CopperWizard
Super Member
More sensitivity=more noise. More noise cues= more atmosphere.
Do more sensitive speakers sound more dynamic?
- Thread starter Kreshna
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432HzBob
Lunatic Member
I'm no expert but my man on the street limited experience says yes recently.
For a few years I have enjoyed some Infinity RS-6B's, 4 ohm, pretty inefficient and requiring a beefy amp to drive to where they sound good, which is @ 75-100+ watts. No complaints as they are punchy and with with the dome mid and EMIT tweets, quite detailed.
Then 2 weeks ago at my LRS I lucked into some JBL L101's for $20. Cabinets darn near perfect shape.
Only caveat was they weren;t "real" C56 cab 101's as someone stripped the desirable LE175 "potato masher" horns and replaced the standard LE14 woofer with a LE12C coaxial 12inch 2 way white driver.
Sounded ok as was but I know a 2inch paper tweeter can only offer so much highs, so slapped in some (very efficient) Fountek ribbon "horn" tweeters in the hole the horns used to be, crossed over with a good Vishany 4.7 uF cap and I love the combo.
Takes half the power the Infinities do to open up and even at fairly quiet 70db background levels have a real natural and full sound that has quickly vaulted them into my everyday listeners.
Granted, the "little" 12in woofers are puny in the pantheon of JBL classics (easy on me JBL guru's, I'm just learning about these speakers!) and don;t have the deep, rumbly bass but a small Velodyne Micro-V sub takes care of anything below 80Hz or so....
So my vote is yes based on my everyday listening experience.... my more efficient speakers do sound more dynamic at regular volumes.
Am I wrong? I dunno.
For a few years I have enjoyed some Infinity RS-6B's, 4 ohm, pretty inefficient and requiring a beefy amp to drive to where they sound good, which is @ 75-100+ watts. No complaints as they are punchy and with with the dome mid and EMIT tweets, quite detailed.
Then 2 weeks ago at my LRS I lucked into some JBL L101's for $20. Cabinets darn near perfect shape.
Only caveat was they weren;t "real" C56 cab 101's as someone stripped the desirable LE175 "potato masher" horns and replaced the standard LE14 woofer with a LE12C coaxial 12inch 2 way white driver.
Sounded ok as was but I know a 2inch paper tweeter can only offer so much highs, so slapped in some (very efficient) Fountek ribbon "horn" tweeters in the hole the horns used to be, crossed over with a good Vishany 4.7 uF cap and I love the combo.
Takes half the power the Infinities do to open up and even at fairly quiet 70db background levels have a real natural and full sound that has quickly vaulted them into my everyday listeners.
Granted, the "little" 12in woofers are puny in the pantheon of JBL classics (easy on me JBL guru's, I'm just learning about these speakers!) and don;t have the deep, rumbly bass but a small Velodyne Micro-V sub takes care of anything below 80Hz or so....
So my vote is yes based on my everyday listening experience.... my more efficient speakers do sound more dynamic at regular volumes.
Am I wrong? I dunno.
CopperWizard
Super Member
Ported speakers tend to be more efficient than sealed and usually more dynamic. I guess once the power goes up than this becomes less noticeable?
Magnaplaner are inefficient but dynamic.
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JBL W15GTi and many subs..., and what you make of them to match their efficiency.
My four surround speakers use JBL W10GTis and JBL 2425s on aftermarket butt cheeks (similar to 4430s). The horns had to be padded way down though the crossover design to match the efficiency of the woofers, but when you crank them up, they are very dynamic.
Kreshna
...but I have to know.
It seems as long as you feed the speakers sufficient power, then they would souind dynamic regardless of sensitivity, am I correct?
sheltie dave
Addicted Member
Not really. Take Beethoven's Fifth, put the album on the TT or in the cd player, and turn your system up to five watts. Does the intro slap you in the face, and can you hear the strings vibrating as they decay? Can you feel the ebb and swell of the orchestra as sections come in, and recede? Can you feel the aggression, and then the finessing of the string section through the movement?
A truly dynamic set of speakers will be able to draw you in for the quiet passages, blast you with a cannonade of tympani, regale you with the woodwinds section, and express the deepest of emotions with the cello and doublebass...and they can do it with five watts, or fifty.
Without high sensitivity speakers, the most dynamic of orchestra recordings can only see authentic(and dynamic) levels with a very large amplifier. You end up chasing the noise floor, and low level information, higher and higher in order to reach the normal peaks an orchestra, and high sensitivity speakers, can deliver with ease. By the time you hit the required peaks, you are dumping a large amount of amplifier power into speaker compression, which feeds distortion, which is not what you set out to hear in the first place.
A truly dynamic set of speakers will be able to draw you in for the quiet passages, blast you with a cannonade of tympani, regale you with the woodwinds section, and express the deepest of emotions with the cello and doublebass...and they can do it with five watts, or fifty.
