What makes a speaker perform well at low volume?

Honest1,

You are right about the volume difference in a concert hall vs. at home. I can easily whisper something to my wife at a concert, but she is always telling me to turn down the stereo because she can't talk to me.

This brings up an interesting question, of whether a stereo has the physical capability of conveying the type of dynamics of an orchestra. Of course, a stereo is a vastly simplified illusion, and is amazing the degree to which it approaches a real performace. However, consider that there are over 100 musicians on stage. Each musician has an instrument, often with multiple strings, each of which is vibrating independently. When you think about the 1000s of pieces of string, reed, skin, metal, and wood vibrating on the continuum of a stage, you realize that a stereo will always fall short. A full-range speaker will most often have only 8 points of vibration eminating from 2 points. Our mind is fooled even though the approximation can only be considered grotesque.

Also, a concert hall is very different than a living room. It is professionally designed and has space to allow the different vibrations to assimilate, reinforce one another, and disperse. How can one compete with that?

Rob

Second the good amp but add a very neutral cable

IME, the amp, the speaker and the cable all make a difference. Tube amps can sound excellent at low volumes, but I've heard a couple of SS amps that can too. Some speakers are better than others at low volume, more efficient speaker generally being better. My Tannoys were outstanding at low volumes maintaining life and presence, my AN E's less so which seem to lose life at very low volumes (and are actually efficient speakers at 94 db). But this last point I think could be related to the cable. I'm running 17 feet of speaker cable and something tells me that the long length of cable is not good for low volumes. I have not been able to try the E's on shorter cable.

Another good low volume pair was my JMR Trentes with the Resolution Audio s30 integrated amp. This amp is based on a DNM design which is noted for maintaining life at low volumes. Conversely, I had a Blue Circle amp that went dead at low volumes.

Three words: Low level detail. Sometimes the problem lies in the passive parts of your louspeakers (binding posts, wiring, crossovers, etc). sometimes it's the drivers themselves. Sometimes the problem is farther up the signal chain. And yes, high-efficiency/high-sensitivity speakers, especially single driver speakers, and well executed multidriver speakers are usually good in this regard. It also helps to have speakers that sound coherent (as cut from the same sonic cloth) over as much of the volume range as possible.

I don't have all of the answers. I've only been at this for less than 4 years.

Lack of hysteresis provides good performance at low volume. A speaker has to settle exactly at the same resting point every time there is "0" signal. Most do not and they "oilcan" to some extent. This muddies low volume inputs.