"Power hungry" speakers

For all the years of audio mania, it seems to me that the component that consumes most of those precious watts are some overbuilt or heavily built crossovers, as well as the type of drivers used for the design of the speakers. Some rather large or what might seem to be very power hungry speakers, with large numbers of drivers can sometimes be more efficient than a pair of two way monitors (IE: array speakers)

Another consideration, especially with monitors, especially two ways, is that when their midwoofers are smaller, the more inefficient they are. Nevertheless, just because they are small and very inefficient (ie: 81 db per 1 watt at 1 meter) they are not necessarily hard to drive. An example of this are speakers that often accompany very cheap, low market mini system speakers that have this sort of spec, and yet, are rather loud with whatever low current watts that their companion amplifiers come with.

Efficiency is a matter of brands. Some brands seem to be notoriously difficult to drive, some that I associate directly with ineffiency are:

SONUS FABER
DYNAUDIO

and other ones that I cannot readily remember.

Bemopti: Right on. The more complex the crossover, the more "power hungry" the speakers will be. Not only are such designs "sucking up power", they are "eating signal" at the expense of losing micro-dynamics and detail. After all, there wouldn't be any power there if the signal didn't call for it. Losing that power means losing signal. Thermal inefficiency / power loss due to heavy parts count in the crossover is directly related to "lifelessness" in presentation with a lack of liquidity. These are speakers that measure great, but sound boring.

In my experience, many companies that make their own drivers and farm them out to other companies should stay away from designing / building / marketing complete assemblies. Dynaudio, Morel, Focal aka "JMLabs", etc... are prime examples. These companies all make good to excellent drivers, but lose sight of what music is and try to make a product that is technically excellent. In the process, their efforts to design something that is "worthy of their technical excellence" and "design prowess" ends up stripping the music of its' "soul".

The above "thermal inefficiency" comment should NOT confuse speakers that are simply less efficient with designs that have too many passive parts between the amp / drivers. Sean
>

Both of you (Sean and Bemopti) mentioned the use of complex crossovers that are consuming the Watts. As far as I'm informed, the crossover in the Sonus Faber Extrema is very simple. It is in fact a design without capacitors in the signalpath. How do you explain the fact that these speakers (the Extrema's) in particular are very power hungry?

I'm not familiar with Sonus designs at all. The only thing that i can think of is tonal balance. A speaker with a very laid back or semi-sunken response will never sound as "loud" as a speaker with a more forward ( or even "flatter" ) response. From what i've read, the Sonus speakers have a rather laid back / soft presentation. Sean
>

I believe the motor magnet affects efficiency.
The stronger the magnet, the louder the speaker will play with x amount of power.
The size of the drivers is also a factor. Tiny drivers cannot move enough air (to go loud) with average power.