Although 3db is twice the acoustical energy, it takes 10db for our brain to perceive it as twice as loud, our brains are not linear in our perception of sound loudness.
Little known fact: Generally yes, however the perception is frequency dependent to a large degree, look closely at the curves and you will notice you need a lot less, about 4dB in fact, to double the perceived loudness in the low frequency range for example.
@@paulb4661 Fletcher Munson curve. Old radios had tonal compensation built in that would change the tonal curve as the volume went up. It was loudness compensation, but no one called it that back then. I agree with you, thank you for the added data.
@@zulumax1 On a side note, I think this better than expected intensity discrimination explains the ubiquity of vented enclosures on the market. The real lows are missing, as the characteristic drops like a stone below tuning frequency even with room gain accounted for, with the added "benefit" of excessive excursion, I might add. Post impulse ringing and group delay are also inferior to sealed equivalents with reflected mids and chuffing noises often echoing from the vents and yet that little bit of extra "boom" above the tuning frequency goes a long way. This imbalance essentially, is often exacerbated by placing speakers in close proximity to every possible room boundary - corners, with the resulting infamous "one-note" reproduction. Then again, many commercial speaker enclosures are so poorly built, the actual resonating walls "complement" sound output to such a significant degree, even applying the term Hi-Fi loosely is a misnomer anyway.
@@paulb4661 Could not agree more. Ports do much damage to the sound. There is also port harmonics at multiples of the tuned frequency and the fact that other midrange sounds exit out of the port and become latent and out of phase with the front wave. Only port designed I like is the Karlson design which is an exponentially opening exit to the port. Speakers are room energizers, placement, reflections, boundaries, objects in the room resonating. It is all futile but we keep listening anyways. I am experimenting with open baffle single driver design. Kind of a dipole flat baffle with a side wing. Speakers, rooms, and microphones do the most damage to the sound.
You can also trade truth for bullshit, that's the trade off. Unless you are living in some rural parts of outer Puboosia and Borat is your president (Hell at this point I'd prefer Borat) the AC power in your sockets do not need "cleaned" and all non defective audio cables sound identical. But you can trade off that truth for BS, that's the trade off...
This video is not fully correct. Bass response is governed by Sd, Xmax, and power handling. Box size also affects bass efficiency. Larger box = higher bass efficiency.
I love Paul, by far the very best teacher : clarity, explanations, audio, video, tutorials, short, effective to the point with not too much info & just the right amount of info & never condescending...always 👍👍 Looking 👀👂🔊🔜
you are wrong on your equation. for every 3 DB you gain you lose 1/3rd of an octave NOT 1 octave. for every 3DB you lose you gain 1/3rd octave bass extension ( this is assuming box volume remains the same. if effiency stays the same doubling box size gains you 1/3rd octave bass extension and vice versa. bottom line? there is no substitute for box size and cone area, buy the biggest speaker you can afford.. note, the upper limit in effiency for a non horn loaded woofer ( single woofer) is around 6% or 100DB at 1 watt 1 meter.
correct 9db/octave...but is non-linear...efficientcy can go higher in prototype/military applications, most stadium stuff is 103db/w/m for single 18 inch...twin 18s are 104-106db...a large 4way stadium single box can be 106db bass and 110db mids +highs!!😳😳😳!! sound extremely clean but use earplugs
Hi Paul, 8 times the volume probably is twice the hight, width and dept, 2 x 2 x 2 = 8? Still a lot bigger for one octave, but it won't fill the whole room. Thanks for all the explaining.
I recently switched from a pair of 92db sensitivity speakers to 87db, so quite a difference but both still in the "normal" range. Both speakers are rated for nearly the same frequency response by the manufacturers (down to 34Hz or 35Hz respectively) and both are ported. Well my god, it is extremely obvious that the 87db speaker has more bass. It sounds nice and it's so easy to blend / crossover with my subwoofer, something I've never been able to get quite right with my previous pair.
Engineering work arounds to that too. TAD Pioneer electronics designed a dual voice coil woofer with a special low mass ceramic cone. The second voice coil starts passing energy by the crossover to keep the bass roll off flat by dipping the impedance lower to 6 ohms under 50hz or so.
