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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 4 responses by nwres

nwres's avatar
nwres
207 posts
 
Great sounding speakers come in all sensitivities, it is all about design goals. And a designer may feel that certain drivers give them the sound they are looking for and those drivers may not be all that efficient. And some companies may feel that exclusivity is more profitable than wide appeal. 
nwres's avatar
nwres
207 posts
 
I agree with Oz, Elliot and MC, I will always opt for higher efficiency speakers.
nwres's avatar
nwres
207 posts
 
b_limo1, great video, have seen it once before. Interesting perspective.

tomic601, When you say "don't confuse low sensitivity with poorly engineered load". I feel they are closely related. And I believe this is John DeVore's point in the video. I know of a high end speaker that is rated at 90db at nominal 8 Ohms (2.83v at 1 meter), have listened to it many times at a friends place. But when you look at the measurements of that speaker it has dips in the impedance down below 3 Ohms as low as 2.6. The speaker maker is only telling us a partial truth with their specs. It is only a 90db speaker for some of the frequencies and in effect a much harder to drive speaker to pull out all the audible sound well. Which I believe plays into the issue pointed out on the video of 1W per meter vs 2.83v per meter can be deceiving. With this particular speaker, you need an amp that doubles down on power when you halve the impedance to sound right. In other words it needs an amp designed for low efficiency speakers.  
nwres's avatar
nwres
207 posts
 
OP, you are correct, the John DeVore video does not answer your original question. And for me it is a useful tool to dig deeper into your question. So, why don't manufacturers make efficient speakers? You might want to next ask, how do we determine if a speaker is efficient, what's the difference. And the video helps us understand that some manufacturers are not giving us an honest real world picture with their specs that we can rely on to make that determination. In other words, there are more hard to drive speakers for sale than an arbitrary cut off db number might tell us. I hope you will feel at some point that your question has been answered well enough. And then at some point you may decide you want a new speaker efficient enough to meet your needs. Caveat Emptor, we need to do our homework and not just rely on the published specs. 
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