Really hard to drive speaker

Folks,

I am sure that this request is a rather unusual one, but I would like to know what is currently, in production a Speaker generally known to be hard to drive but of good sound quality and "High End" abilities, but remaining semi-affordable and resonably portable.

We are developing this rather powerfull Amplifier (and other stuff) and while we are working on our own reference grade monitor, for the Show Circuit (or is that circus) and for other evaluation purposes we would like a modest size speaker that can handle cleanly several 100 Watt or power and plays low, but in effect "difficult impedance" and "needs lots of power to come alife" type (the exact opposite of what interrests me basically), a speaker that sounds great (if edgy) with big Krells and fades to "boring" using more normal stuff.

Any tips? Please no Quad ESL's, Apogee Diva's etc, small standmounters that handle ton's of power and sound great, with great bass would sound like the trick.

Ciao T

 

Celestion A1s? Not currently in production but readily available

 

Dynaudio Contour range?
I had contour 1.1, abysmal with a valve amp at a demo, if you could make those sing with valves....

 

Sonus Faber Extrema?
Totem Mani-2?

 

Dynaudio Micron. Old model but small sealed box with reasonable bass extension.

That recipe means something like 80dbw sensitivity and a fairly brutal 4 ohm load. You can often pick then up on Audio Markt.

 

The original Mk1 spec (one set of terminals) Acoustic Energy AE1 needed a hell of a lot of amp to wake it up. Probably quite cheap second hand by now, and a nice easily portable little speaker too.

Tony.

 

B&W 805s would also fit your bill....need bags of power to get going,and pose a difficult load esp at low frequencies where the impedance drops below 4ohms,and draws a lot of current.

The 805s do have decent bass,but only if stuck on the end of a good amp....I have a pair of these,and found they reduced a TAG 100w amp to early clipping and sounded pretty poor,whereas with KMA100 Krells,they're transformed.

 

What about the Merlin?

Or the PMC AB2s. A good two way large standmount. Down to 25Hz, handles about 250watts. Seems to have a more balanced response than the IB2 we heard Thorsten.

 

PMC s generally present a pretty well mannered load,and certainly wouldn't tax an amplifier anywhere near as much even an AE 1 would,but otherwise,yes,a nice speaker.

 

Hi,

That sounds like what we need. Well known brand and all, if the Audiolabs (which is what TAG really was) falls over in a heap of wet jelly then it is exactly what we need.

Thanks for that and also to others, much was down the lines of "usual suspects", in my experience Dynaudio's bottom out if given an Amp of sufficient stature, Totem Mani's are on the list. The AE's might be a nice sidetrack, but I doubt they will survive our Amp (around 250W RMS into 4R and around 3db dynamic headroom).

As for Valves, this will (have to) be a hybrid, no way around that at the pricepoint we decided upon (and that is about the only compromise we are making).

Ciao T

 

T
I can vouvh that the 1.1 dyns did make an old audiodrab curl up and run away.

 

Being fair to both Audiolab and TAG,it was a TAG 100x5 amp,which was designed/built by TAG themselves,and pretty well rated by most who'd heard the thing.

It certainly didnt react well to the 805s and just ran out of power,whereas the Krells just keep on going...in terms of power handling and headroom,I think you would find them to be OK,as mine run on the end of nominally 100W Class A Krells,which have been measured at over 250W into 4ohm loads,and I do run them loud from time to time!

 

The reason I mention AE1s is that a friend had a pair for quite a while back in the late 80s / early 90s. He started off with a MF P170, and that just sounded loose and uncontrolled, but to be honest I think it did regardless of what was up or downstream of it. I took round the Naim 62/Hicap/140 I had at the time, and it didn't even touch the sides of the AE1s - I literally wrapped the volume knob to it's end stop and it still sounded small, thin and anaemic, and this is an amp that will happily drive Isobariks. Next up was a Deltec pre/power, the original model with the lovely sand cast rounded fronts and the funny three core speaker leads, first a 50 watt stereo, and after that blew up a pair of 100 watt monos. The DPA 100 watt monos sounded really nice, but again blew up. Twice IIRC. Finally came a Krell KSA 100 Mk2, and that worked the best of any of them by far into the AE1s.

The AE1 may be a piddly little speaker, but it can suck an amplifier like nothing else I've ever seen. When driven right they sound huge, when underdriven they sound their size.

Tony.

 

Dynaudio Contour 1.3MkII, Contour 1.3SE or Countour Special 25 all fit the bill.

Michael.

 

Michael, shouldn't that be ANY Dynaudio? .

I've never heard of an easy load Dynaudio, but for my amp the Contour 1.8s seemed a more difficult load than the 1.3.

 

With regards to Dynaudio, has anyone tried the new Contour range and the Special 25? The reason I ask is that they now feature impedence corrected crossovers that make them relatively easy to drive. I certainly had no problems with the 25 powered by a 20 wpc 300b amp when I tried it at the beginning of the year.

 

I had some AE1's (mk1) with an 80w musical Fidelity amp (about 8 years ago, before I was really into audio).

Like you mentioned, that wasnt enough. It didnt clip, just sounded rather sorry for itself, in a ''is that all you've got?'' kind of way.

I sold them without ever hearing what they might have been able to do with a big amp.

Oh well!

 

The bigger pmcs are hard to drive

 

ATC SCM12, or the SCM7's if you're after something smaller

Lefty

 

Audio Physic Brilon

86db 4 ohms