Thanks Paul. I think I got the essence of it. I can probably explained again.... without all the numbers on dB, Watt, Sqr ft and throw a lot of "believe me" in between sentences
If there was an easy way out, would there be any speakers with low sensitivity? For example Dynaudio speaker are not very efficient but if driven properly, they will outshine many efficient speakers. Certain people like certain sound and people tend to hear things differently too. Many likes mid range and some go for resolution at the top end. We are all unique is certain sense hence space for innovation and speakers of all kinds. Like what you hear or hear only what you like...? 👍
Good luck getting your alignment and coherency right in a small room with anything but perfect spatial alignment.. All in one boxes are still best if they fit your needs as they are designed to work together perfectly.
Hi Paul, That was an interesting topic there, thanks for sharing your insight ! I have a question- What about Klipsch Rf7iii ( i own a pair and the bass is wow ) they are rated at 100DB sensitive and the frequency response starts from 20 hz. They have 2 10 inch woofers per box:) . This is contradicting with your statement. Can you please explain?
Paul's example was simply a "for example". He wasn't referring to any specific actual speaker. Your Klipshes are spec'd as -3dB at 32Hz. For extreme low frequencies, your room and speaker setup have a very large influence on how low they will go. If you have brick walls, your bass will be much stronger than if you live in a flimsy mobile home.
@@ThePentosin Yup. They are also "8 ohm compatible' which isn't a true 8 ohm load so maybe 6 ohm in reality? Klipsch's high sensitivity numbers is a marketing lie IMO. Who cares how sensitive a tweeter/horn is when its the woofers that count? Did you also get them on sale as their pricing is also a marketing gimmick.
"This question comes to me from Zello on Zomprus Zemuli in the Nebula Contaliken. (Everyone who is anyone knows PS audio) She wants to know....... Geesh.
@lunam7249 What a complete tool that guy is the difference between that guy and a used car dealer is a used car dealer doesn't really know for sure he is selling a phoney product. This guy knows what he is doing. A purveyor of intulis maximus.
"Efficiency" is not JUST a matter of (moving) mass, it's also (among yet other factors) a matter of effective coupling of the driver diaphragm to the air, and that relates to effective piston (or horn mouth) area. A larger piston has greater air resistance and relatively less inefficient and turbulent "side-spill" (due to a higher ratio of area to circumference), therefore it is more effective at transducing mechanical motion to acoustical energy. You could say it has more traction to the room; another analogy would be a high-bypass turbojet engine. Also its inherently higher directionality increases its "throw", which does not increase overall efficiency but does increase its on-axis sensitivity. All else equal, a larger driver area gives a more dynamic listening experience... within its coverage area.
Thank you Paul for your continued, informative presentations. However, you failed at saying Klipsch, (O; and so much so that you slapped the JBL nametag onto a Klipsch product still being made some 73 years to this day! And yes, at 105 DB efficient, Paul delt with the bass issue by designing an EIGHT FOOT bass horn into a rather compact corner design to keep up with the big mid horn..............in 1946 !! Since the person writing in mentioned his Martin Logans, the ESL-9 Classic (in my system) are rated at 90 DB for those that are interested in the Masterpiece series e-stats being produced today.
SORRY but this OM hasn't a got clue. His "wisdom seems tb 1/2 centrury old. The "only true thing he mentioned is about the old Amps and the desire to play loud- this spured sensitivity speakers. Look at the B&C 18 DS115 (one of the most amazing beasts out there) it's got 98dB at 30HzFs, with a 40mm long voicecoil (almost 12cm in diameter !!!) and a 330g mass of the moving system. How you do this. It's all about Neodym (or field magnet drives like the big Focals) . The power of the peaker motor the OM did not mention at all. The reason for me is that high efficiency speakers are harder to control acoutically but also electrically (when the efficiency origins from strong motors) . Low efficiency speakers are - in ease words- smoother, less tendecy to come up with nervouse frequency respons curves etc. The "friedly behavior is achieved by high inner damping of the cone the spider and the surounds - all costing effiency. I could go on for a bit but here is why I like high sensitivity; You can sit at 1 am while youf family sleeps next door and listen to full body every octave music with great pleasure ......(ref JBL 4520 w acoustic lens mid horn and slit tweeter- 3 way active) ......
