@brev I get that this was your experience which I don't argue. But the sensitivity of the speaker does matter. FWIW, if you have the standmount version of the 702, its a pretty easy speaker to drive despite being a little less sensitive.
We should reject hard-to-drive speakers more often
Sorry I know this is a bit of a rant, but come on people!!
Too many audiophiles find speakers which are hard to drive and... stick with them!
We need to reject hard-to-drive speakers as being Hi-Fi. Too many of us want our speakers to be as demanding as we are with a glass of wine. "Oh, this speaker sounds great with any amplifier, but this one needs amps that weigh more than my car, so these speakers MUST sound better..."
Speakers which may be discerning of amplifier current delivery are not necessarily any good at all at playing actual music.
That is all.
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If this were the case about Loudspeakers not the most efficient like Truly Great speakers like the MBL 111. Omni directional speakers would be ignored , or the Excellent Apogee ribbon speakers from our great audio past , or Maggi Magnetic 🧲 planer speakers .if you have the extra watts they like and a bit of extra room , they provide very life like reproduction of music ,their longevity in Audio is a testament to their popularity with other Audiophiles, myself also owns Dynaudio speakers That are 86 db efficient ,they sound very good but they too like a few watts to. Bring them front and center we are talking literally a few extra watts to bring out all the low level details , to me a small sacrifice .why don’t Erik state what exactly his Audio system is made up of so maybe he can point out what we maybe missing !! |
@erik_squires I encourage you to read about Hoffman's Iron Law. Can't have your cake and eat it too. ;-) |
@atmasphere Yes, the 705s are not that hard to drive. But whether the speakers were sensitive or not was not the issue. Did I like the sound? I know two people who have Maggie's and 400 watts in each monoblock to drive them. They love them. I see no reason to consider the fact that a speaker is hard to drive as a negative in and of itself. If you don't have or can't afford the power to drive them, then sure, it's a factor. |
This is why it makes a difference: the harder you push the amp, the more difficult the load, the more distortion the amp will make. The other thing to consider is that not all really high powered amps are all that musical- its pretty well known that smaller amps tend to sound better. I suspect you're using the same amp since both the speakers you mentioned are fairly easy to drive. But consider that if 100 Watts won't do it, you'd need 4 to 8x more power to do the job and as you point out, that can be expensive. Also keep in mind that while the ZU is easy to drive, its not the only speaker that is meant to be easy to drive and there a number that IMO are also better sounding (while also being more efficient). |
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