Today it's 500 watt solid state amplifies and small speakers because that's what fits in smaller places... but is it really right?

No, it's really convenient.

Many times a month I happily find myself chatting with audiophiles on the phone who are new to tubes or new to the concept of lower power amps or both.  When the conversation focuses on our 2 watt amps, the idea of driving say, four 15 inch drivers seems silly, I mean it's 2 watts...

What people don't realize is that four 15 inch divers are likely to be around 100 to 110 dB in total efficiency which is just what the 2 watt amp would love.  In the mainstream audiophile world, you have heavy sloppy slow high mass drivers in smallish ported boxes that need amplifiers with massive amounts of damping from negative feedback to sound tight.  Sad.  None of these high feedback amplifies with 500 watts can drive a dead short without launching itself into protection or liberating the output transistors from the circuit board in a nice fireworks show...

So when you have a tube amp that is set up to handle impedance dips below 1 ohm and like it, it is in reality probably better capable of handling 4 15 inch drivers than the vast majority of solid state amps within it's power range.  

So with this little background information, the ideal speakers to fill a large space at say an audio show would be something similar to these:




Take a long look at this... now picture the entire black colored rack and all the gear deleted from the picture.  Replace it all with a 25th Anniversary Zen Triode amplifier and preamp.  Two components that would be small enough that you would have a hard time finding them in picture.

I can promise you that the sound of the above mentioned combo on these speakers would embarrass the entire rack of components and be one of the most spectacular demos of the amp you have ever heard.  This is how to get a 2 watt amplifier to rock concert SPL with no distortion in a larger space and the spooky thing is that even for those in the front row listening positions, the speakers would completely disappear.

I'm not making this stuff up...  :)

Only twice as good?  I believe you have not heard the SE84UFO25!!!  :)

Let's talk about giant horn loaded speakers....

--> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v-x1X0_Uyk

I saw and heard this system at RMAF last October.. the same weekend as Zenfest, which is why I wasn't at Zen this past year.  This is a 5-way, fully horn loaded system... the entire rack of electronics is also from the same company as the speakers - ESD Acoustic.
ESD Acoustic is:
E - is for Dr. Bruce Edgar. Who is the mind behind the Full Horn's expansion characteristic.
S - is for Technical Advisor Sam Saye and
D - is for company chairman David Dai
ESD Acoustic is located in Hangzhou, China.

If I remember correctly, at least some, if not all the drivers were field coils.. and thus 10 power supplies involved.
And the system uses an active electronic crossover and each speaker has its own individual amplifier channel - yes there are 10 channels of amplification going on here - 5 channels per side.  The amps are pure Class A flea watters, of 20-25 watts - think Nelson Pass First Watt-ish.
The amps at the show were housed in mortise and tenon joint wood cases, decorated with repro's of classic Chinese art. On the products/amps page today, it looks like they have been replaced by more modern aluminum enclosures. I think they are same, they have the same model name/numbers.  The Show samples might have been prototype-ish - not sure.

I thought this was some of the best sound I've ever heard.  But it needs a huge room to breath and you need to be like 25ft. away or more for everything to gel.  At RMAF they were in a pretty good sized room.  Much larger than the average audiophile's listening room. But under those conditions, it got pretty real.  

I saw this system literally bring tears to grown men several times while I was there.  As it should have.. and this may be why , the price of the whole system was 1.1 - 1.2 MILLION dollars...!!!  I can't remember for sure, but I have price sheets and literature from the show.  Looks like they have prices on their site and "buy now" buttons!!  Oh... and at the show, they had "attractive" Asian ladies serving as door greaters and serving hot tea and refreshments - that's gotta be worth something right!  

ESD's room was kind of off the beaten path and not one you would just stumble on at the show.  But once the word got out, everyone was looking for this room.
While I was in the ESD room, everybody from PS Audio's room passed thru also - one or two at a time.  I had spoke to Paul and a couple other PS folks early on, as their room was right behind the sign-in desk at the front of the hotel, but did not talk to any of them after their "exposure" to the ESD system.
I did read a post by Paul a week or two after the show where he stated that he didn't see why everyone was so ga-ga over the sound in the ESD room.  He didn't think it was all that great.  Not sure what he heard when he was there, or if he was listening up in the front row or what, but the sound at the back of the room was superb to my ears and all the guys I was with thought so too.  The sound was not stereotypical "horn" sound at all.  I think it's safe to say, that Paul M. was in the minority of folks at the show that were not impressed by the sound in the ESD room.  Kind of has me wondering what PSA's new "AN" series of speakers are going to sound like...?

P.S. the ESD speakers in the YouTube are the "Dragon Series" about a 1/4 mil for a complete pair, with field coil drivers, power supplies and the carbon fiber horns..
http://www.esdacoustics.com/index.php/product/info_classic/19/8.html
If you want all the ESD front end to complete the system... you're into 7 digits to the left of the decimal point.....
And if you have a Warren Buffett size wallet, and are so inclined as to indulge, you'd be best served to also have a "ballroom sized" room to put this system in....