Yes. If the magnet is not magnetized (I guess it wouldn't be a magnet then) the efficiency goes to nothing. On the other hand, it doesn't work quite as linearly as one might think. The BL "constant' is the magnetic field density multiplied by the effective length of the voice coil in the magnetic gap and it determines the force exerted by the motor per unit of current. So, you would think that twice the BL would give you twice as much everything. However, there is a magnetic damping force created by the back EMF = BL*u where u is the velocity, that counters this. A great piece of freeware is Unibox for Excel. It is a good enclosure design tool and it allows you to play with these things. If you have an interest, and a few hours to kill, it is pretty fun. Cheers!
Not necessarily. Improving the efficiency of a speaker system can actually enhance bass performance if done correctly. Efficient speaker designs can often produce cleaner and more accurate bass, as they can handle more power effectively, resulting in better control over low frequencies. However, it ultimately depends on the specific design choices made by the manufacturer and how they balance efficiency with other factors like bass response.
I got a question,is "entry level" audiophile speakers like the b&w 606,monitor audio bronze 2 or focal aria 906 a waste to buy for bass heavy music like hip hop(and no i normaly turn down the bass on the amp)?I would just like to know since i dont see reviewers using hip hop music to audition speakers.
I know some speaker cabinets (2 stereo and 1 bass( that can hit 118 dB SPL at 1 meter at 1 watt. My old Sunn 2x15 front=facing rear-loaded folded horn that could blast a theater with 100 watts. However, if you had an acoustic labyrinth speaker with a 6" woofer, it would probably sound better for pipe organ or electronic music. The Sunn cabinet was made to compete with guitar stacks, but the bass only goes down to about 40 Hz, so you're mainly hearing the harmonics. if you want to play a 32 Hx pipe organ note, you wound need a design that sacrifices efficiency for very deep bass. Very deep Nass costs a lot in power. Take a look sometime at the baddest pipe of.a big pipe organ, and you can get an idea of how long the wavelength is that you are trying to reproduce. From my understanding, the acoustic labyrinth speaker (with a very long rear port) can actually have a speaker play below its resonant frequency. I haven't tried it, but I've read about it. Now that I've switched from a 4 string bass going down to E. I have an extra string that goes down to the B below the E. It makes me more aware of the deep bass issue. It's a trade off.
As a speaker designer there's some considerations that I always make the same decisions with; homes here in europe are getting smaller and smaller, for more and more money, so if I go by hoffman's iron law of "bass response, small box, sensitivity; pick 2", then I'm ALWAYS going to choose small box, and with how most modern music is recorded and the reluctance and difficulty adding bass through subwoofers, I'm probably also going to choose bass response. The other reason I'm going to discount sensitivity is how electrically noisy home environments can be these days, and how infrequently people use decent power conditioning, a high sensitivity tweeter is going to expose your noise floor MUCH faster than a low sensitivity design, if I can improve other aspects of the speaker and reduce that noise floor, I'm going to do it. I do risk alienating the old-school crowd in my design approaches, but I hope that hi-fi will come back into fashion with the younger crowd and I believe my designs are much more orientated to their needs.
@@mctapia12 I've always got some sort of project on the go, the pair I'm just finishing up is a 2 way 14 litre bookshelf using ultra affordable components and crossover duties done by Cabinet design rather than electronically. I've managed to get them to play 35hz-20khz +\- 3db
without getting full on "mathy" with you.....the ratio of speaker size to the frequency of sound thier playing.....take a 100hz = 12 feet long....so you would need a woofer cone 12feet/4 = 3 feet woofer cone!!! to be 100% efficient, 10 hz = 120 feet long.....120feet /4 = 30 feet....a 3 foot horn sub box = 10% efficient AT BEST!!!!
great question, perfect answer without any high end voodoo. Maybe what could be added: Smaller, low efficiency woofer have more problems with power compression due to high power input. Huge excursion of woofer causes several distortions like more doppler effect and the nonlinearity of the mass-spring-system.
