We should reject hard-to-drive speakers more often

If this were the case about Loudspeakers not the most efficient like  Truly Great speakers like the MBL 111. Omni directional speakers would be ignored , or the Excellent Apogee ribbon speakers from our great audio past , or Maggi Magnetic 🧲 planer speakers .if you have the extra watts  they like and a bit of extra room , they provide very life like reproduction 

of music ,their longevity in Audio is a testament to their popularity with other Audiophiles, myself also  owns Dynaudio speakers That are 86 db efficient ,they sound very good but they too like a few watts to. Bring  them front and center 

we are talking literally a few extra watts to bring out all the low level details , to me a small sacrifice .why don’t Erik state what exactly his Audio system is made up of 

so maybe he can point out what we maybe missing  !!

@erik_squires I encourage you to read about Hoffman's Iron Law. Can't have your cake and eat it too. ;-) 

https://www.salksound.com/blogtopic.php?id=3

@atmasphere  Yes, the 705s are not that hard to drive. But whether the speakers were sensitive or not was not the issue. Did I like the sound? I know two people who have Maggie's and 400 watts in each monoblock to drive them. They love them.  I see no reason to consider the fact that a speaker is hard to drive as a negative in and of itself. If you don't have or can't afford the power to drive them, then sure, it's a factor. 

Yes, the 705s are not that hard to drive. But whether the speakers were sensitive or not was not the issue. Did I like the sound? I know two people who have Maggie's and 400 watts in each monoblock to drive them. They love them.  I see no reason to consider the fact that a speaker is hard to drive as a negative in and of itself. If you don't have or can't afford the power to drive them, then sure, it's a factor. 

@brev 

This is why it makes a difference: the harder you push the amp, the more difficult the load, the more distortion the amp will make. The other thing to consider is that not all really high powered amps are all that musical- its pretty well known that smaller amps tend to sound better.

I suspect you're using the same amp since both the speakers you mentioned are fairly easy to drive. But consider that if 100 Watts won't do it, you'd need 4 to 8x more power to do the job and as you point out, that can be expensive.

Also keep in mind that while the ZU is easy to drive, its not the only speaker that is meant to be easy to drive and there a number that IMO are also better sounding (while also being more efficient).

@atmasphere  The question for me is not whether the sensitivity of one's speakers matters in terms of integrating them into a system. Obviously it does. Nothing you are saying is new to me. The question is whether low sensitivity speakers are bad and they should be avoided. I think that's silly.  That is just a silly as if I said from my experience the high sensitivity is bad. That a speaker is difficult to drive just means you need to get gear capable of driving it. I think the great majority of people who own such speakers have got suitable power for them.