[planet10]

The different types of commercial and DIY ESL's present different loads to an amplifier.

While true in a general sense an ESL presents a capacitive load.

Given that P = Voltage * Current * cos(phase difference between the 2).

Assumming we are dealing with voltage amps with low R_out that means that the amplifier needs to be able to deliver significant current despite the cap load.

You will not find a specification for this but you are usually ;ooking for something with a significantly beefy power supply.

I have not used ESLs in a long time, but back when we were selling Dayton-Wrights, the big boys (lots of 200+ w amps coming out at the time) did not do the job well, the surprise was that teh NAIM 250 drove them, even a set in parallel, seemingly with ease.

You are looking for an amplifier that can deliver lots of extra current.

dave

[joulewrangler]

I have had great success driving SoundLab M-1 speakers with Parasound JC-1 mono block amplifiers; the depth of image, bass control, and sound staging all excellent. I had used Innersound ESL amps, and also found them to be “flattened” in perspective / cool sounding, and generally not a good match, though they did have lots of power as noted by an earlier poster.