This is why I love audio as a hobby. Nothing’s perfect nothings every really done DONE always room for improvement. And you can enjoy it pretty much 24 hours a day in one form or another. I’m into both car and home audio if I had a boat I’d be into boat audio as well 😎
Hi Poul Thanks again for the tech talk. They do make medium efficient speakers with low fs. I just bought a pair of 10” woofers with a fs. At 18Hz and a efficient of 89dw Yes they were ...
Modern amplifiers may brag of some tiny distortion figures but speakers are on another plane. They're terrible, the physical realm is not easy to work with.
Most informative video ever. All are informative but this one is tops. It explains why my 462 Dayton Audio 9inch tall speakers with 4inch woofer AMT tweeter 84 sensitivity has such great bass. Thank you sir.
cerwin vega CD and D series are very efficient and have big ol bass 30Hz-20kHz, 98dB, not particularly big. clean bass. boom! theyre party speakers. wouldnt be party speakers without that bass response and sensitivity.
Hi Paul, I would like to hear answer about overall sound quality. Does higher sensitivity loudspeaker will reproduce sound better than lower sensitivity loudspeaker? I mean vocals for example. Low frequency it is for subwoofer.
I'll tell you the truth. Many speaker elements that have 95db at 1watt and 1 meter or 100db do not have as good sound quality. you often need more crossover parts to get good sound! speaker elements such as 8 inch which are at 80db or 85 db often have better sound and are easier to make a crossover. Yes you get lower sound but often better sound! For example, PA speakers often have 95db or 100db or higher a 3000 USD speaker does not always have better sound than a 100USD. watch gr research on youtube
There are some speakers that don't sacrifice bass response for high sensitivity and they're not huge boxes. . I don't like to name names, but Klipsch Legacy and Audio Note are examples. (No, I don't own a pair and I'm not shilling for them.) I'm not an audio engineer, but it seems to me that it is just being technologically lazy: if you can easily make a low sensitivity speaker with standard parts driven by a 100 watt solid state amp, why bother to make a high sensitivity speaker using less common parts (and less common design experience) that works off a 10 watt vacuum tube amp (or a low wattage solid state amp for that matter), when that market is much smaller. My real curiosity is whether higher-sensitivity speakers can produce more detail than lower sensitivity speakers since they can produce sound from smaller signals.
You can keep trying to make me hate my Klipschs but it will never happen, seriously though my klipsch are efficient and have plenty of bass/large drivers. I prefer an efficient large driver larger speaker besides who cares if the mains sacrifice a little bass for efficiency thats why we have massive subs these days! Btw thats klipsch cornerhorns not jbl
seems like a big maybe. an entire octave of bass drops off per 3dB of sensitivity increase....starting at what rating/number? i'd love to know that i have certainty, trust me i would. are there other sources that say this? its not easy to believe exactly! might be true just a bit annotated here, if so.
Troels Gravesen is now selling a range of medium to high sensitivity kit speakers which he claims sound better than his lower sensitivity designs.From what I have heard I would believe it.Higher sensitivity speakers sound more like live music.
To the point here, if anyone really does want info on this, track down and read *all* of the truly great audio pioneers Paul w. Klipsch's "Dope from Hope" white papers. These are far from being promotional material for his company. Do that and it will all become crystal clear.
I am using a pair of JBL LX2005. The sensitivity is 91dB, Frequency Response: 35Hz to 22kHz, Recommended Amplifier: 10 to 250W and they sound great coupled with my valve amp build in the 1960's. I don't think I would get the enjoyment with the valve amp if they were not as sensitive. PS love the videos Paul and I have learned a lot, thanks.
Audiophile addiction is a euphoric journey! Just when I though I had a pretty good understanding of how something works, I then get slapped with captivating information such as this. Paul's the best. Thanks for bringing joy and a big smile into my stressful life, as well as to your audiophile community. Merry Christmas 🎄
Yes, quality of bass and quantity are very different things. My 15" Tannoys sound huge, and will kick you in the chest with drum hits, yet they really don't go very low.... down to only around 45 Hz. I prefer them with a sub.
