Jump to content

Thoughts on Inefficient Speakers.....


SWL

Recommended Posts

What's the general thought amongst us Klipsch-Heads about speakers with say less than 92db sensitivity?

Good qualities? Bad qualities? Characteristics of less efficient speakers? Efficient vs. Inefficient......

Thanks guys,

-Scott.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In all seriousness some speakers that are what we call Inefficient just have a different sound to them. More mellow, less "In your face". Jamo, and even Energy speakers. But I like there sound.

They just require more clean power to achieve a fuller, more robust sound.

JMHO.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mainly, I think it's just a question of how much output capability you want. If you want to fill a theater with good, clean, LOUD sound, you need high sensitivity speakers, period. A typical home living space...well, not so much. This of course, doesn't address other qualitative differences in low-eff / hi-eff designs. Even at moderate volumes in smaller spaces, high-sensitivity designs have an ease that I attribute to their drivers not having to work as hard, that lo-sens. designs just lack. Lower sensitivity speakers often sound like they are rounding off transient peaks. Hi-eff designs don't sound that way to me.

Of course there is always give and take: I love the way my Energy speakers disappear into the sound stage when set-up and fed properly. That's a quality I've never been able to duplicate with horns, although the LS2 does a much better job in this regard than any other horn speaker I've used. The Energys also provide for a wide sweet spot; something high sensitivity designs usually don't. The ideal speaker would be both highly effecient and would recreate a three-dimensional soundstage over a broad listening area. Tell me if you find one!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Moderators

Seriously though I have heard a few speakers that sounded really good and were not efficient, but more than the efficiency I liked the live/forward sound of Klipsch. For a living room that you may want just a nice back round or average listening there are many speakers that can work. One was a pair of Advent speakers I gave my son in law, they had a nice smooth sound.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My Bose 901 series one easily clipped a Phase Linear 700 and sounded like........ well it wasn't hi-fi. They were not very efficient. On the other hand some of the best speakers I've ever heard are terribly inefficient. Maggies, all the big Infinities of the 70's, Accustats, etc. I can't make a blanket statement of sound quality and efficiency. Some are good some are not. The only thing I can say that if you have an inefficient speaker it's going to need some power to sound it's best. Sometimes quite a lot of power.

Thanx, Russ

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I still have a pair of Magnepan MG-IIIs, but not set up. As I recall, these are about 86 dB-1m. When I first heard them in 1984, I was somewhat seduced by their sound, but over time I grew increasingly dissatisfied with the fact that they just don't have any real dynamic range. I also grew tired of sending them back to Magnepan from time-to-time to get the full-length ribbon tweeters repaired: they were extremely easily damaged by a variety of environmental factors. I would assume that Martin Logans and other flat-panel speakers all suffer from this vulnerability.

I grew tired of having to sit in one spot to listen to them, and I didn't like the fact that I never could determine whether to toe-in or not (bottom line: I eventually didn't toe-in due to their very poor polar response, and this is another typical point of distinction of horns vs. direct radiators - constant directivity).

The final observation was this: while the MG-IIIs seemed to reproduce string orchestras and human voices smoothly and without steely artifacts, I became aware that I wasn't listening to how the music sounded in real life. (Just before that time, I had been a music major and had developed a listening ear for real music via daily doses of good musicianship.) With the Magnepans, I was listening to distortion of a sort that I would call tag "apparent detail", but this was more of a seduction. It sounded like the real thing for a while, then I realized that the world doesn't really sound like that.

Now that I listen to the Jubs (see profile) on a daily basis, I'd have to say that Richard C. Heyser's October 1986 AUDIO review of the Khorn (the next closest thing to the Jub) sums it up --

"I could also switch between the K-horns and a pair of excellent speakers whose bass could shake the house on pipe organ; they made the K-horns sound thin by comparison. Then a funny thing happened. The sound of a slammed car door sounded like a slammed car door on the K-horns, but sounded like muffled 'whumps' on the 'wider range' system. The same with helicopter fly-overs (quite frequent where I used to live) and with the sound of distant traffic. I never forgot that experiment nor its ear-opening ramifications with regard to sonic accuracy versus measurement. Quite true, I have listened to many excellent subwoofers that could shake the walls at 10 Hz, while the K-horn produced little sound pressure even an octave above that frequency. But in my personal opinion, accurate percussive bass is a specialty which a properly set-up corner horn seems to have to itself."

I think that lot of people get seduced by a sound that isn't real and most of the time that sound is coming from low-sensitivity speakers, some of which are extremely expensive.

Chris

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a pair of Carver Amazing Loudspeakers (III model) that are some of the best imaging speakers I've ever heard, and they are TERRIBLY inefficient (@ 86 dB 1 watt/1 meter), which require LEVIATHAN amplification (which I have~). I love the sound of Klipsch, but for my dedicated 2 channel, the Carvers will forever be my favs until (if?) something better comes along....

