Speaker sensitivity vs SQ

@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.

@mijostyn ,

Maybe I'm missing something.
I have a resistor attached on chassis of my phonostage. The chassis is on open rack and good ventilated and it is much bigger than any voice coil. The power dissipated on this resistor just 8 Watt. And this power 8W make a big chassis temperature about 20C hotter compared the room temperature. It is not bad, but the voice coil is inside the little box and much smaller. 

Regards,
Alex.

These are field coil-fitted drivers, right? In that presumable case their price, though way above what needs to serve a fitting purpose here, makes a little more sense.

@phusis 

They are TAD 1602s. Pricey, and a bit different from the EV. I forgot to mention they have Alnico magnets.FWIW the midrange driver employs a field coil and a beryllium diaphragm with a Kapton surround.  They are Classic Audio Loudspeakers model T-3. I had the cabinets custom-built by CAL to be a bit taller than stock so they are flat to 20Hz.