High Efficiency Speakers Your top 3 or more

03-30-10: Mapman
I'm just wondering if there is anybody out there who would recommend building a system around a SET amp to an audiophile who listens to a lot of modern popular music, like metal, synth pop, rap/hip hop, etc.

I hate to again bring up the Audio Note experience. I'm sounding like an AN shill these days, which is absolutely not my intention. However, the AN system pertains to your question.

Both the AN systems I heard at RMAF 2009 were low power tube systems. The system in the large room used a 20wpc parallel SET amplifier. I purposely brought rock music to the show, and the Audio Federation folks also played a good amount of rock music on the system. Radiohead was a favorite.

I can say the AN parallel SET system really rocked. This is extremely important to me. Did it rock as well as my earlier Von Schweikert/Moscode system? No.

Has anyone mentioned Zu speakers yet? The ones I have heard have sounded good and I believe around 101 db/watt. The Essence was cheap and sounded good on Atamasphere amps.

As Mapman alluded to these can play modern music without strain too amp permitting.

If somebody can show me a SET based system that can deliver Radiohead's "In Rainbows" with the authority and rock solid iron grip in the low end that I hear currently in my system running the (not so) big Bel Canto Class Ds, in a typcial sized listening room, I will be gladly convinced.

Zu speakers rock, especially the Definition and Presence models with the powered subwoofers.

I won't comment on whether they sounded good to me.

I don't think there is a standard unless someone else knows of one. Early in the thread I set a limit of 92db at 6ohms minimum so as not to exclude anything on the cusp. However I think most of us would agree 92db is not really high efficiency. I think I personally would classify 92-96 db as higher, and 97+ as high. However if your reference is horns that may be low.