My first speakers, many years back, were Quad esl57s. At the time, there was no other speaker in the world that was as neutral and revealing. However, they had a nasty habit of not liking (i.e. destroying or being destroyed by) the vast majority of amplifiers at the time, and Quad’s own 303 was the perfect match, so that is what I bought. Anyway, in 1971 in the Netherlands, the choice of high quality amplifiers was extremely limited.
In the next iteration of my system, about a decade ago (I don’t suffer from audio nervosa upgrade itches), it was once again the speakers that drove the decision, this time together with the room. I had decided to move up to the new 2805 stats, and these were less efficient than the old els57’s. I had also moved into a new house with a rather larger living room. It took me a while to realize that what I did not like about the sound was the simple fact that on more dynamic music played at higher levels the amplifier was strained. So I bought a competely refurbished (every resistor and capacitor replaced) 2x140 watt Quad 606-2. At lower levels there was no audible difference, but with symphonic repertoire at more realistic levels, there was a clear improvement with a much cleaner sound. To be honest, the speaker and room could perhaps still benefit from the even bigger power of two QUAD QMP monoblocks.
The last iteration was the addition of a B&W PV1d subwoofer. The bigger room was begging for more bass, and now that I had completely given up on vinyl I also had the source quality to exploit. The last thing I needed to do was to tame the sub with a DSpeaker Antimode 8033 room eq unit. I have now decided that the next step will be a second PV1d sub, for even smoother bass, and more power.
So in retrospect, all my decisions were driven by my clear preference for the Quad electrostats, and later the addition of a sub. I just bought the amplification that I needed to drive the speakers. I must add that I am not convinced that good amplifiers have much of a sonic signature, if any. They need to be powerful enough, however, because that is what power amplifiers are: sources of power, and preferably big power. Or to put it in Peter Walker’s words: straight wires with gain.
