the real bug for the ones in particular who don’t have high efficiency speakers
If high efficiency speakers are so darned good, why did the industry move away from them? So electronics makers could sell more expensive Power? Methinks not.
Thermal Distortion your loudspeaker most likely suffers from it. But do you care?
Thermal Distortion is much more serious than just a maximum power handling limitation or side effect.TD is overlooked by most manufacturers as there is no easy (low cost) solution and TD is audible and measurable most of the time at most power levels. TD is caused by the conductive metal (aluminum, copper, or silver) voice coil getting hotter when you pass electrical energy through it. The more power you pass through it the hotter the metal gets. The hotter the metal gets the more the electrical resistance increase. The efficiency goes down and you need to ram in more and more power for smaller and smaller increases in SPL. It can be the reason you get fatigued while listening. If you are running massive power you are creating more TD in your transducers. But do you care? And is it a reason some prefer horn-loaded designs or SET-powered systems since they have the least problems with TD?
- ...
- 81 posts total
This gentleman understood the importance of speaker efficiency. See link below Enjoy! That's what it's all about! 😎
Mike http://www.lansingheritage.org/html/jbl/reference/technical/efficiency.htm |
@ieales -- "If high efficiency speakers are so darned good, why did the industry move away from them? So electronics makers could sell more expensive Power? Methinks not." Actually more power got less expensive with the advent of the transistor, at which point Edgar Villchur also made his entry with his "acoustic-suspension" AR-1’s as a much smaller and much less efficient speaker package - a package that needed the extra power, of course. It was and largely still is about (size-)convenience and the introduction of a mass domestic market, albeit at the time (and reiterated today by the likes of John Atkinson) it was sold off with the marketing bling as offering the same extension from a fraction of a size with less distortion. What’s not to like? Well, Mr. Atkinson was (and likely still is) an avid supporter of MQA, so let that seep for a while like a good Earl Grey. In the context of this thread it’s about thermal compression/distortion/modulation, and there’s no escaping physics here with regard to overall size requirement of a speaker system that naturally accommodates high efficiency, and thus is much more impervious to thermal issues. The question though also seems to be: does it matter, or how much does it matter in a domestic environment with typically moderately sized listening rooms? Here’s a quote from yet another fine article supplied by poster @ditusa on the subject of efficiency: "In all fairness, this limitation in dynamic range [with a small, inefficient speaker system] is of little interest to many listeners. At "average" loudness, neither type of system is apt to be momentarily overloaded. But the difference can be easily demonstrated under the right conditions. The man who wants to hear the smash of cymbals, the "bite" of a Steinway grand, a full concert intensity, will not be able to duplicate these sounds readily with a bookshelf-type loudspeaker system. http://www.lansingheritage.org/images/jbl/reference/technical/efficiency/page03.jpg |
provided one has the space to accommodate the system. Many a good big system has been utterly compromised in a space too small or with another failing where a smaller less efficient system would shine. For ½ century, I've been telling people the room is part of the system and it's possible to buy the best of and end up with unlistenable!
|
- 81 posts total