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Speaker sensitivity vs SQ

My first thread at AG.

Millercarbon continues to bleat on about the benefits of high sensitivity speakers in not requiring big amplifier watts.
After all, it's true big amplifiers cost big money.  If there were no other factors, he would of course be quite right.

So there must be other factors.  Why don't all speaker manufacturers build exclusively high sensitivity speakers?
In a simple world it ought to be a no-brainer for them to maximise their sales revenue by appealing to a wider market.

But many don't.  And in their specs most are prepared to over-estimate the sensitivity of their speakers, by up to 3-4dB in many cases, in order to encourage purchasers.  Why do they do it?

There must be a problem.  The one that comes to mind is sound quality.  It may be that high sensitivity speakers have inherently poorer sound quality than low sensitivity speakers.  It may be they are more difficult to engineer for high SQ.  There may be aspects of SQ they don't do well.

So what is it please?

128x128clearthinker
tomic601's avatar
tomic601
12,911 posts
 
Also the box flopping around also adds to output, just not in time with the note played ....
tomic601's avatar
tomic601
12,911 posts
 
So building a dead box.... cuts output..,,

shall we go on ?

the big baffle can be thought of as a 2D horn ....


tomic601's avatar
tomic601
12,911 posts
 
Also don’t confuse low sensitivity with a poorly engineered load ( bizarre phase angles, super low impedence, etc... 

or a bunch of series / parallel connections....
b_limo's avatar
b_limo
2,274 posts
 
Great video relating to the topic!  Check it out.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PEcFkSQMc8g
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
Encouraging to see at least some get it. Not surprised at all to see the O P does not.

Maybe because it helps to want to understand? People who want to understand tend to say things like so and so says. People who want to argue, instead of says which is neutral and true they say things like bleats which is insulting and demeaning. This may be from learning by bad example or could be they resort to insults because they don’t have an argument. Either way it’s an insult not an argument.

Others here are in love with tech talk. There’s definitely a place for that but I prefer whenever possible to stick with good solid practical advice. It may be at times hard to understand why it works but it does in fact work and therefore is practical. Useful. All these useless pie in the sky fantasy questions the OP is asking, "why?" Can be argued endlessly.

My advice is simple: exclude from consideration speakers less than 92dB sensitivity.

Don’t read into that facts not in evidence. Not saying buy high sensitivity. Not saying they all sound great. Not saying low sensitivity speakers sound worse. Not saying there is any correlation at all between sensitivity and sound quality. Not saying anything other than exactly what I already said: building a really good high end system is hard enough already. Don’t make it harder than it has to be.
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