Amp for Martin logan CLS Originals

A friend of mine has ML CLS speaker for as long as I can remember and has used Pass amps. He is very an.. about those speaker, you may want to try Pass.

Mac 2205 will NOT drive the CLSs.

The original CLS is a solid state amp killer.
Most of the freq impedance curve runs between 16 and 32 ohms.

Just as some amps double their output when the impedance drops (8 - 4 ohms) they will also cut their output in half when the impedance is doubled (8 -16 ohms).

I drove my CLS's with a Classe CA400;
400 watts @ 8 ohms
800 watts @ 4 ohms
1.6k watts @ 2 ohms
and 1 ohm stable

With the CLS's that turns into;
200 watts @ 16 ohms
100 watts @ 32 ohms

When you factor in that the CLS is not the most efficient speaker, maybe actually 82 dB, 100 - 200 watts is not much power.

I could drive the CLS's just so far, then either the speaker or the amp ran out of steam.
The stators were also the newest generation.

A 200 watt tube amp would be a better choice.

I agree with Mrderrick to some extent.
20 years ago my friend Richard had the original CLS's which sounded just sublime driven by Audio Research amps (D115 I think from memory).
I never heard them with solid state amps so can't really help in that direction.

To this day, there are things that the original CLS speakers could do that I've never heard bettered by ANY speakers anywhere.

VTL or Manley monoblocks will drive these wild. I cannot imagine driving this speaker with anything but tubes. They are too revealing and tubes just make them sing. Long interconnects to monoblocks, short speaker wire runs.