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?

128x128clearthinker

Showing 9 responses by mahgister

Reproduction of sound/music, is NOT the same as creation of sound/music.
Ok i will not answer to all your distortion of my points...

Except these one...

Pure "Reproduction" of sound/music is IMPOSSIBLE in practice... It is a path where each foot is placed on diverging choices.... The management of these choices are what i called a "recreation" of what was a musical creation in a living stage or room...But you dont answered that point at all...You only call me ignorant  like it was an argument....Recording engineer by the way are not only scientist but artist for this reason...

I cite Toole about reflections and someone who contradict him, just to relativize your own DOGMATIC affirmation that all primary reflection are bad... You distorted my intention like usual..Read your own posts before answering me . Or keep a red string in your head....Even late reflections can be good if wisely used by the way...

I contested not, the fact that nature lack walls and reflections, 😊 but your false assimilation of nature and an anechoic chamber, remember?.... Here also you distorted my intention...



I will let you with a tidbit to pounder also with the same arrogance you always keep with any " ignorant audiophile"...

Why do you think speech is badly perceived in an anechoic chamber?

A clue: Most headphones have ALSO a room with reflections...This is their shell....

I already have a life and i try to not attack other audiophiles with my dogmas....It is not your case... Practical acoustic is an art based science not a science, like medecine is an art by the way...







«Ignorance come first from what we know, not from what we dont understand»- Anonymus Smith
«audio2design to @tomic601 , that makes no sense at all.
If you go into an actual natural environment, short of being in a cave, or very close to a cliff, or in front of a large tree, the only source of reflection is the ground, and normally that is dirt and somewhat soft (absorptive) ground cover. Trees by virtue of being somewhat round, make excellent diffusers. That negates your whole argument right there.
That nature you mentioned? Predominantly it behaves more like an anechoic chamber w.r.t. music reproduction than it does the average listening room.»

Complete non sense, an anechoic chamber ideal is absolute silence measured in Db....Nature is anything except absolute  artificially designed "silence" measured in Db....

«Also negating your argument is your room is not the recording studio, or the concert hall, or the church. For the most part you want to negate the impact of the room so that the acoustical cues in the recording are clearly communicated to the ears/brain and you hear what was recorded.»
Complete non sense the recording cues from different microphones and different location are RECREATION after trade-off choices from the recording engineer, not PURE reproduction....Then for the most part we want our room to be an helper to facilitate the concrete recreation of our experience of timbre; the information about timbre being partially lost or distorted by virtue of the trade -off choices in the recording process....Our room can compensate and facilitate or impede this natural recreation....

«Removing early/loud reflections via speaker placement, broad band absorbers, and diffusion absolutely will do this. Close late reflections are bad too.»
Complete non sense, because first: even world-known acousticians are not in complete agreement about the suppresion or partial use of the early reflections...read this article where Floyd Toole speak positively about using some early reflections but is criticized for that...

https://ethanwiner.com/early_reflections.htm

It is a fact verified by science that speech recognition is greatly improved with some early reflections... Which one and the timing with late reflections is an acoustical complex problem not to be solved by dogmatical ignorance...

https://nrc-publications.canada.ca/eng/view/accepted/?id=dd3c1e7a-8d8d-440e-bbcd-04c69ef20419

«I expect few people have actually heard stereo speakers in an anechoic chamber. Contrary to popular opinion, it is not bad at all, with pin point natural imaging.»
Complete non sense...
Read what musician think about that in this link:

https://www.violinist.com/discussion/archive/23998/

«I expect few people have actually heard stereo speakers in an anechoic chamber. Contrary to popular opinion, it is not bad at all, with pin point natural imaging.
There is a big difference between audio reproduction and a new sound created in a room. Voices sound weird in an anechoic chamber because there is none of the expected echo . Recorded music sounds predominantly natural because the echos are already built into the recording. Your eyes and brain may be at odds though. That nature you mentioned? Predominantly it behaves more like an anechoic chamber w.r.t. music reproduction than it does the average listening room.»
Another nonsense here....What is true for some aspect of imaging is NOT true for timbre perception...These phenonema are correlated yes but not reducible ONLY to frequencies accuracy...

Sound in an anechoic chamber sound a bit like headphone, said Floyd Toole, the sound is in our head...In nature sound dont live in our head , for our survival we must locate sounds and identify clearly speech articulation....Then the metaphor comparing nature lack of echoing walls and anechoic chamber is bullshit....The level of sound recorded in a silent desert cannot be compared to an anechoic chamber by a margin measured around +30 Db......You dont jump because of your heartbeats in a desert, in an echoic chamber you do.... It is even dangerous to live there more than 45 minutes for many people....

"Recorded music sounds predominantly natural because the echoes are already built in the recording" is non sense because it is not the echoes that are built in in the recording but some information about the original room where the musical instrument were recorded with a lost of information and his inevitable distortion by the inevitable trade-off i spoke about linked to the choices made by the engineer between for example the 4 different kind of microphones he can use and their specific location...Not one microphone can record the same information even at the same location....These choices implicate a distortion in the information recorded about timbre for example...

The audiophile room is precisely what can help the recreation of a more natural sound if rightfully designed or acoustically treated, not only to erase some bad timing actions from the walls, but to use and take advantages from some others... It is called positive timing acoustical events...This information coming from our room can help us to recreate the natural timbre of the initial instrument in his living location and compensate in some way for the lost of information or the distorsion of the information coming with the recording process....



