[jandrews]

Curious if anyone here has happily paired their spark with 15 ohm LS3/5a’s?  I am currently breaking in some Falcon “silver badge” speakers on my Spark ii and the combo is quite nice so far.

[Audiovista]

LS3/5a's combination of low sensitivity and high impedance is a mixed blessing: high impedance makes Spark work very calm and relaxed, however, there is a reduction in maximum power which limits how loud the setup can be.

Several customers paired Spark with the Sound Artist LS3/5a. Mostly in desktop setups and probably as a result of this review (the link should jump to the relevant part starting around 11:50):

https://youtu.be/XMPnTmEZaZw?si=mn5ShvvjmaQfg_OF&t=708

A customer in Japan paired Spark with Rogers LS3/5a and he reported great results. And this is a real Japanese audiophile, so it means a lot to me    I think it was also a near-filed listening setup.

On the other side, a customer in Germany moved the Spark - LS3/5a combo to a large living room and he got clean sound, but not a lot of volume. That makes sense, my back of the envelope estimations say that for a listening distance of about 10ft (or 3 meters) maximum effective sound level can go to around 90dB and that is not enough oomph for the good dynamic range.

In summary: for desktop/near-field listening it's a very nice combo, while for more regular setups, more power is needed, which our new product (to be announced soon) should address to a certain level.

[jandrews]

Thanks Boris
As I was breaking my new Falcons in ...I had them in my kitchen of all places.  In a pretty tight space, they were on a counter top with only about 12" behind them to the wall.
In that desktop like environment they sounded lovely with the Spark ii.  Really surprising.. So If one wanted to set up a near field or desktop system with 15 ohm ls3/5a's and a Spark, I think it would be a very pleasant, engaging and detailed pairing.  Maybe a little light but if you use the room boundaries carefully, you should be more than OK.
Once I moved out into my larger room, the spark still sounded great.  But maybe not as captivating as in the smaller space.

[Audiovista]

That is great to hear. I had LS3/5a clone from a company in Hong Kong (brand name escapes me now), I tried it with a few tube amplifiers (our i34 among them) and did not like the sound. Impedance mismatch, likely. It was better with NAD 325BEE, but sound was dry to my taste, uninviting for longer listening.  It seems that this speaker and Spark are the combo that might give the sound that I expected from the i34+LS3/5a