New efficient speakers - best way to keep noise floor down?


I will be getting some new speakers soon and they will be a lot more efficient (98db compared to 86db) My analog front end is very quiet right now, but I'm thinking the noise floor is going to be a lot more noticeable with the new efficient speakers. Just to get ahead of the situation (in case it ends up bugging me) what is the best way to lower that noise floor? I already have a TT and cart that I love and I also have a good record cleaner, so I'm hoping it may be as simple as focusing on the phono pre-amp? Is that a correct assumption? If so, who makes the quietest noise floor phono stage for MM (and I am talking bang for the buck here - under $700 I'm hoping?) If not a phono stage, what else should I be looking into? Thanks!
bstatmeister
Agree with Chakster. There are too many variables. I have Devore O93's and tube gear every step of the way to the loudspeakers and I used to have a hum problem with my VPI table due to a grounding issue. My other deck, a hot-rodded TD124 with a Reed 3P had zero hum. I believe my hum problem had to do with VPI's inferior and sometimes problematic grounding scheme with their junction box. Reed (and several other great arm designs) incorporates a cartridge clips to RCA continuous wire (no breaks along the way). My belief is that this reduces the chances of hum greatly. Shielded IC's from the phono stage to the preamp and from the preamp to the amp also help. In my case, I run balanced-Cardas Clear Beyond-from my preamp to amp. So I got rid of my VPI Prime and replaced it with a hot-rodded Garrard 301 with another Reed 3P and though both decks sport low output MC cartridges, my system is dead quiet on most days. Sometimes when the power lines are noisy, I hear very slight hissing. 
What may affect noise floor? The gain of the preamp and amp with regard to sensitivity of the speakers. It can reveal noise in the upstream components. May not be a problem with the right cartridge choice.

And of course, the amount of noise on the AC line coming into your house. Has this ever been noticeable before, and do you use any power conditioning?


good point, I do have a passive preamp (well in tube mode it has 1DB gain). My phono preamp does have adjustable gain settings. Right now I'm on the 48db setting, I suppose with the new speakers being efficient I could lower that to the 42db setting or even the 32 db setting (has the best SNR of all 4 settings). Keep forgetting my phono has those adjustable gain settings... This makes me feel better :)
The status quo for tonearm to phono stage cable’s is horribly flawed. You can help keep the signal free of interference by changing from “shielded” cables that use one of the signal-bearing conductors as “shield” to shielded twisted pair cable and XLR connectors. The shield on this cable is connected to the tonearm ground, and is grounded at your phono stage. This is your best opportunity for rejecting  induced noise on a vinyl playing system. 
Edit: lowrider57 said it more succinctly

I have very efficient speakers too (96 db/Watt), in a vinyl-only system, and have struggled with this. If your vinyl source is quiet with normal speakers, it will be equally quiet with efficient speakers - i.e. the efficiency of your speakers has no bearing on your perception of source noise. This is because you simply adjust your preamp’s volume control to get the signal level you need to achieve listening levels - and for efficient speakers, this will necessarily be a much lower volume setting, which rejects the source’s noise floor exactly in proportion to its signal (i.e. the signal and noise get equally attenuated, and then equally "amplified" by your sensitive downstream amp & speakers). Your vinyl source’s noise floor is a function of the quality of your phono stage combined with the output of your cartridge.

Where you can run into problems elsewhere in your setup is if your preamp and amp don’t have an adequate signal/noise ratio. That’s because these are your active stages downstream from your volume control - so any unused gain is going to contribute to your noise floor, with no chance to reject it via volume dial. This is going to be most egregiously demonstrated by tube preamps, especially ones with high gain. My tube amps are VERY sensitive amps (275 Watts / 1V input) so any residual noise from the preamp is going to be made extremely apparent. I’ve tried more than a few tube preamps, and the only one so far that’s been dead quiet in my setup is the Audio Research Ref 6 - very impressive! Stereophile posted some nice measurements of the REF 6 in their review, so I’d make sure to have a preamp at least matching its signal/noise.

In recap - use a preamp with as high a signal/noise ratio as possible, keep its gain on the lower side as much as possible, and if you can utilize amps with a lower input sensitivity (or add attenuators to the inputs if you have excess system gain to spare) then that will help too.