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Are these speakers fully compatible?

I have a 10 watt 300B tube SET amp with these specs:

Power output: <= 10W x 2, THD <= 3%, 1Khz
Frequency response: 16—38 Khz, -2dB
Output impedance: 8 ohms
Signal/Noise: >= 90 dB

I was thinking about getting a pair of John Blue bookshelf speakers for my small room and the speakers have these specs:
Efficiency : 87 dB / W / mImpedance : 6 OhmMax power : 30 W

Would I be better off getting a pair of speakers with a 90dB effiency or higher?
spareribs

Showing 2 responses by elevick

elevick
2,638 posts
 
How I look at wattage. Continuous power, not peak.
I always considered peak to be bull anyway. The really good amps with great transformers could produce 3db extra on peaks and the lesser amps got 1.5 or so db gain.
However, crap amps kept boasting much higher peaks because they didn't care about distortion levels of 10% or more.

1 watt = 87db
2 watts = 90db
4 watts = 93db
8 watts = 96db At about 10db gain you will get a
16 watts = 99db perceived doubling of volume.
32 watts = 102db There you go, 15 db of gain at 32 watts
64 watts = 105db This is getting fairly loud
110 db is THX, 112db is ultra thx
elevick
2,638 posts
 
For quiet listening it will be fine. Going to 90db won't get much of an increase. 87db to 90db will double the power but it takes 10db to double the perceived volume. I'd look at 93db or better if you want to "rock".

Currently I have a 7 watt amp that drives 88db speakers fine. However, it really sings with my 94db speakers.
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