Power/Current: How much is realistic?

@fruitloopsr, as you may realize lots of people successfully use power amplifiers having unregulated power supplies in conjunction with electrostatic speakers, the comments at Mr. Sanders’ website notwithstanding. Not to mention that there aren’t very many power amplifiers that have regulated supplies, at least for their power stages.

Also, one further comment regarding the possibility of going with a tube amp. The output impedances of various tube amps vary widely, and I believe it would be preferable to limit your considerations of tube amps to those having relatively low output impedances, meaning damping factors of at least 8 or so. Most and perhaps all Audio Research tube amps are among those which meet that criterion.

Regards,
-- Al

Does anyone own Sanders Esl amp or Magtech monos ?
If so what is your opinion
Mike

Let me ask Anyone have tried the combo of Pass or Sanders amps with M/L 13A if so what do you think?

my mcintosh mc602's manual says it's current is 150 amperes per chanell. is this true

No. Not unless it can make well over 22,500 watts!! And that is giving it the benefit of the doubt- that it can drive 1 ohm.

@almarg I think ML specs their speakers the way they do because they are panels rather than point sources. In that regard a microphone placed 1 meter from the speaker will not pick up all the energy that the speaker radiates. If Stereophile measured it at 86 dB, 10 feet away from the speaker the sound pressure effectively is as if a point source were being used that is 5-6dB more efficient, so 91dB might be practically more accurate. This is why so many panel speakers seem crazy inefficient, but in reality aren't that hard to drive.

Thanks Ralph (@Atmasphere). As you saw I factored in a loss of 3 db per doubling of distance, rather than the 6 db loss per doubling of distance that would apply to box-type speakers acting essentially as point sources. But even so, per your comments I was probably being overly pessimistic in my SPL estimates.

So the 109, 106, and 103 db SPL numbers I calculated for powers of 600, 300, and 150 watts, at a 3 meter listening distance, should be even higher!

Thanks again. Best,
-- Al