There's also the relationship between low frequency, efficiency (sensitivity) and box volume. As you'll always trade one for the other speakers boxes can now (with improved motor) be made smaller and that's easier to sell. But there's still some really great drivers out there that's built on say 40 year old technology that's good in sensitivity or might require slightly larger boxes.
Very well put Paul .... you've summed up the evolution of modern drive units ... Not only have the speakers and amps changed in the way they interact but also the speaker enclosures too. I recall listening to a vintage Goodman's 18 inch Audium 91 bass driver mounted in a gigantic bass reflex enclosure driven with only 50 watts and that system shook the house down ..
For those who want to learn more about this, do a search for Hofmann's Iron Law. Personally I like efficient speakers and think the ones with horns in particular are much better in an age of computer modeling and DSP correction, but it is true they have some drawbacks as well. Everything is a matter of tradeoffs and which ones you're willing to make.
Paul has been the go to channel for great information and help.. Paul klipsch supposedly used a 3watt rms amp to test their speakers!! The ratings are not exact
Back in 1972, I remember my Physics teacher (who was a brilliant electrical engineer, helped design parts for the earliest color TV's) explain why 10 watts was more than sufficient and how you could mount a loudspeaker into a wall to have a virtual infinite baffle. A year later I bought my Large Advents and 45 watts per channel... he wasn't necessarily wrong, but he also wasn't necessarily right, either.
So I'd say the high efficiency of the old speakers was only possible in a narrow frequency range, and certainly not in the low frequencies. In order to achieve a more flat response in a wider range of frequencies it was necessary to reduce the high efficiency within the midrange. It would also have been hard without modern transistors.
Midranges are the perfect speakers to be able to obtain the highest efficiency due to the frequency response. Tweeters by design are already very efficient.
If you look up the spec’s of those Amplifiers Paul is using to power those FR30’s compared to the sensitivity rating of those FR30’s. That is like a car doing 80 mph at idle. It’s getting the best fuel economy possible.
I’m still a bit confused even though I follow the general idea that more powerful transistor amps made it possible for speakers to become less efficient to gain other sonic advantages. But in 2023 we have an ongoing debate where 20W tube amps are considered as capable as 100W transistor amps. Or am I wrong? Is it that the 20W tube amp simply cannot drive a lot of modern loudspeakers? Or are Tube Watts better than transistor Watts?
Yes, sensitivity is measured in db/watt, but remember that it's db/watt _at one meter from the speaker_. The inverse square law tells us that 90db at 1 meter is only 84db at 2 meters, so it drops off quickly. Also, I strongly suspect that something like a Klipsch horn has different sensitivity for the horn driver vs the dynamic driver that's doing the bass duties, so if the bass driver has more power to draw from, the better.
@@PooNinja The speakers are always the “Slave” to the amplifier. It doesn’t matter if the speakers cost $20.00 or $800.000 dollars. They will always remain the slave to the amp.
@@davidfromamerica1871 headroom brother, I’m all about having way more power than necessary to preserve my clean headroom in my stereos and my guitar rig 🤘🏽
@@PooNinja There are some spec’s in an amplifier you want to pay attention to. If one is not sure they can google the spec. It will tell you what it means and does. Some spec’s are better high, others are better low % or numbers. They are important to the speakers.
I’m running 200x3 and 200x2 amps plus 200w subwoofer. So 1,200 watts. It still doesn’t seem to be enough because my neighbor threw a rock and broke the window to hear it better.
Back in the late 60s, 70s and early 80s, great amplifiers were powerful, good proportions, built to last and made in USA . And affordable. The likes of Krell, Ampzilla, Carver, Crown etc. Now they look like small sheds and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Give me a break. A bit like the modern sports cars which look like batmobile and cost millions. The world has gone mad. Back in my day,,,
Laws of physics once again. The variables are size, bass response, efficiency. All else equal, the bigger the driver the more efficient it is at lower frequencies. As only lower powered amps existed originally, size became the variable. Once more power was available to overcome lowered efficiency we could design smaller drivers to get to the lower frequencies by giving up efficiency. Step in air suspension/ sealed cabinets. Lot's of physics as to why, but trading off efficiency for low end response from smaller drivers was accomplished. So today we have little boxes on stands that can outperform closet sized cabinets from the past. If you have enough power behind them.
Most of the time we listen to music between 70 to low 80s db. That is less than 1 watt for an average speaker of 88 db/watt. I would think a 8 to 40 watt tube amp or 20 watt of solid state like the Schitt Aegir or Firstwatt amps would be enough for most. An even more efficient speaker of say 91 db/watt driven by a 20 watt amp could play to 100 db, while keeping amplifier distortion at less than 1% at least that is what many of the first watt specs show as it approaches maximum wattage.
If we're talking Tube amps here, i think most of us will agree we wish for a little harmonic distortion... without it music would still be Petula Clark and Cher....
