Tube Amp for Martin Logan Speakers

Do what the maker recommends.

It'll all work. It's just a matter of how well. The maker should know best what works best. Once you've done that, then you are in a position to try something different and see how that works in comparison. You never quite know what will sound best to someone, however its much easier to determine what will perform best from a technical perspective. Optimal performance is usually the best place to start. Where one ends up after that might still be different, but at least you know you started out on the right road.

If you need an adaptor, impedance or otherwise in order to make things work well, you probably did not start out on the right road.

hi everyone,
I had actually pose my opinion in another article, but I think this subject here is more suited and I wish senior members would share their valuable knowledge & experiences.

We had seen many varieties of impedance coupled with varying phase angles charts, especially from ESL speakers when they behave like a giant cap into high freq.
When some audiophiles describe tubes amp suit well for ESL, we are assuming the tubes would handle the voltage & current needed by the speakers optimally, at a certain range of frequencies. because, generally tubes cannot provide enough high current into magnetic coils when required for high excursion of speaker drivers into low bass and high frequencies due to same reasons too.

Now, I do not know how tubes behave given the ever changing phase angle in relation to impedance,(voltage leads or lags before/after the current), but I suspect that tube can offer more "fluctuation" or "more tolerant" to out of phase signals when required by the speaker to produce music. I believe tubes are naturally more "forgiving"(tubes can give more voltage without rising current) as compared to output transistors when facing these out of phase requirements posed by speakers, especially ESLs. I guess transistors usually have a tighter range to work with electrical signal. transistors are generally linear devices am I right? my bet is that transistors work best when voltage and current are output simultaneously(meaning linear), to provide the power needed by speakers, so if transistors need to work beyond its specification(non-linear, as required by out of phase angle signal), it would clip even before it reaches its full rated power(watt) regardless it is a single or multiple transistors trying to provide power into a given load.

base on above assumption, I perceive that tubes would better suited for ESLs but there are caveats, that's the songs the listener is playing should not contain low bass & high notes i.e. no punching bass, no high pitch like triangles or in harps, electric guitars etc.. (please also bear in mind tubes are slower in response, transistors are faster)

just my two cents

Transistors and tubes are the same speed (speed works out to bandwidth, so imagine how it was that color television was possible with tubes; color television requires some bandwidth!).

It is the output transformer of a tube amp that usually limits its speed. However, delivering the 'current' to play bass on an ESL is no problem at all for a tube amp, in fact generally speaking transistors are less able to deliver the power needed, simply on account of the fact that the bass region of most ESLs is also the region of the highest impedance, which is often ten times higher than it is at 15-20KHz.