware is a notable exception) like to drive higher impedance speakers.

Good luck, Paul

Travis, they were sent in for review at the time; they were properly burned in. Coda, Innersound, Boulder are all detailed oriented, energy loaded at the transient-type SS amps - quite similar. Not sure that's a great comparison...

Paul, 7W!!? You've got more courage than me! :0)

Seriously though, Paul, you might find a nice balance with the Berning - and maybe a bit of tube rolling the inputs yo siut.

A friend of mine recently was trying to upgrade the amplifier to drive his Martin Logan CLS speakers, he was driving them with a Quad 606 (original version) and it was sort of managing OK. He was really looking for a substantial upgrade and he tried a Krell 300i which was onsale.

The Krell was not in a position to drive them at realistic levels even at full volume. The Quad somehow was playing much louder and still had room to spare. We were really surprised. Switched his two CD players, three speakers, and the two amps. None of the equipment had any problem including the Krell which was driving the Maggies as well as large dual concentric Tannoy speaker. We were unable to figure out why Krell on Martin Logan CLS sounded like a 25 watter. Nothing made sense to us.

What could be the reason for such low volumes on the CLS? Is Krell 300i a bad match for CLS? Is the power supply of just 400v in Krell not able to cope with the load? Is it the matter of voltage versus current?

Can anyone shed some light on this issue for our better understanding?