[Radio Wrangler]

Therein lies the delight of having amplifiers right at the speakers. Have one poweramp per driver and a low level crossover. You lose all the problems of high level crossover components, you can even have the low level cables from the preamp as true matched transmission lines, if that takes your fancy.

The best speaker cable is no speaker cable. The idea of having all the power amps near the listening position is like the idea of putting the engine at the front of a motor car "Because that's where the horse used to go!"

Just look at that B&W impedance plot and the Q factor of those peaks. Wow. Must have been fun stopping those showing through into the acoustic output.

And as Martin says, the influence of the erratic Z depends on the cable Z (chiefly resistance) and the amplifier output Z. If you don't equal what values for these were designed into the crossover equalisation of the speaker, you are letting an unwanted factor in.

A fair bit of the 'sound' difference attributed to cables may be from amplifier stability suffering with some cable/amp combinations.... nothing that sane engineering can't fix/ But sanity is not a common factor in a lot of audio.

David