Hi Paul, just an additional point. a higher efficiency speaker hooked up to an amplifier at the same volume setting almost always soundsbetter unless it is driven into high distortion or worse. As per Fletcher and Munson and their successors, our ears have less sensitivity at the frequency extremes than in the middle. So, the higher volume speaker will sound better, all other things being equal and, sometimes, even when they are not. So it is always good to match volumes between speakers precisely before comparing them. A quick way to do this is to switch between the speakers using white or pink noise which can be found in many free apps and is well approximated by interstation hiss! Comparing speakers at different levels was a favorite trick of unscrupulous Hi-Fi dealers back in the day. Thanks again!
I have been wondering about this forever. You find efficient and less efficient speakers in the market. Both can be inexpensive to very expensive. And yet the difference in terms of what can drive them is dramatic. I could never wrap my head around why everybody didn’t make only efficient ones--Now I know. Thank you
Learning new things every time I watch another video. Even if the subject has been covered in previous ones. I appreciate you explaining them different. Thanks Paul! Need more talks with Darin on amp and preamp designs. Be cool if he could show on a circuit schematic or the spice program the designs and what he is aiming for and describing. Perhaps this is too in depth. It would be fun. Maybe bring out the portable whiteboard?
Just for a fun comparison ... my MTX jackhammer 22 with a sensitivity of 90 db will be in a ~ 4 cubic foot net sealed box shooting in to a fourth order band pass with 11,500 watts rms @ 4 ohms at 14.4 volts ...
I always feel I’m kneeling at the feet of the master! Thanks again for another brilliant video. Small speakers with bass means inefficient. So simple when Paul explains it.
This is great. Thanks Paul 👍 What I seem to notice also is that higher sensitivity speakers become loud quickly so it’s harder to control the volume. Goes too low then goes too high etc. Impedance also seems to play a factor? This goes back to the car stereo days but my buddy had a certain amp and system that was very sensitive to volume. There was no circular knob control either. It was a slide bar type deck. So when you pushed the lever up even slightly it would easily start to distort. One of the amps also went out. Realized he was running each channel at 2 ohms which was not ideal for this particular amp. He had 4 8 in subs each rated at 4 ohms. We didn’t pay much attention to sensitivity. I re-wired into series vs parallel and everything was much better. Amp still had enough power to drive the 4 subs. The volume was much more easy to control also. Does distortion factor into the speaker sensitivity also? Meaning the more efficient the speaker the more likely noise can be picked up?
Sedgefield where former slimeball the blairwitch PM of England resided if I remember correctly not a county though neither is England. But a town in County Durham I think Paul skipped geography lessons at school if they even teach that in the US of A
Totally disagree on bass statement.. my tekton ulfberts are 99 sensitivity and bass is crazy good 20 hz .. the statement of high efficiency speakers having no bass is a total lie .. cheap junk high efficiency speakers have no bass is a accurate statement.. and you hear alot more micro detail and way better bass than any 85 87 89 even Speakers ill never buy another pair of speakers that just take all a amp has to hear less at any price.. ive owened 100 pair speakers in 50 years
@@EricLS well the tekton ulfberts are 20 hz im powering them with ps audio m 700 monos and ps audio dsd dac so thats clear im not saying stuff to put ps audio down.. im stating what i hear from 87 89 db speakers compared to high efficiency 99.6 and they dont get crazy loud with low power and they eat current .. also had my two kilo watt ead powermaster 2000 .. is all paul does not know everything i mean he likes those servo woffers in the infinity speakers he loves so much.. and the dac randomly turns volume on at 50 db the techs blame roon labs .. but its not roon labs.. its the dac and this my second dac as one blew up but they have great customer service but they lie.. so dont believe everything this guy says like he saying basically the higher efficiency speaker suck thats i lie
Funny how company that makes the dac witch is awesome dac @5,999 plus 900 dollar bridge cant fix this problem there will be a review video on my facebook and my instagram on this issue ty
I recently picked up a pair of Tekton Lores and also have the same observation where their high efficiency of 98 dB does not compromise the bass response. In fact, I no longer use my subwoofer for 2 channel listening, only home theater. The Lores replaced a pair of 86 dB Magnepan MMGs as my main speakers, and as much of a Magnepan fan as I am, the Lores surpass them in detail, dynamism and bass response. This all runs contrary to your explanation albeit I respect the science that supports it. There’s got to be something else going on that allows the Tektons and other speakers of that type to succeed with high efficiency and uncompromised bass response. Maybe I’m just getting better bass definition and confusing that with volume or depth. I always look at the efficiency spec on speakers of interest and, at this point in my audio evolution, don’t think I would ever consider a speaker that wasn’t of high efficiency. Having high efficiency speakers opens up an entire universe of amplification possibilities, adding to the fun factor.
