Eminent Technology 8b Speakers - Amp/wattage Recommendations

@jwr159 for tube amps, you are on the right track with the M120s, if you can find them. I run a Cary SLP-98 as @russ69 mentioned, btw. If you bi-amp with say a capable tube amp for the upper section (which sounds glorious on those speakers btw) and some higher power SS amp for the lower woofer-bass-drive, you are going to need some kind output level control to balance it out. I’d start with one amp first, try it out before jumping to bi-amping. The QS Mono 120s work well with your 8bs, with those extra-large quality transformers. It’s not about the watts per se’, it’s about quality of power/current/transformers applied for those speakers.

I've heard the 8bs and 16s with a high quality (exceptional) 10wpc tube integrated before. It's possible, yet again its about the quality vs. quantity of power in this case.  

Thanks all for the feedback. 

Just to be clear, the QS amps I am considering are the newer KT monoblocks which are rated at 100W with the KT 150 tubes.  I will discuss with both Mike Sanders and Bruce T at EMT if these will work. 

The 120 monoblocks are no longer available. 

Yes, the plan is to bi-amp using probably a QSC amp with DSP to drive a pair of dipole subs I built. 

Your speakers sensitivity is 83dB at 1W.  Sitting at 4m distance is equivalent to 12dB drop, but second speaker adds 3dB and room reflections another 3dB.  In the end it it will be 77dB loud at 1W, 87dB at 10W, 97dB at 100W.  It might a bit less drop than 6dB for double distance since electrostatic panel is not a point source, but it is hybrid, so I'm not sure.  I would still assume 97dB loud at 100W to be safe.  97dB is very loud but choice depends on your normal listening levels.  Average power delivered to speakers is very low (few percent of the peak power), unless you listen to continuous sinewaves, but peaks are important.  I would go for 200W at 8ohm to be safe, but it will add only 3dB while theoretically 100W amp, on average, should be better than 200W amp costing the same.  Tough choice.  The best would be to borrow and try.  If you bi-amp with different amplifiers be sure to match gains.  If you plan to use xover filtering before the amp then how you disable crossover inside of the speakers? 

If you plan to use xover filtering before the amp then how you disable crossover inside of the speakers? 

You don't have to disable the internal crossovers, you are just doing it before the crossover sees it, no harm no fowl.

@jwr159 apologize if I misunderstood, originally I thought you planned to bi-amp the LFT8B speakers alone, like this on the rear. Using the QSC amp with separate subs should give you plenty. This is similar to how I run my setup, with custom dual Scanspeak subs. Works great, the QS amps don’t have to work so hard, and low level volume listening is more enjoyable too.

8B: