How important is the efficiency of a speaker to you?

The physics of the speaker is a balancing act: if you want more efficiency you give up other advantages. Im not saying this is wrong, it’s simply a choice. A moderate efficiency speaker (86dB 1w/1m) is not a mistake either as it is just a different choice that enables other performance features that high efficiency cannot offer. You cannot have it all.

@lonemountain Unless you can. I have a set of Classic Audio Loudspeakers (model T-3.3) which are some of the most revealing speakers I've heard, even compared to the best ESLs. They are flat to 20Hz, are 98dB, field coil powered and 16 Ohms. So fast, revealing, full bandwidth and actually work quite nicely in a smaller room since you can back them up against the wall behind them without making them boomy or losing any sound stage palpability. Put another way I don't know of a speaker at any price that works better, although its probably out there. 

They are not cheap; IMO your comment would be more accurate if price were part of the equation.

@lonemountain --

The question is, certainly to me, what we’re actually disagreeing on here. My remarks above were aimed specifically at the parameters brought up by you, namely distortion, dynamic range and "better bass," and I’ll maintain that higher efficiency is the preferred route for these parameters to be better realized. While many understand high efficiency to be mainly about achieving higher SPL’s, to me it’s about what these designs offer sonically as a consequence of their higher eff., and that it translates at moderate SPL’s as well.

Decide what you want, then figure out what speakers do that.

To me it’s really the other way ’round; observation and discovery (and this is where open mindedness is truly challenged) ultimately points me in a direction of speakers and overall implementation, stuff I could hardly imagine or have come by if it weren’t for experimentation or even chance. It’s a process where preconceptions are readily confronted.

As to my clarification on efficiency, it exposes how many audiophiles tend to exaggerate the efficiency of speakers with a sensitivity range somewhere between the typical 80-90dB’s. Why, or how is that relevant? Because as poster @atmasphere and ​​​​@ditusa point to you don’t just compensate freely for low efficiency with more power, not even in a home setting, and this goes for both speakers and amps.

Efficiency is just one of these many features.

Sure, but for my own part I’ve never claimed it’s the only important aspect (though a vital one). Rather it often comes down to defending high efficiency in the face of the opposing view that low eff. designs can avoid the limitations of poor efficiency simply by adding more power, and thus, implicitly, are having the "fuller package" by comparison. I absolutely disagree with that.

@atmasphere wrote:

Unless you can. I have a set of Classic Audio Loudspeakers (model T-3.3) which are some of the most revealing speakers I’ve heard, even compared to the best ESLs. They are flat to 20Hz, are 98dB, field coil powered and 16 Ohms. So fast, revealing, full bandwidth and actually work quite nicely in a smaller room since you can back them up against the wall behind them without making them boomy or losing any sound stage palpability. Put another way I don’t know of a speaker at any price that works better, although its probably out there.

They are not cheap; IMO your comment would be more accurate if price were part of the equation.

I’d add it’s not limited by price as much as mere physics and overall execution/implementation.

@phusis

Nicely written! I enjoy your perspective. When you say that efficiency is not the most important aspect of performance, you and I are on the same page. I disagree that efficiency is the "preferred route" in achieving lower distortion, improved dynamics or increased bass. There are so many other avenues to these features.

I did not say that low eff. designs avoid the limitations of poor efficiency simply by adding more power. There may not be limitations of lower efficiency designs, depending on your goals. Or there could be limitations of a high efficiency design. I think the whole array of solutions are far more complex than high or low efficiency "spec" on a spec sheet. Whether something is 92dB 1w/1m in a loudspeaker gives you zero information about quality when compared to a 86dB 1w/1m spec.. You only know the designer chose to chase efficiency (probably for more than one reason). Intended application is everything..

Some lower efficiency designs can achieve lower distortion in the driver, or can extend low frequency of that driver or both. Or your lower effieciency design may improve cooling and power handling without extending voice coil length. I guess to me its like horsepower tells you zero about the performance of a car. There are so many different options available to a skilled designer that focusing only on a high efficiency design is not wise, again, depending on your goals. I favor lower distortion myself, I want to hear more of the fine details, the reverb tails, the room sound, etc. If I can have lower distortion that reveals more of that fine detail in exchange for a larger power amp, I’m in.  That's the trade off I am talking about.  And I'll stick to my guns on this one, you cannot have it all.  

Brad

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Dear @daveyf : The issue thatan amplifier working harder develops higher distortions could not be exactly as was posted.

You can read in the link that the JC 1+ gives you at full power output same distortion levels at 8ohm, 4ohm and 2ohms: 0.15%.

The other issue about is that the levl of distortions each one of us can detect it as an added colorations depends on what the brain amygdala whole audio/MUSIC information is hang on to for the life experiences of different kind of sound and different kind of SPLs.

J.Curl knows exactly how design  "  a huge ss amp upstream ".

Speaker efficiency always is important depending how you paired with the rigth amp in the rigth room and of course inside your MUSIC reproduction priorities or restrictions. 

Now and is something that you don't touched yet other than " good sounding " and you did not tell us with wich electronics ( overall ) you were listened, with which MUSIC sources and MUSIC gender and at which SPLs.

R.

Noise/distortion --> the room and the speakers trump whatever anyone’s attributing to any decent amp.

It’s like you’re having your carriage pulled by a dying horse, but you’re dead focused on greasing the wheels with some special oil secreted on a blue moon night.