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
Hi @clearthinker ,

The problem is because high efficiency speakers today are rare a very few audiophile had opportunity to listen good implemented system with high efficiency speakers.
The other factor is the average high efficiency speakers are more transparent and shows more flaws of the system electronics.

I remember, for me it was shock when I at first listened a good high efficiency speakers system back at 2002. I was like a medieval knight who saw an army armed with aircraft and tanks.
Since that day I heard many systems, but any low efficient system didn’t impress me. In the best case they sound just OK. They also sound more boring in therm of music.
If any thing impressed me - it always was high efficient system!

Regards,
Alex.


Thanks Alex.
In terms of my original question, I am rather afraid you are saying high efficiency speakers are rare because they're rare.  That won't get us far.

And on your second point. Or are systems electronics commonly used to drive them often flawed?  I have always felt that in many cases it is the flaws that make them less 'boring'.
@ctsooner wrote: 

"it's simply not true to make a statement that a higher sensitivity speaker is more costly to make..."  

Based on sixteen years of manufacturing fairly high efficiency speakers, I disagree.  

The enclosure is usually the most expensive component and high efficiency calls for large, typically labor-intensive enclosures.  As enclosure size goes up so does the enclosure cost, even moreso if the larger enclosure is also more complex.  And enclosure size has two hidden costs:  Shipping cost and opportunity cost.  The latter is due to the sheer amount of space the speaker takes up in a showroom.   

Many other costs also are typically (though not always) higher with high efficiency, but enclosure cost is always higher for the larger enclosure assuming an equivalent enclosure build technique, and dramatically so for dramatic size differences, and even moreso as the enclosure complexity increases.  Sort of like the cost of building a house goes up as the size and number of rooms (complexity) go up. 

Duke  
Alex, who said you need 100 watts to drive a voice coil at normal volume? First of all music is dynamic and made up of a palette of frequencies. You don't listen to a sine wave. Even with less efficient speakers RMS wattage is going to be pretty low at normal listening levels maybe 10 watts at most while still hitting peaks of 100 watts. A woofer that is well ventilated is it's own fan. That is the way it is designed. The drivers I use can take 600 watts continuously indefinitely. I doubt they have ever seen 100 watts RMS 


Hi @clearthinker ,

The low sensitive speakers sound boring because they eat microdynamics that exist at live performance. They are simply much less musical.
The audio business (producers, sellers, reviewers) cheat you and sell you cheaper stuff as something good and fancy. 
I'm sorry. I don't want to be offencive. You asked what do people think about this topic. It is just my honest opinion.

Regards,
Alex.