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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?

128x128clearthinker

Showing 1 response by nnicola

nnicola
31 posts
 
Surprised that no one has mentioned “Hoffmann’s Iron Rule” in this discussion.

Josef Anton Hoffman was the “H” in the original KLH company. He was an audio engineer who theorized that you could only have two of the following in speaker design, never all three:

1. Small speaker enclosure
2. High efficiency
3. Accurate bass response

That is, if you want an efficient speaker with accurate bass, you cannot have a small speaker enclosure. 
Likewise, you can have a small speaker enclosure with good efficiency, but bass response and accuracy will be limited. 
My impression is that speaker design is primarily driven by that limitation when addressing SQ and efficiency.

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