Sonus Faber Cremona Auditor "Minimum" Power?


Would the new Bel Canto C5i work with the *original* Cremona Auditors at 88 dB @ 4 ohms? I have read conflicting reports about these speakers being easy and difficult to drive. The Bel Canto is a very modest 60 WPC into 8 ohms and 120 WPC into 4 ohms, but apparently has a pretty high current output at 30 amps and is stable with 3 ohm loads. Any other reason to believe this combo would not be good?

On a tangent, how does an amp have lower power but high current output? Aren't the 2 directly related? I recall from rudimentary Physics (for mathematically disabled Bio majors like myself) that P=i^2(R). Can somebody conceptually explain to me what's going on with the electrons in high power/low current vs. low power/high current?
eugene81
Someone else will need to chime in on the physics but I ran the original Cremonas on a pair of REF500M's and had plenty of juice to spare. The auditors as a 2 way should be less of a load than the 3 way Cremonas with its more complex crossover. I'd say you'd be just fine.
Thanks for the reply. I would think the Auditors are harder to drive as they are rated 88 dB sensitivity vs the 91 dB of the floorstanders. Both are 4 ohm nominal impedance. I haven't found an impedance curve for the Auditors, but the big guys are relatively flat with a dip down to 2.8 ohms (ouch) in the upper bass.

How did the combination of Cremonas and Ref500M sound? That's a pretty good comparison as the C5i uses the same 125ASX2 ICEpower module, albeit only 1 compared to the pair of bridged modules in the 500M. At least the general sound qualities should be similar. I don't think it's fair to compare dynamics when the 500M puts out > 4x the power! Then again peak current is marginally higher at 35A. Again, power vs. current... *confused*
Oops, I was comparing peak to RMS power. OK, the Ref500m ONLY puts out 3.75 times more power than the C5i. :)