A speaker the Devialet cannot drive...

[WSLam]

I own a pair of D-Premier. I was using the pair with a pair of Magico Q3. I also have a pair of Sanders Model 10c, some of the finest ESL on the market. Unfortunately, the Devialet completely choke on the Sanders, distorting very very badly even at moderate volume. The Sanders impedance drops very low, and apparently, the Devialet cannot drive them at all. I am not talking about not synergistic. I am talking about outright distortion.

[Antoine]

It's true and known that the Devialets struggle with very low (sub 2 ohm) impedance drops. At least I've known this from early on from the early D-Premier reviews. Things have improved over time thanks to Devialet tuning it's PSU firmware and the introduction of the 110/170/240 range (now 120/200/250) but I guess even they can't circumvent the laws of physics in such a small box with a 600W SMPS PSU.

The Sanders must be an exception though and a real torture test apparently, other ESL's do behave properly. I've been following Devialet for years and have never read a report like yours before.

I think the problem lies with the Sanders not Devialet, they'll probably need the old-skool 2kW into 2Ohm, 100kg mono blocks as big as refrigerators, generating enough heat to heat a small home.

[WSLam]

I dug up an old email from Sanders, and they told me that at 20kHz, the Model 10c drops to about 1ohm. I guess that really is a torture test for the Devialet. Somewhat disappointed as I would love to have the transparency of the Devialet driving a pair of Model 10c.

[NickB]

What do you drive them with apart from the Devialet might give some insight, or have you just bought them?

[WSLam]

I have a pair of Sanders MagTech amps which have Voltage Regulation circuitry.

[Confused]

A similar tail .......

http://devialetchat.com/showthread.php?t...ht=Sanders

[Antoine]

I dug up an old email from Sanders, and they told me that at 20kHz, the Model 10c drops to about 1ohm. I guess that really is a torture test for the Devialet. Somewhat disappointed as I would love to have the transparency of the Devialet driving a pair of Model 10c.

That is indeed terribly low. I found the early review I was talking about of an early D-Premier model. It's here: http://www.stereophile.com/content/devia...asurements

Particularly the measurements section of this review is interesting for you, although (again) things did improve later on.

Also Devialet up to today specifies, for all models incl. the top of the line 800/900 models: "Compatible with all speakers, from 2Ω to 16Ω".

[AaronG]

There's a reason Sanders makes an amp for them!

[Hph6000]

Only an idea: what if configurator treble is set to 20000 Hz and you turn treble 6dB down the 1,6 ohm impedance may not be any problem for the 200 dev.
age 50+ wont mis the 20000hz. or???

[Duomike]

There is another solution. This would reduce the efficiency of your speaker though. Add resistance to your speaker So the amp sees a higher impedance. Mundorfs makes power resistors with 20 watt rating. Get 8 pieces each 4 ohms. Use 4 on each side and use parellel and serial connecting so you still get 4 ohms but rating goes up to 80. Open you speakers and solder them directly between bindung post and xo board.

I had the opposite problem before. My previous amp had a switching outputstage and was flat into 6 ohms but quite bright sounding into my duos 16 ohms. Could have used the digital tone control function but this added quite a bit of edginess to the high frequncies. Soldered a 10 ohm mundorf power resistor accross the binding posts of my amp to reduces the impedance the amp sees. Worked like a charme and sounded a lot better than using digital tone control