Without high sensitivity speakers, the most dynamic of orchestra recordings can only see authentic(and dynamic) levels with a very large amplifier. You end up chasing the noise floor, and low level information, higher and higher in order to reach the normal peaks an orchestra, and high sensitivity speakers, can deliver with ease. By the time you hit the required peaks, you are dumping a large amount of amplifier power into speaker compression, which feeds distortion, which is not what you set out to hear in the first place.
Poultrygeist
Lunatic Member
My goal is to reach a nice listening level with less than one watt.
sheltie dave
Addicted Member
A third of my amps barely reach one watt.
darkblue94
The Devil made me do it.
Like it's been said...if the first watt sucks there's not much point in piling on a whole bunch more.
Kreshna
...but I have to know.
But JBL 120Ti's, whose sensitivity is merely 89 dB / watt / meter, can go pretty loud without compression. I don't know where the upper limit is, but the specs say the speakers can handle up to 150 watt.
On the other hand, sensitive single driver loudspeakers like Fostex FE206EN can only handle 30 watts or so.
Does loudspeaker power handling marks the point where the said speaker starts to compress? L
darkblue94
The Devil made me do it.
No.
unfairlane
Well-Known Member
This might be the case with cheaper equipment but it is wery far from true when we talk about well designed speakers & amps. Wery few though seems to really understand what makes a system moore dynamic, that includes most audiodesigners.
Not necessarily if you use high quality equipment made to take the power.
The noise floor on my Yamaha RX-Z9 is so low that even way up, you can't hear it with high efficiency speakers, let alone low efficiency speakers.
High power..., at 520 WPC dynamic power into 2 ohms and 170 RMS into 8 ohms, it's there to be used.
The low efficiency woofers (W10GTi), can handle peaks of 3,000 watts, and the RMS rating is many times what the amp puts out, so compression is not an issue. Similarly, the 2425s/butt cheeks run very little power and don't suffer compression because much of the power is burned up in the crossover resistors, not the coil windings.
Actually, if your amp/equipment has a high noise floor, low efficiency speakers will keep the hiss from driving you crazy.
Back to Lowthers and their controversy for a moment (I only just tuned in)... I was very lucky to get a pair of Lowther's at an auction. I was thrilled! They were the real deal, in Lowther designed-and-made cabinets. Corner designs and I had the perfect room for them. But when I go them home, driving them with Quad II tube monoblocks, the thrill was gone. The sound was so thin, range so limited, dynamics so undynamic. I was comparing them to Quad ESL 57's, and those delicate electrostatics trounced them. Changing amps didn't help, nothing did. Another story to add to the controversy...
Poultrygeist
Lunatic Member
Here's what Linkwitz says regarding electrostats and dynamics. Wish you could have tried the Lowthers in OB with augmented bass. Implementation is everything.
"Electrostatic or magnetic panel loudspeakers meet the polar response requirement at low frequencies, but become multi-directional at high frequencies and suffer from insufficient dynamic range. Loudspeakers that use electro-dynamic drivers on an open baffle overcome these shortcomings. Compared to omni-directional loudspeakers such dipolar loudspeakers cause fewer room modes and wall reflections, which helps them in hiding the room at greater listening distances. The absence of an enclosure to retain the rear radiation is a major advantage. It avoids frequency selective and resonant re-radiation of acoustical and mechanical energy that is transmitted into the enclosure walls and not converted into heat. Instead the rear radiation is productively used to establish the sound field in the room."
That's why I stressed that the Quads had better dynamics — because they shouldn't. As for implementation, the Lowther drivers were in Lowther cabinets, assembled at the Lowther factory, I just assumed that was good implementation.
I'd also liked to have heard them OB as you suggest, I'm very interested in OB. Am I correct in thinking "augmented bass" means subwoofers? The Lowthers are supposed to be full-range aren't they. I'm sure I'd have liked them more if a lot of things were different — but I heard them in cabinets specially made for those drivers by the makers of the drivers, driven by ideal amps, and that's probably how Lowther wanted me to hear them. I'd love to hear Lowthers again, sounding like good speakers — but after that experience I certainly won't buy them, I already did.
As someone said earlier in this thread, they're controversial.
Kreshna
...but I have to know.
This is a pair of Audio Nirvana 12" full range single driver. Highly sensitive. They sound nice, natural, and very airy. However, they don't sound dynamic to me. Not enough slam and punchyness the JBL 4311's exhibits. Would these kind of speakers make good home theater speakers?
Poultrygeist
Lunatic Member
Wow I have never seen factory assembled Lowthers speakers before as the great majority of enclosures are built from plans. Are you in England by chance? Would love for you to post pictures as they are extremely rare in this country. What drivers and enclosures did you have?
Augmented bass would include large OB woofers not subs.
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