Quote Originally Posted by bubslewis
Seems to me that Mike would be right that a higher power amp like the Behringer EP 1500 amp (2 x 700 watts into 2 ohms) would give me a greater chance for success than my ADCOM 5400. And the Behringer is going for under $300 to boot.
And not just for planar speakers. Any speaker that presents a load to the amp that falls below the spec where the amp can handle the current will suffer from compression. Many top speaker designs drop to 3 ohms or lower at one point.

A for instance;

At this resistance (3 ohms) the same voltage is TWICE the current draw than at 6 ohms. If the amp cannot produce this double amount of current into the 3 ohm load then it will compress the signal. You might hear it as the amp/speakers "lacking bass" or having a lack of punch, but hook the same amp up to a set of speakers with a less demanding load and the amp sounds fine.

A good way to think about it is that the amp/speakers are a closed system not independant of each other. The best amps usually sound good with mostly all speakers, but some very good ones also need to be matched with the proper speakers.