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We should reject hard-to-drive speakers more often

Sorry I know this is a bit of a rant, but come on people!!

Too many audiophiles find speakers which are hard to drive and... stick with them!

We need to reject hard-to-drive speakers as being Hi-Fi. Too many of us want our speakers to be as demanding as we are with a glass of wine. "Oh, this speaker sounds great with any amplifier, but this one needs amps that weigh more than my car, so these speakers MUST sound better..."

Speakers which may be discerning of amplifier current delivery are not necessarily any good at all at playing actual music. 

That is all.

erik_squires
lanx0003
676 posts
 

In the opening, the OP said out loud that "We need to reject hard-to-drive speakers as being Hi-Fi". Now the tone was evolved to "... It's fine with me if you buy a car that gets 10 MPG. What I disagree with is the awe and bragging rights associated with that..." and followed by "No, your car is not better to ride in or more exclusive than high MPG Cars just because it's low MPG."

In reality, in the hi-fi world, I think very few audiophiles (if there is any) will procure speakers just because it's low efficiency. The speaker designed to have lower efficiency has its good reason. Take ATC speaker/driver as an example, if one desires a good low frequency extension out of a small-to-medium sealed enclosure (which I prefer) design speaker with a given size of driver, efficiency has to be sacrificed. Manufactures/designers could achieve higher efficiency by utilizing vented enclosure like tube/flat ports, lighter material for moving parts, horns, etc., but the sound reproduced from those designs may not suit some audiophiles' taste. In addition, quoted from the ATC designer, "The low mass parts are often not suited to the forces and resonances generated when reproducing audio at high SPLs and the structures that behave well at low levels can become unstable.  When the driver was reinforced for its stability and high internal damping, reduced sensitivity is unfortunately a trade-off.

 

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erik_squires OP
15,875 posts
 

In the opening, the OP said out loud that ...

 

It is really hard to get nuance across in a single sentence so I really am happy when readers take the time to digest the entire paragraph. Of course no one types things perfectly, and hard thoughts often require multiple drafts to craft well.

My apologies for the confusion but overall I stand by the entire paragraph, as a whole:

 

We need to reject hard-to-drive speakers as being Hi-Fi. Too many of us want our speakers to be as demanding as we are with a glass of wine. "Oh, this speaker sounds great with any amplifier, but this one needs amps that weigh more than my car, so these speakers MUST sound better..."

I realize that there are technological marvels which may be very hard to drive because of the way they are stretching the state of the art. The legendary Apogee ribbon speakers are probably the best example I know of at 1 Ohm resistive, and if that’s your thing go get some.

My complaint is more about the machismo that hard to drive speakers are naturally better sounding, and more hi-fi than speakers which meet their spec, and stay at 4 Ohms or higher.  Of course there are great sounding but hard-to-drive speakers as well.

I’d also like to point out that there’s a sub-thread here about high efficiency speakers which is not mine, I take no responsibility for those statements regarding efficiency vs. sound quality.

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atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,633 posts
 

yes low impedance in upper registers is nothing to worry about but tuning impedance curve in the lower registers to design a speakers desired characteristic. I am thinking Wilson speakers would be a good example some Wilson’s are known for having great slam in the lower registers, does this make sense or am I completely off base here?

@jeffrey75 I don’t think Wilson is doing what you’re suggesting, if that’s what you mean by ’off base’.

Take ATC speaker/driver as an example, if one desires a good low frequency extension out of a small-to-medium sealed enclosure (which I prefer) design speaker with a given size of driver, efficiency has to be sacrificed.

@lanx0003 While this is certainly true, what about large multi-driver full range speakers that are really hard to drive? They don’t get the Murphy that a smaller speaker does for low efficiency.

I might see this a bit differently because our ears hear on a logarithmic curve. I figure if 100 Watts won’t do the job, 200 or 400 Watts won’t either because 2 or 4x more power isn’t that much louder- 3 or 6dB. To get to a perceived ’twice as loud’ its generally accepted that you need 10x more power. In radio parlance this is known as ’gold plated deciBels’; 1000Watts, I think we can all agree, simply isn’t practical.

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