Is the most efficient speaker the best speaker?

"But,to each his own"
Triode , words of wisdom. The low power amp/high efficiency combination seems to more sucesfully present the flesh and blood, living breathing presence that`s so convincing. This ability to consistently create such realism is what pull me over to this genre.(is it the much simpler circuits and fewer parts?). Trumpets,pianos,saxaphones and human voice is simply much closer to what I hear at live performances, the palpable reproduction is stunning at times. YMMV.

These kind of discussions would have more weight if we were to quantify what is high sensitvity, medium and low ..

A horn speaker with a sensitivity of 100db/w/m being driven by a 20w SET, will have far less db gain and dynamics when compared to a planer speaker with a sensitivity of 86db/w/m being driven by a 200 watt amp @ a listening distance of 15 ft.

regards,

Hi,
Weseixas, basd on your example of the two systems above, the horn/SET 20watt wouuld have much more available headroom (dynamic reserve)than the inefficient system. At 15 feet(roughly 5 meters) to achieve a sound level of 94db the horn/SET would require 4 watts, the planer/200 w system would need 128 watts. 5 divided by 20 is a much smaller % of available power rhan 128/200w, thus far more reserve headroom for the higher efficiency system.
Best Regards,

Apogee Stages were notoriously inefficient, but, for what they did, were in a class by themselves.

Weseixas, I think you might want to recalculate that.