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Speaker sensitivity vs SQ

My first thread at AG.

Millercarbon continues to bleat on about the benefits of high sensitivity speakers in not requiring big amplifier watts.
After all, it's true big amplifiers cost big money.  If there were no other factors, he would of course be quite right.

So there must be other factors.  Why don't all speaker manufacturers build exclusively high sensitivity speakers?
In a simple world it ought to be a no-brainer for them to maximise their sales revenue by appealing to a wider market.

But many don't.  And in their specs most are prepared to over-estimate the sensitivity of their speakers, by up to 3-4dB in many cases, in order to encourage purchasers.  Why do they do it?

There must be a problem.  The one that comes to mind is sound quality.  It may be that high sensitivity speakers have inherently poorer sound quality than low sensitivity speakers.  It may be they are more difficult to engineer for high SQ.  There may be aspects of SQ they don't do well.

So what is it please?

clearthinker

Showing 8 responses by alexberger

alexberger
938 posts
 
The thermal distortions in speakers and transistors have inertia and therefore are a heavier burden on our brain than conventional non-linear distortions.
In addition, changing the impedance of the speakers changes the frequency of the speaker filters, which leads to different sound at different volumes and issues with frequency and phase response. Electrical Q is changed that changes bass response.
The proper built SET don’t have issues with bass (with high efficient speakers). The problem is too many bad SET designs.
alexberger
938 posts
 
@audio2design ,
Thank you for the link to the article.
It is so sad that most audiophiles don't care about this one of the most important characteristics for speakers SQ.High efficient designs sound more alive, with better texture, micro and macro dynamics.In contrast - the high compression of low sensitive speakers masks important music information and causes listener fatigue.
In addition, most audiophiles don't have a clue how good sound tube SET amplifiers (with the proper high efficiency speakers) are compared to any transistor amplifier design.  
Regards,
Alex.
alexberger
938 posts
 
Hi @clearthinker ,

The problem is because high efficiency speakers today are rare a very few audiophile had opportunity to listen good implemented system with high efficiency speakers.
The other factor is the average high efficiency speakers are more transparent and shows more flaws of the system electronics.

I remember, for me it was shock when I at first listened a good high efficiency speakers system back at 2002. I was like a medieval knight who saw an army armed with aircraft and tanks.
Since that day I heard many systems, but any low efficient system didn’t impress me. In the best case they sound just OK. They also sound more boring in therm of music.
If any thing impressed me - it always was high efficient system!

Regards,
Alex.


alexberger
938 posts
 
@mijostyn ,

Maybe I'm missing something.
I have a resistor attached on chassis of my phonostage. The chassis is on open rack and good ventilated and it is much bigger than any voice coil. The power dissipated on this resistor just 8 Watt. And this power 8W make a big chassis temperature about 20C hotter compared the room temperature. It is not bad, but the voice coil is inside the little box and much smaller. 

Regards,
Alex.
alexberger
938 posts
 
@mijostyn ,

How can you cool the driver voice coil if you need 100 watts to listen to it at normal volume?
Even if you put a dedicated fan it wouldn't help!
In contrast if you need just 5 watt, you don't have this problem even with the most straightforward driver coil design.

Regards,
Alex.

 
alexberger
938 posts
 
Hi @clearthinker ,

The low sensitive speakers sound boring because they eat microdynamics that exist at live performance. They are simply much less musical.
The audio business (producers, sellers, reviewers) cheat you and sell you cheaper stuff as something good and fancy. 
I'm sorry. I don't want to be offencive. You asked what do people think about this topic. It is just my honest opinion.

Regards,
Alex.
alexberger
938 posts
 
Hi @atmasphere ,

There are a lot of examples when amplifier has mixed SE and PP stages.
For example some SET amplifiers have first stage SRPP and PP amplifiers have SE first stage before phase spliter.
Another example - SE preamp and PP amplifiers.
Do all these amplithis have a prominent 5th harmonic in addition to a 2nd and a 3rd ?

Regards,
Alex.
alexberger
938 posts
 
I'm completely agreed with @realworldaudio.
High sensitivity speakers give much more real music reproduction.
The low sensitive speakers, even big and expensive like Wilson Audio, Dynaudio,... have artificial bass reproduction and sound not alive. 
Electrostatic speakers have good microdynamics and sound more alive. But they have issue with macrodynamics and bass.
Regards,
Alex.
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