What is your take on high efficient speakers vs. low efficient speakers?
Consider both designs are done right and your other equipment is well matched with the speakers. Do you have any preference when it comes to sound quality? Is it matter of economic decision when it comes to price? - power amps can become very expensive when power goes up, on the other hand large, efficient speakers are expensive as well. Is your decision based on room size? I'd love to hear from you on the subject.
@smoothtech If the loudspeaker has a different nominal impedance than the volts needed to achieve a watt also changes. Some manufacturers calibrate their one watt to the different impedances. Other manufacturers stick with 2.83 volts regardless of impedance. This is why we need to be careful about reading specifications. If we have a 4 ohm cabinet then 2.83 volts is actually 2 watts. As we have doubled the power the loudspeaker sensitivity will appear 3dB louder. Is this fair?Imagine that you have two loudspeakers. Both loudspeakers have a sensitivity of 100dB referenced to 2.83v at 8 ohms at 1 meter. Your black loudspeaker is an 8 ohm box and your white loudspeaker is a 4 ohm box. You put them both on a separate channel off the same amplifier and play some music. You hear that your white speaker is twice as loud. Should both these speakers have the same sensitivity in the spec? Quick ReferencePlease use the table below as a quick reference to help you compare sensitivity measurements calibrated to different values.
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@alexberger wrote:
That outcome is also very much dependent on the specific amplifier used. I’ve heard a very good 30W pure class amplifier drive a pair of notoriously heavy load S.P. Technology Revelation’s rather effortlessly, whereas coupling them to a pair of 200W NuForce monoblocks felt like those amps struggled by comparison - even though, on paper, they’d have a +6dB headroom advantage. Which is also to say that the sensitivity rating is only a partial signifier; a complex passive cross-over can bring many a wattage proficient (but apparently PSU weak) amp to its knees, with the same amp performing closer to its full potential and rated specs presented to an easier load. A more load benign amp requires a sturdy, powerful PSU, and those things come at a cost. On principle though we fully agree. A difficult to drive pair of speakers, likely due to the "load severe-ness" as caused by its XO, presents a significant problem to me that only highlights why I’d rather have it configured actively sans passive XO, but that’s another discussion. High eff. passively configured, heavy load speakers would likely prove less of a hassle to the amp given that it has more headroom to deal with a complex XO.
In practicality I’m inclined to believe thermal modulation (as term also used by poster @audiokinesis) is the more general problem, as this comes into effect with peak heat build-ups in voice coils (and XO?) with short term transients, that dulls the perceived transients somewhat. It seems this phenomenon is less a studied field, but it could explain with why transient snap sounds more convincing with high eff. speakers. Not to say thermal compression isn’t an issue with low eff. speakers. Dynamic prowess and their fuller swings certainly takes a hit here. |