2ChannelSetup-1.jpg

Carver AL-III, Sunfire TG-IV processor, Sunfire Cinema Grand 400x7 amp

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One of the biggest differences in sound quality between

efficient and inefficient, IMO is, something the late great Richard Heyser

called the “crescendo test”, which is the RATIO of sound pressure level to drive

power.

In most, if not all, speakers, as they become less

efficient, this “crescendo ratio” tends to compress more and more with

increasing drive level. To me, more efficient speakers tend to track the

dynamic range of the sound level more accurately. In fact, you’ll find that

most inefficient speakers are simply not capable of reproducing the full

dynamic range of live music while still maintaining consistent balance from softest to loudest passages with low

distortion regardless of how their designers tout so-called smoothness of

frequency response.

Accurate crescendo tracking of complex sounds such as music also

means that stereo imaging should remain steady with no instrumental wander

caused by changes in musical dynamics.

The trade-off to maintain smooth extended frequency response

in a very efficient speaker with low distortion is mainly increased size and

therefore also cost.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a pair of Carver Amazing Loudspeakers (III model) that are some of the best imaging speakers I've ever heard, and they are TERRIBLY inefficient (@ 86 dB 1 watt/1 meter), which require LEVIATHAN amplification (which I have~). I love the sound of Klipsch, but for my dedicated 2 channel, the Carvers will forever be my favs until (if?) something better comes along....

Bob Caver is far better at designing space heaters than speakers.

Check out the Ulimate LSH in the Klipsch Dope From Hope Vol. 14, No.1. Be sure to see footnote 5.

Bob Carver thinks that speaker distortion goes down as speaker efficiency goes down. He (not single-handedly) has apparently dooped a whole league of audiophiles into this falacy. However, if you like your music reproduced with compressed dynamic range and higher distortion that is certainly your prerogative.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I got to hear TNR's Carvers, and was amazed at how they filled the space around them with fine, very spacious 3-D sound. I didn't listen long enough to try to be critical. My main thought was I wish more speaker designers could capture their very positive aspects.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I love the way my Energy speakers disappear into the sound stage when set-up and fed properly. That's a quality I've never been able to duplicate with horns, although the LS2 does a much better job in this regard than any other horn speaker I've used.

Funny, I have the opposite experience with horns. The Heresy II, La Scala and Klipschorn all completely disapear and I have never been able to do that with regular speakers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All low efficiency loudspeakers share one trait - they do not sound real, no matter how much power you put into them. The best high efficiency designs seem to have a lifelike presentation that is addictive.

In The Dope From Hope, Vol. 14, No.1, April 1974, PWK writes about this subject and proposes a low efficiency "Ultimate LSH" design that would take 1200 watts to achieve a 100 dB SPL. Note that this is without headroom, so dynamics would be clipped if this were an average level. !00 dB peaks would translate to 85 dB average SPL. My computer speakers will do better than that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Live music has dynamics that no speaker can perfectly reproduce, but the very high efficiency of horn speakers seems to let them come closer to the real thing than low-efficiency speakers, even with lots of power to the "low-e" speakers.

The thing is, many listeners want "the sound of music", not "the sound of a live music performance", so they prefer the sound of low-efficiency speakers, finding horns to be "too revealing". I wonder if they prefer TVs that are less clear-looking, because HD is also "too revealing".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What's the general thought amongst us Klipsch-Heads about speakers with say less than 92db sensitivity?

Good qualities? Bad qualities? Characteristics of less efficient speakers? Efficient vs. Inefficient......

Thanks guys,

-Scott.

Much like tungsten lightbulbs are space heaters that put out light, ALL speakers are space heaters that put out sound. The least efficient, a tossup between Carver Amazings and Dalquist DQ-10's were in the low 80's requiring bi-amping Kilowatts to sound robust (not posible with the DQ-10's), which, when the same company makes high power amplifiers, it makes sense. The efficienty is in the 0.1 % or less camp, so mostly space heaters.

The highest efficiency from all horn systems is typically in the 30% range or less (depending on passive vs. active balancing networks/Xovers), so about 100-200 times more efficient than direct radiators, but they are still space heaters, just not as good for heating spaces as the ineficient ones............and oh, BTW produce 20-30 db less distortion in the process than direct radiators and that much more in dynamic headroom for a given amount of power. The bigger the better in either case, and this is why I like real BIG commercial horns and drivers, which are designed to PRODUCE live music (PA) and still be used at home with superior results. Trying to use ineficient speakers for live music with kilowatt amplifiers only produces smelly smoke and sound for only a few seconds.

There is absolutely NO substitute for cubic inches and horsepower when it comes cars and speakers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They seem to make poorer quality sources sound a little better

That is part of the reason for my interest in less efficient speakers. We all know......all too well.....how poor recordings sound on our ultra-efficient Klipsch speakers.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like real BIG commercial horns and drivers, which are designed to PRODUCE live music (PA) and still be used at home with superior results.

You guys with these big *** speakers in your houses are my heroes. [Y]

I plan on going that route someday........[:D]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...