these stories might be a little more palatable without descriptions like night and day ect....been a long time and a few dollars since i've heard night and day differences in the electronics domain.
Well, I do know it is a fringe case - but VERY real in actual audio life.
Imagine driving ANY full range electrostatics - with the exception of Quad ESL-63 ( it is, electrically speaking, a LC transmission line, finally terminated in resistance - not neaerly as impossible load as most normal pure capacitance ESLs ) and its later variants. Sooner or later, the purely capacitive load, most normally coupled trough a step up transformer, will reach - if not actually zero impedance, then certainly a value most amplifiers are no longer capable of driving correctly. Typically, that would be 1 ohm and lower ( highly reactive at that ... ) in the upper audible range - give or take an ohm or few kHz either way , depending on the actual speaker.
There are behemoth amplifiers in multi hundred watts per channel range that - fall apart like broken glass in such a load. It is either complete silence (best), some very low volume level attainable before the protection cuts everything off ( worse) or some heavy distorted unlistenable screeching, too limited in volume ( the worst ).
I have found one amp which - by specs and ratings - should NOT be suitable for driving ESLs - yet, in practice, it IS. It is the 75 w/ch into 8 ohms Technics - either as power amp SE-9060 or in integrated amp livery, as SU-8080 . The circuit is the same, differences are in the power supply - and, as it is often with Technics, the supply in integrated is actually better than in separate power amp.
Now - any of the descriptions above vs Technics ( that can play cleanly, but, with 75W/ch, obviously can not drive typical 85 (usually even below ) dB/W/m sensitivity speakers to ear splitting levels.
That IS night and day difference.
There are , of course, better amps for the ESLs. But, they ARE few and far in between. Acoustat TNT-200 ( DO check its schematics - unlike anything else ... ) is the first relatively affordable amp that can drive ESLs to decent, but NOT ear splitting levels. For that, true "welding apparatus" amps are required, but that is $$$$. Gamut range of amps with a p and n pair single giant MOS-FET as output devices
are the real deal in this case - as well as probably is Sanders amp specifically designed for the ESLs.
Similar occurs at the other extreme - moving coil phono cartridge preamps. Particularly those that have to amplify the cartridges with below 0.1mV/5cm/sec sensitivity. Merely achieving an acceptable S/N ratio definitely is a challenge... - not to mention any further requirement. Here, the boys and men are told apart in few seconds...