High Efficiency Speaker Asylum Need speakers that can rock with just one watt? You found da place.

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RE: Thermal Distortion Paper

Posted by seancuster71@gmail.com (P) on May 7, 2025 at 21:19:48

In Reply to: Thermal Distortion Paper posted by claudej1@aol.com on March 17, 2025 at 16:50:27:

90% of things in this world are very inefficient something we use every day like a car 25% of gas is converted into kinetic energy 75% dissipated in heat. A class A amp 15% to 20% efficient everything is inefficient. why would this guy think that people would not know how inefficient speakers were?

I mean seriously look at a speaker's T/S parameters look for the reference efficiency have you ever seen a speaker in this world over 3.6% reference efficiency NO!!

Love it when he says copper, aluminum, silver, gold are lousy conductors LMAO!!! they are our four best conductors until someone finds new elements. Meanwhile those conductors make the modern world possible and without them we would be screwed no MRI no smartphone no space shuttle no nothing!!!

What is funny is the fact that speakers sound good and have since the late 1930's I have never heard an audiophile say no I cannot turn it up because my voice coils will get to hot LMAO!! I have heard plenty of audiophiles say these speakers do not start sounding good till you get some power running to them. Witch would totally contradict the effects of thermal distortion. Not saying voice coils do not get hot I am saying that voice coil temps have never made our speakers unlistenable and never will.

What is an average listening volume in dB? 75 dB is considered average. What is the average listening distance from our speakers I have researched 9' to 12' being average. Ok now we know average volume and distance now we can figure how much power a speaker needs to reach these averages.

It takes a doubling of amplifier power to increase a speakers output by
3 dB so if a speaker's sensitivity is 85 dB @ 1 watt measured at 1 meter then that speaker would be 88 dB @ 2 watts measured at 1 meter. Now every time we double the distance from the speaker, we lose 6 dB of volume. So, listening to a speaker with an 85 dB @ 1 watt sensitivity at a distance of 2 meters being feed 1 watt of input power will play at 79 dB and if you are 4 meters distance then it will play at 73 dB @ 1 watt input power. Double the watts to 2 watts and your 88 dB @ 2 watts 1 meter away. 82 dB @ 2 watts 2 meters away and 76 dB @ 2 watts 4 meters away. So a very low sensitivity speaker still only needs 2 watts to play to an average listening volume sitting 4 meters away.

So a 90 dB @ 1 watt speaker would play at 78 dB at a distance of 4 meters. And my 98 dB @ 1 watt speaker would play at 86 dB at a distance of 4 meters with just 1 watt input. So the average audiophile speaker will play to an average listening volume of 75 dB at an average listening distance of 4 meters with 2 watts or less. A 98 dB @ 1 watt speaker needs less than 1 watt to reach 75 dB at 4 meters. So needless to say I will go deaf before I put enough watts into my speakers to heat my voice coils enough to degrade the sound of my speakers.

There are topics people bring up that are meaningless this is one of them. Other topics like Pattern flip I have heard horn haters say to horn lovers your speakers are flawed due to pattern flip. All vintage Altec, JBL, Klipsch speakers suffer from pattern flip and I have never heard a owner or lover of these vintage horn speakers say they need larger horns or higher crossover points to get rid of pattern flip NEVER!!!

I have also heard people that hate full range driver say to full range lovers oh your speakers are majorly flawed due to doppler distortion when in fact all speakers suffer from doppler distortion.

There is no such thing as a perfect speaker and it is easy to pick out the flaws of speakers or what people think are flaws. It's much easier to pick out all the good things about speakers like how much we enjoy them every time we sit and listen to the music we love.

There is one thing I am not mentioning I will hold my breath and let others mention it.

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Kimber Kable

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