Speakers and Tube Amps

I would second the horn recommendation in general, and the Klipsch Cornwall recommendation in particular, unless you have a small room, then maybe something smaller in the Klipsch Heritage line. I have Cornwall II's that have 101dB efficiency. The very high efficiency is especially important if you want to experiment with SET amps. If you get speakers with this high efficiency, it almost won't matter what you drive them with, though, and the Cornwall's sound fantastic.

Audiokinesis, that was well put and great info. above. In the past I did exactly what you described and the manufacture said well this tube amp works great with our product etc.

Thanks Ralph, and thank you too, Dev.

Blindjim, in my opinion the "order" of the crossover doesn't reveal whether or not a speaker is tube-friendly. I can think of examples with filters ranging from first through fourth order, and don't really see any reliable pattern there.

In general high-efficiency speakers are more likely to be tube friendly, but there are exceptions to that as well.

Duke

Thanks Duke

I didn't think so but thought to ask. That's more a blening thing I suppose.

IMHO, I would look at a speaker's "impedance curve" in determing where or not it's "tube-friendly". If the impedance is relatively flat throughout the speaker's frequency range, with whatever deviations represented by smooth curves, than those speakers are likely to work well with tube amplifiers. If the "impedance curve" shows some sharp peaks and dips where the impedance is changing quickly, then a tube amplifier will probably have some problems dealing with those changes. I know Duke said the same thing I just said, but hopefully I said it in a way that some of us who are less "technically oriented" than others can understand.