It's a nearfield monitor, isn't it? Low sensitivity (or low amplifier power) is not necessary a problem for close range use. 82 dB @ 1 m = 88 dB @ 0.5 m.
Efficiency is a trade off. The most efficient speakers are used for PA systems, but they also have to be able to handle huge amounts of heat from the hi wattage amps they use. Low efficiency speaker have have more damping. That helps when you have an impulse or quick beat of a bass drum, the damping makes the speaker stop ringing very quickly. Ringing, especially in the woofer , cause distortion of the low frequency audio signal. So a quick hit on the bass drum sounds boomy, and doesn’t stop ringing as fast. But they’re are speakers that do fairly well in the efficiency department and in the damping department. But they’re hard to find. This is the main reason that speaker builders are moving to smaller bass drivers. My old 12” were not anywhere as good as my 7” Focals.
A short voice coil moving small amounts couples to the amplifier better than a long voice coil playing at small movements because parts of the overhanging coil are just getting turned into heat, it is no longer part of the magnetic circuit. That is why you need more power to dampen a small diaphram high excursion design. High damping, high current delivery. Kinda backwards, big speakers, small amp and a big amp with small long throw stand mount speakers.
@@SJMessinwithBoats Common misconception is that people with large amplifiers listen to loud music, and people with small amplifiers must listen to soft music. I find the opposite to be true generally speaking.
@@SJMessinwithBoats To quote Jay Leno: "It is more fun to drive a slow car fast than it is to drive a fast car fast." True, how true. My first sports car was an 85 horse power Datsun 1500. Big fun, and a beautiful noise when the twin carbs open up.
@@zulumax1 I had a stroker crank, cam and a Webber side draft carb on my Audi fox. 0 to 60 was 8 seconds at every stop light and never had to rev it over 5k rpm. And...there wasn’t too much wrong with the stereo either🐸
It all hinges around the Holy Trinity of Vas Qts and fs. Non linear Bl ( and voice coils that are double the length of the magnetic gap ) are the main cause of inefficiency
To make up for the lack of bass, I added isobaric subs and got them to couple with the main woofer. (They are right next to the main woofer) But it’s not Audiophile. There’s an amp channel for each driver and some active crossovers involved.
Correct! But the is more compromises in intertwine with the trade off such as the addition of a bass port. For simplicitys sake however, you're it's correct. There is also similar trade offs in the design of a speaker driver, being stiffness, lightweight and damping.
That's spot on, in speaker design there's something known as "Hoffman's Iron Law" that basically states: high sensitivity, deep bass response, small box size; pick 2.
@@maxb.simonsen2459 In some ways you can add price into this triangle as a 4th corner, by using 2 drivers isobarically you get almost identical performance for sensitivity and bass response, but you can half the box size.
I have Capella CP-3000 that are 60 watt RMS, 4-8 Ohm, 85db sensitivity, 3-way speakers (Engineered by Bose) in the early 80s. They need a good amp, bought a Yamaha RX-V450 AV receiver and that did not cut it at all. Later I bought a Behringer iNuke NU1000DSP amplifier to drive my transducers that I have on my racing simulation chair/rig, and I hooked up the speakers to that. I was blown away by the audio quality I got from them once properly driven. Especially the bass got so nice, tight and correct sounding. Crappy thing is that the PA amp has a fan in it that makes a lot of noise. Nothing to worry about on stage, but in the livingroom it's a no go.