I will conclude by saying that the decision to voice or not speakers in an anechoic room is a technical matter in the hand of speakers designer specialist...BUT thinking that an anechoic chamber is good for a musical experience is ridiculous...Designers of speakers can and must ask for EXPERIMENTAL conditions that have NOTHING to do with immediate musical listening conditions and are more linked to the improving process of the limitations of their structural design... Ignorance only can confuse together, digitalisation of sound, acoustical and/or musical information... They are related but are 3 different events or process....

Then pretending that anechoic chamber reveal more information because frequencies perceptions are more "pure" is ignorance clothing in knowledge...
It is like pretending that flying ourself in an aerodynamic chamber or a wind tunnel is the more truthful experience for flying...

Confusing the resistance of the parts of a plane in a wind tunnel with real flying action and impression, is like pretending that the more" accurate" frequencies perception and imaging in an anechoic chamber "sounded more natural" than in a treated acoustical room using reflection and timing events created for human ears to recreate musical timbre and not only imaging ...

Perhaps robot will prefer anechoic chamber....They dont like what seems to them" useless" information, like the "colors" of a stradivarius compared to an ordinary or mediocre violin....Like us humans....😁

The few high-end brands left are struggling for market share in this age of ear buds.
Thanks great post...

It explain to me why my Tannoy were so good.... 😁

Alas! i own them no more...(2 pairs)

Happily my Mission Cyrus help me to forget them, they are very well embedded in all 3 dimensions, then even if they are not on par in quality with the Tannoy, they sound better than my Tannoy non well embedded ever sounded to my ears...

I will not go further, the word "embeddings" is not very liked, being not understood....

My best to all...

A note: someone not tired to read all day long reviews of costly new electronical design possible "upgrades" said that my "evangelization" of people is too much for his ears.... It is unbeliveable that people are so gullible to throw their money without thinking about the way to use in the better way possible what they already own....




«You can change opinions, you cannot change science»- Harpo Marx

«It is like reverse engineering brother, you can change science and after that opinions change»-Groucho Marx
 There are so many varied considerations in speaker design that it is difficult to be versed in all of them. So, we are left to art and our own devises, hearing. We all have our theories and preferences which is what makes this fun.
I concur tough with the rest of your post...

Sorry if i seem rude....Anyway you dont read my posts anymore... 😊

My best to you....
Has anybody ever wondered by no two loudspeakers sound alike? Assuming there is only one accurate sound, that would mean that everyone except for maybe one company has it wrong.
Sorry but this is completely non sensical...

First "accuracy" is a complex chain of measured numbers, for example in the standard processing of designed pieces of electronic components, but "accuracy" in this sense had "no audible signification" except to certify that a piece of electronic component was rightfully designed....

Then the "accuracy of a sound" is in no way synonymus with the accuracy of an electronic design pieces or the accuracy of the audio system and the accuracy of sound is never reducible to them for his only source and cause...The "accuracy of sound" is a phenomenon mainly linked to the relation between the audio system and his embeddings linked to the ears/brain evalutation...

Then "assuming there is only one accurate sound" is a sentence with absoletely no meaning....And accuracy of a sound in music, is not accuracy in the acoustical sense...Timbre for example is not reducible to tone accuracy only...The accuracy of a sound produced by an electronical design in a laboratory has nothing to do with the accuracy of a sound in a room...

The sound did not come from our speakers to our ears directly in a pure delivery without any noise from any source, but on the contrary is the results of a complex acoustical interaction with the room....More than that the audio system is immersed in the mechanical dimension, in the electrical dimension and in the acoustical dimension, then the sound coming from our speakers is the signal/noise complex chain that is modified by these constraint i called the 3 embeddings....


Then your conclusion is also totally absurd because saying that all companies have it wrong is , like someone who want to recreate the wheel, especially, a non circular wheel....All company have it all relatively right in the limit of the trade-off implicated by electrical and mechanical constraints in the design of speakers and the choices they made...There is no perfect speakers, there is some better than others for some ears and for some goal....

Sound quality, timbre experience, imaging etc all these qualities come from the audio system in his totality embed in a specific room , in a specific house, and in a specific electrical grid..

Someone who think that human experience of musical sound come from the speaker design mainly is beside his shoes...

Why there is no 2 speakers that sound like each other?

The list of reasons is so numerous that reducing it to  difference in electronical design and mechanical design of speakers is very misleading...

But in audio thread the electronic design importance veiled for most eyes/ears the importance of the embeddings...

A piece of electronic design cannot work optimally in a non controlled environment.... Is it not simple?


Of course, it all depends on one’s priorities in reproduced music. If dynamics is your No.1, high efficiency is for you. I myself am not willing to give up transparency and/or natural timbre reproduction to get dynamics. Are dynamics and transparency/lack-of-coloration mutually exclusive? I haven’t heard everything (including the Tektons), but from what I have, I find the two inextricably related.
Interesting...

My speakers Mission being less sensitive are better at timbre than dynamic... I will never exhange natural timbre perception for dynamic tough....For sure the 2 qualities cannot be separated on good speakers...My tannoy were good on the 2 front on equal measure...Alas! Too big for my room and needs i sold my 2 pairs ....


Like always this thread is another illustration of the Groucho Marx law:

«To each his own, because all things and needs differ especially us in front of a mirror»
There is an inevitable tradeoff relationship between box size, bass extension, and efficiency. And it’s a fairly brutal relationship.
This observation nail the question with the beginning of an answer...


I own Mission Cyrus 781 speakers sensitivity rated 90.5 db...

I drive them with my Sansui AU 7700 rated 8 ohm 55 watts....

No problem....I can make deaf my neighbours.... They sound  very refine and bass powerful...



😊