I have a question for the connoisseurs: I have a pair of Technics SB-10, and I have 3 amps: Denon PMA-500Z recap, a Technics SU-V6, and a Yamaha M-70 with its M-50 preamp. I don't know on which one to play my SB-10 ? To the ear, I like the PMA-500Z recap. And my M-70 has a noise filter that melted and smoked, so I put it aside, but I don't know if it's worth repairing right now. What would you get if you could use these 3 amps for technics SB-10?
Yeah I just hooked up an old Pioneer SA-500A to my moderately sensitive bookshelves to test for my sister for resale. Well baste my turkey does it ever sound lovely! Set at 2'o'clock, it's more than too much volume driven directly from my old RME interface. It's only rated at 13W into 8ohms, and these are 6ohm speakers with maybe 89dba sensitivity. Maybe the bass isn't what it was with the Hafler or the NAD, but since I blew those up I really can't do an A/B comparison... 😅
I listen to demos of Western Electric tube amps driving voice of the theater horns and they are wonderful. So I have a different opinion. What came first? Big solid state amps or inefficient cheaply made speakers? The industry got lazy with speakers and could throw watts to cover it up. But they lost the life of the sound. I'd rather have an Aries Cerat horn system driven by 30w tube amps than 1kW amps driving some box speakers. But there is an advantage to having more watts than you need. Music just has more authority. Perhaps better transient response or lower slew rate? I don't know. It just sounds better as long as you give nothing up to get the watts. I use triode amps that can run at 25w or at 110w. The 110w sounds better. Same exact system, same music, source, speakers etc. Just disconnecting a couple of tubes.
"The industry got lazy with speakers" - no. That's just polemics on our part. Horns are efficient but are not accurate reproducers of sound, so lower efficiency speakers are used to be more faithful reproducers of sound.
@@jonathandavis9507 I don't see a correlation between efficiency and price. Some like Zu are pretty reasonably priced. Some single driver full range using transmission line to boost bass can be quite reasonable.
@@user-od9iz9cv1w I tended to think higher watts was to mainly to get smaller / stiffer / higher mass drivers to perform better. I’m not a speaker designer, though.
My stereogram is only about 3 or 4 watts into 15 ohms per channel. And it's reasonably loud. But quality wise it's not the same as my NAD and Dali system.
Exactly Paul ! Good answer.. (sorry to be a critic). This is one of those things where being around longer than everybody else is a good teacher, lol. Many people don’t realize the points you raise, and I’ll add that speaker efficiency is actually horrendous (as far as efficiencies go) being on the order of 1 % or less!, depending. It would be a bawling session if amplifiers had that kind of efficiency, lol. That said, there are guitar speakers that sound good with higher sensitivities since they lack the low end requirement, but I’ve never liked highly sensitive home audio speakers. I’d rather have a less sensitive pair powered up with a quality high power amp. High efficiency is all about conservation of energy, and is not synonymous with quality. Some people think it equates to saving money though, bc they really like the idea of a cheaper amp. Don’t fight the power, embrace it, fools. 🤣🤣😉
Does Paul ever respond? I guess he's a busy man. Why don't they make cd players with much higher output and amplifiers that can take the extra output without overload. The amps would not have to amplify the signal as much and we would all get more dynamic sound.
you need so many watts because transistors sound the worst when clipping so you want to be as low as you can be on the volume dial and have enough power. with class a or tube amps it's less of a problem since they don't sound so bad cranked.
Quicksilver Audio used to make their mono V4 Tube Amps large transformers uses (4) KT-88’s AKA 6550 tubes 100 WPC, KT -120’s 120 WPC and with KT-150’s newer tubes since 2013, 150 WPC. If you design Tube Amps without Transformers you need OTL Amps they use tubes that replace transformers and the have a lot more tubes! And you need an Auto former! OTL Amps Generate a lot of heat!
Vietnam, Iraq... Iraq again... truly, Ukraine is the first worthy of speaking about happ'nin for a looong long time. Shamest of the fullests of things and all. Whatever, at least a Russian folk didn't get censored for purely existing, let's listen to them watts and wattnots.
It often mistaking that, more wattage, more advantage. Being NOT an engineer, i csnnot explain the thinking behind the subject? But i do own a Pre/Mono amp combo, which each put out 56W, and those babies can take on, almost any kind of speaker, and that must say something to it all, right? So please explain someone like me :-) Btw: My amps are French and called: Lavardin (look em´up).
Speaker sensitivity iss still high but more watts is still a benefit regardless. Basicly you can't habe a too large amp but it can be too small so it clips.. That has always remained the same
I wonder if it was the promise of new 'exotic'materials that promised more then it could deliver, replacing the simple basic setups we learned from the start? I remember all sorts of weird shit when it comes to cone materials. It all seems to come back somehow. Oldskool with upgraded knowledge.
That was an answer? 😮 there are many variables to the question that was not considered. Example, some of the lower powered amps produced lower noise, no one worried about carbon consumption requiring less electricity demand, imports were not as common with costs on the shipping of heavy linear transformers. A 20/30 watt amp had a large enough supply to produce the required voltage to allow the power to flow to inefficient speakers. Let’s not forget that the governing bodies did not set the limitations to market power to the rms standard until the 70’s or 80’s.