Interesting topic. I am currently tinkering around on hub dynamo powered stereo system for bicycle (with a buffer batterie of course). The electric part (dynamo , small mppt solar charger to get the max out of the dynamo, a nimh battery and a small class d amp with 12W) works much better than expected but the speaker design is hard. With the 5th prototype (aiming for the most boom for the watt) i now have a weird looking 6 liter ported speaker on both sides of my front wheel and it only starts to sound decent. And even if most of the people i ask find the sound quite good, i want to build something that sounds better than a 90's portable cassette stereo. PS i can send you a picture if you want to have a laugh
That really was a great question... My front speakers are 89 db sensitivity and my new center is 96 db, I sent back my Elac because it sounded "muddy" but it had a sensitivity of 85db. Today I will test the new center (Klipsch RP450c) which is a "2.5" way speaker with a claimed sensitivity of 96db and see how it sounds.... I am starting to wonder about setting the crossover at 70 hz for LCR instead of L+R at 50 hz and the center at 70?
This is the first time I got an explanation why bookshelf speakers have a lower impedance. About 25 years ago I bought a pair of kef reference one speakers, they were 90 db at 8 ohm. My amplifier was a 50 watts at 8 ohm. The amp I bought was half the price of the price I payed for my speakers. I don’t play a high volume and that worked fantastic. I play all sorts of music going from renaissance vocal music to Led Zeppelin and the music sounded always fantastic and realistic. Went to classical performances as to rock performances. Now I’m playing with an Arcam surround receiver with great power and a set of Audio Physic Temp speakers who needs lots of power. When my wife and I bought a studio not to small were we are staying regular and were we going to live in a few years. I searched for a set of bookshelf speakers and found out those speakers needs a very expensive amplifier with lots of power and price of the amp was far much expensive than the speakers and I didn’t understood why. With video I got the explanation. Thank you very much. At the end I bought an marantz streaming receiver with 60 watts at 8 ohm and 80 watts at 4 ohm and a pair of speakers from Amphion Argon 1. They have the same price as my amp. And they are good match. Greetings from Belgium Ludo
When i play a grand accord on a grand piano with fortissimo , it produces 115db/1m peak....if the speaker and amp cannot deliver the signal will be compressed, its called crest factor....a belgian audio constructor worked with vitavox s2 and klipschhorn or jbl 2245 bass , so minimal 96db/w ....
Sedgefield. Sedge rhymes with hedge. A 15-watt Vox AC15C2 with 12” 100db celestion blue speakers WILL blow your socks off. Not much use for home hifi though. Good video 😎
Great explanation thank you. I bought a pair of Hertz for my front doors in my truck for use with the anemic factory radio because they had the highest sensitivity I could find at 93. I also noticed the woofer cone construction of paper was unique compared to other options and didn’t understand why until now. I also didn’t understand the relationship to bass response. While tuning my system my heart was telling me the front crossover should be set to HPF and close to 80, but my ears were telling me between 100-150 sounded more balanced with my sub set at closer to 110-120 instead of 70-80ish (both slopes 12db).
In my world (guitars), a 99dB speaker is super common. Is that because the lowest (fundamental) note a guitar is likely to make is still relatively high in pitch, compared to say, a T-rex foot trodding? They don't need to worry about fat bass response in guitar amp speakers?
DCM used labyrinths inside their boxes to move more bass using more efficient mid-bass drivers. The DCM Timeframe 600s have 92dB sensitivity and can go down to 30 hertz using a mid bass driver.
Dear Paul, sorry for my formerly not so friendly comment! In the meantime I had the pleasure of listening to a couple of your videos and certainly you know about all of the details. I guess it is just difficult to bring it all up in those 6 min casts. In fact you regained all of my sympathy when I took note that you are a high efficiency addict (like me). In particular I like your statement (quote just alike..) : "take a high efficiency system and try to optimize it with the least possible compromise...." That is EXACTLY my approach in speaker building!!!
So higher sensitivity rating combined with a low hz rating is what to look for? I"m trying to apply this to car audio. Feel like I got sucked down the wormhole high power instead of efficiency starting with the amp then sub/box.
Maybe a word about what speaker sensitivity is would helpful. Unfortunately everybody doesn't use the same definition. It's always good to be on the same page.
