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RE: Which are the most efficient speakers?

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cawson@onetel.com

In Reply to: RE: Which are the most efficient speakers? posted by iodemus on August 16, 2020 at 21:37:39

I'd be interested to know why you are asking.
There are of course advantages of high efficiently but also disadvantages of taking this to extremes. These speakers reproduce minute signals as loud sound. What do they do with noise from amplifiers or anything else in the supply chain? They exaggerate this noise dramatically. Thus choice of amp is far more important as you go up the efficiency scale - to the extent that tube amps are generally too noisy for very high efficiency speakers - at least to those listeners who don't want to put up with any sound that didn't exist at the live recording. This is a shame as horns of moderately high efficiency are often teamed very successfully with tube amps.

Edits: 08/20/20

Follow Ups:

RE: Which are the most efficient speakers? - KanedaK 00:20:23 09/08/20 (0)
That is very true. There are some components that are perfectly fine but can't be used in my system because they are slightly more sensitive to RFI perturbations and the speakers expose all of it.
As for the amps, that is one of the reasons why I'm happy with tiny class D amps - they are absolutely silent. My system is on 24/7 and I can't stand hearing hum or hiss or weird noises when there's no music playing!
RE: Which are the most efficient speakers? - 91derlust 15:25:31 08/21/20 (0)
The extremes tend to enforce diminishing returns. Good-sounding tube amps that are quiet enough, and sound good, are probably rare and expensive... depending on how one defines "quiet enough" and "sound good".
I think SETs tend to sound best with high efficiency. To work well in ultra-high efficiency settings, ideally, filament supplies are well-sorted, grounding well-arranged, and power supplies have low-ripple and good damping. For good sound, I like power supplies to have low enough impedance and fast enough recovery (though relieving the amp of large bass transients may reduce the recovery requirement). Most designs don't achieve all that. Moreover, ultra-high efficiency is revealing, so exemplary design and implementation are essential too. Expensive.
Or, one can chuck a mediocre SET amp on those speakers and find it wonderful and the noise not distracting. Go figure.

"Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems to characterise our age." Albert Einstein

Edits: 08/21/20
RE: Which are the most efficient speakers? - merid 10:03:39 08/21/20 (0)
Interesting information.
RE- the most efficient speakers - for 600mW SEDHT. - iodemus 01:03:36 08/21/20 (0)
My last creations, 600 mW amps with SEDHT need them. The monoblocs employ WE102D, WE101D and RGN1064. All from the 20's. Made for professional telephony. Superior linearity and distortion. No microphony. No noise. No humm with filament chokes. The life of the WE-tubes is estimated to more than 50.000 hours. Search for Geiru Chan in the SET-forum.

In synergy with the right speakers, good music from japanese SACD's is beautiful and clean.

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