Hmmm with less than 5 watt I power 802D3’s and it’s quite loud…. When we talk A/B amp’s the vendors are talking about lots of power which is needed. Once you go the class A route 50 watts is enorm… why? Power = Power = laws of electricity. Snake oil with some gibberisch?
There are still plenty of high-efficiency speakers on the market. Audio Note is particularly good in that respect and I've heard amazing systems using less than 20W, and even some with less than 10W.
I would say 20 watts is right on the money especially if they have a sub I had a twenty watt radio and I would crank it it would be perfect for watching a movie or listening to music while doing dishes
@@V1ralB1ack Called Klipsch recently, the man said that you need 10X the, `normal, average power,' that you're using, to handle brief, instantaneous peaks. Or, more! If you're coasting along at one or two watts, this is only 10 to 20 watts. When you want to, crank it up, once in awhile, how much? Let's keep in mind, that a cymbal crash, piano music, has a lot of, `peaks,' less of an, `average level,' if any at all ~ Can YOU hear the compression, when the amp runs out of power, even if it doesn't sound, `bad?'
@Richard’s Office actually, yes, if you know what you are listening for. There's a harsh sound when the amplifier goes into clipping, because it basically sends an approximation of a square wave to the speaker, which is a generation of a lot of harmonics that are not natural. The more clipping you generate, the more high frequency energy you send into the tweeter. The original Advent speaker had a three position toggle switch on the back for the tweeter. If you were going to crank up your system, you toggled to the setting that cut the frequency response to the tweeter so you wouldn't fry it.
When in your life time there was global peace. Iran-v-Iraq war, Desert Storm, Bosnia & NATO, Iraq, Afghanistan... 2T/yr of our taxes goes for funding wars.
Paul will be 75 years old next month. You missed a lot of "wars" or "Police Action" around the world in almost 75 years. Makes me question todays education process.
Currently your taxes (about 0.21%) + brave Ukrainian army are: 1. Disarming russian terrorist forces (so called russian army) to the point where they had to mobilize hundreds thousands, not to mention about half of all armored vehicles destroyed. 2. Protecting sovereign Ukraine nation living peacefully on their land from genocide. In 🇺🇦 we are incredibly thankful for all the support USA and allies are providing ❤️
@@mightyhail8707 You are welcome. I wish you and your country the very best in the fight for freedom! The U.S. was founded on freedom from tyranny. The U.S. gives out millions and millions of U.S. dollars to many, many different countries around the world that are in need of "help" in one form or another.
The problem with crazy powerful pro audio P.A sound systems, is really quickly, to use them at outdoor festivals the amount of generator power required is ridiculous! A 1 unit 20k amp requires a generator the size of a moderate truck! When our civilisation, can generate massive amounts of continuous electrical power, by non fossil fuel ways, in a reasonable sized portable format, we will have advanced massively! 👽
Speakers are voltage driven not current driven with a few exceptions. People think it's the high current delivery of having many watts that's doing the trick but big wattage amps have big voltage transformers. So what's actually happening is there's a linear region before a class ab amp goes from the a to the b and the extra power extends that region and as most only use a few watts in their systems because nobody needs that much they end up thinking they need that much. For example. the schiit ragnarok has its first like 3 watts in class a and the rest in ab. My smsl vmv a1 mostly runs 10 watts class a. My tube amp has 8 watts class a. How do they all sound? about the same in my apartment because I don't use many watts. If I push them all hard in a big room you may see some difference but even then I'd just use more efficient towers in a big room and I'm back to not needing the wattage.
Voltage across the driver drives the speaker. So, you need big current to maintain the amplifier voltage to move the speaker if it's impedance drops. Look up some lab reports on speakers, and the effective impedance caused by phase changes at certain frequencies can get down to 1 ohm, or even lower. What does this mean for current? Well, a typical 50 watt amplifier needs to push 20 volts into 8 ohms to deliver that 50 watts. But what happens at that low impedance point? We still need 20 volts across the voice coil to maintain a flat frequency response. So, at that point, we need 20 amps to prevent a drop in output. So, your statement is not true. Yes, we need big volts to create a loud sound. But, we need the high current to deliver that high voltage across all frequencies, depending on the impedance curve of the speakers being used.
Slide Beat ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cCbw_94jtT0.html WoW! ..3:27 am here, dark out (Moonless night) ..the birds are singing outside my window, while the beat goes on ..being played the first times. Glad the birds seem to appreciate. Maybe it is the Durban Poison but it sorta sounds like the birds are in a non-stop conversation amid the music ..this is cool.
64-Bit Dizzy Gillespie - Sometime's I'm Happy ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Ek4S9E52M_Q.html Strange, this makes for TWO Dizzy Gillespie songs that RU-vid credits to my name. My intent is to upload a preserved and alternate listening copy. I do not own Benny Goodeman nor Glenn Miller songs ..why the apparent giveaway of black, multicultural and music history? I am even going to try this a THIRD time ..using another loved Gillespie song, see what happens.
