Wilson's Chronosonic XVX loudspeaker over 3/4 of a million US dollars

@gdnrbob

Sometimes this is legitimate, and in the past, I could see that it was due to poor design tools.

Like in the early Genesis era. Damn, some of those crossovers are horrible in terms of impedance, but I can see how they got there due to manual trial and error.  Attempts to get a certain sound out of the speaker, and not having very easy tools to help you optimize frequency AND impedance at the same time.

I can also see it with something like the giant Apogee true-ribbon speakers. The very technology caused 1 Ohm impedance, but with dynamic systems, I scratch my head.

When solid state-generated watts became cheap, speaker designers started to care less and less about the impedance of the models they were creating.  Kind of a corollary of the law of supply and demand.

Sick Puppies

When solid state-generated watts became cheap, speaker designers started to care less and less about the impedance of the models they were creating. Kind of a corollary of the law of supply and demand.

@twoleftears 

I think this is a good observation.  If Genesis only had tube amps, they probably would not have been able to release some of the speakers with the impedance issues they did.

On the other hand, I think that with the design tools and computer based optimization, there is no longer any excuse.

erik_squires I took apart one speaker and saw circuits there deliberately designed to reduce the impedance. It made the speaker "discerning" of amplifiers.

So it wasn’t a Conjugate impedance compensation load that you saw, that makes an amp sees a constant impedance load across it’s working range??? Your saying it was deliberately done to be detrimental to weaker amplifiers that maybe demo’d with them. Please say who these terrible cads were that did this kind of thing???? And if it was Wilson or not?

twoleftears
When solid state-generated watts became cheap, speaker designers started to care less and less about the impedance of the models they were creating

Really!! you and whoever else is living in a dream world, if you think this is Wilson Audio design criteria

Are you guys listening to yourselves
I’ve heard many of their top range, that are a b*****s to drive and I can confidently say these will give better bass because of it and their deign principles than anything that’s 8ohm and 100db efficient and called Klipsch or similar.

Cheers George