Wayne Parham Messages: 18783 Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)
There may be some high-efficiency speaker users that think "all amps are equal," but I think high-efficiency speakers are actually the kind most likely to expose the differences between amplifiers.
A speaker that generates over 95dB/W/M is going to be usually run under a watt in a home hifi setting. So, for example, zero crossing distortion from some push-pull amps is going to be much more obvious than an 80dB/W/M speaker running at 30 watts for the same SPL. The zero-crossing distortion on the low-efficiency speaker gets "lost" because it's proportionally smaller. But the dynamic range gets lost in the low-efficiency speaker too, which is what tends to draw people to high-efficiency speakers. They sound "bigger" and more "open."
So I do think you need an amp that's clean in the "first watt." You really notice the ones that aren't.