How important is the efficiency of a speaker to you?
I went to an audio meeting recently and heard a couple of good sounding speakers. These speakers were not inexpensive and were well built. Problem is that they also require a very large ss amp upstream to drive them. Something that can push a lot of current, which pretty much rules out most low-mid ( maybe even high) powered tube amps. When I mentioned this to the person doing the demo, i was basically belittled, as he felt that the efficiency of a speaker is pretty much irrelevant ( well he would, as he is trying to sell these speakers). The speaker line is fairly well known to drop down to a very low impedance level in the bass regions. This requires an amp that is going to be $$$, as it has to not be bothered by the lowest impedances.
Personally, if I cannot make a speaker work with most tube amps on the market, or am forced to dig deeply into the pocketbook to own a huge ss amp upstream, this is a MAJOR negative to me with regards to the speaker in question ( whichever speaker that may be). So much so, that I will not entertain this design, regardless of SQ.
Your thoughts?
You are right about the amp issues regarding hi vs lo efficiency designs, well said. Yes, a low efficiency design might require more power. But these issues are truely complex and trying to make a blanket statement that some performance related feature is always good or always bad doesnt really work in audio. People long for universal truths, but in audio, the truth is conditional. Brad |
@invalid You bring up a great point. The signal to noise ratio is a factor with most gear. Tube gear is likely to be noisier than ss gear. The question is how important is the tube noise through the more efficient speaker to the listener. I'm not so sure that it off-sets the overall performance to such an extent as to rule out certain speakers? |
Dear @daveyf : It seems to me that if you put together some vali with facts and knowledge levels on speakers it looks as some way or the other we need something that just does not exist and we are looking in a transducer that makes all to be posible: there is no single or" surrounded " perfect speakers/transducer and never will. In the other side some of those gentlemans with good speaker knowledge levels have not the same good knowledge levels about amps/electronics and this fact makes everything more complicated to really have a good conclusion.
Example: even its inherent importance of speaker impedance phase no one name it and this is something to take care when we are choosing an amp we need to know the speaker impedance measures/curve and its phase down there. Topic per sé is endless..
R. |
