High-efficiency speakers and high-power amps?

As long as you are careful it will be fine. You don't want to blow the drivers.

But the main reason people use low power amps is because they tend to have less amplifier stages. This can mean a purer the sound.

If you have a push-pull amp (unless its one of ours) the distortion will increase at a certain minimum power level maybe 5 or 10 watts) and then *increase* at power levels below that.

The distortion is audible and obscures low level detail. This will *seem* to make the larger amp seem less detailed, and happens whether it is a tube or transistor amp.

This is why smaller amps are often used on higher efficiency loudspeakers.

SETs and our amps are built in such a way that distortion decreases linearly to zero as power is decreased. This makes such amplifiers a good match when used on high efficiency speakers. You might often be using less than a watt most of the time- and with no distortion (or so little as to be unmeasurable) the result will be greater transparency and 'magic'.

Of course its not really magic, its just physics :)

Hodu,
As you see Atmasphere made reference to the concept of using 1 watt or often less than 1 watt of power. Just as he said you want to use an amplifier that decreases distortion at these very low power levels. This will result in a sound that's more natural, pure and as a result more realism with less artifacts. These very efficient speakers provide good volume and dynamics with tiny power demands from the amplifier, it's about sonic purity.
Charles,

I thought I've read here (maybe it was from Duke) that amps with high negative feedback don't behave well with high efficiency speakers. That might be something you should keep in mind. I've played my high efficiency speakers with a few different SS and tube amps. Obviously they really shine with the tubes and that is where the magic is. They were okay with all the solid state amps except for one...a Class D amp which really made the speakers sound bad.

Let me suggest that you take a different approach and just commit to changing over to a high efficiency system. If you base your results on the sound quality you get from a mismatched system you have gained nothing. Chances are this amplifier will not mate well with whatever high efficiency speakers you are listening to because that is not what it was designed to do.

Over many years of stereo shopping, swapping and fiddling I have come across one fundamental truth in the pervasive quest for great sound. And that truth is.....42 (bad joke - but some will get it). That truth is to find a system that has really really good low level resolution. Put another way, if you play your stereo at fairly low volumes and still hear everything clearly to the point that the music takes you there, you have it.

There may be a wide variety of systems that do this but I have found that the cheapest way to get to this benchmark is through high efficiency speakers.

The best way to start is listen to some high efficiency set-ups, find something you like, then sell your whole system and start to rebuild.

One plus with high efficiency gear is that excellent low power amplifiers are fairly inexpensive compared to their more muscular brethren.

Hope that helps.

LL