In Reply to: How does speaker sensitivity affect real world SPL? posted by khachai44@gmail.com on May 7, 2017 at 21:26:00:
Efficiency is 1 watt/1 meter.
Sensitivity is 2.83 volts at 1 meter.
If the speaker is 8 ohms, the two are the same.
(8 ohms = 2.83volts/0.35 amps; 1 watt= 2.83Volts x 0.35Amps)
If the speaker is 4 ohms, 2.83 volts works out to 2 watts, not one. IOW, there is the expectation that the amp is doubling its power!
So by cutting the impedance in half, the speaker can **appear** to be more efficient, which does not happen. If you want to know how efficient the speaker is, the only way to do that so it makes sense it to limit the input power to 1 watt.
Now to play with this a little, if you have a speaker that is 4 ohms and 90 db sensitivity, its efficiency is actually 87 db. This is because going from 2 watts to 1 watt is a 3 db change.
Conversely, if you have a speaker that is 90 db sensitivity and it is a 16 ohm speaker, its efficiency is 93 db.
This can have a profound effect depending on the type of amplifier you want to use. FWIW. One should also keep in mind that all amps regardless of technology have greater distortion into 4 ohms, and so will sound harsher and less detailed.
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Follow Ups
- Efficiency and Sensitivity are not the same thing! - Ralph 10:49:19 05/08/17 (17)
- RE: Efficiency and Sensitivity are not the same thing! - A.Wayne 17:42:33 05/08/17 (0)
- RE: Efficiency and Sensitivity are not the same thing! - Dave_K 16:54:20 05/08/17 (4)
- An octave of bass performance can be lost - Ralph 09:13:07 05/09/17 (2)
- RE: An octave of bass performance can be lost - Tre' 10:16:33 05/09/17 (1)
- RE: An octave of bass performance can be lost - Ralph 10:55:22 05/09/17 (0)
- RE: Efficiency and Sensitivity are not the same thing! - A.Wayne 17:47:16 05/08/17 (0)
- RE: Efficiency and Sensitivity are not the same thing! - neolith 15:58:14 05/08/17 (10)
- Correct- and it is measured 1 watt/1 meter nt - Ralph 09:14:47 05/09/17 (8)
- RE: Correct- and it is measured 1 watt/1 meter nt - Presto 10:37:58 05/09/17 (7)
- You might want to review that... - Ralph 11:07:22 05/09/17 (6)
- RE: You might want to review that... - Presto 10:12:03 05/10/17 (5)
- Like I said - Ralph 11:22:27 05/10/17 (4)
- RE: Like I said - Presto 10:06:51 05/12/17 (3)
- You got it nt - Ralph 13:23:22 05/12/17 (2)
- RE: You got it nt - saki70 15:01:17 05/26/17 (1)
- They are indeed :) nt - Ralph 09:15:18 05/30/17 (0)
- Thank you - 1973shovel 17:33:17 05/08/17 (0)