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RE: There is more to it...

"One misleading piece of information with which our customers are often provided is sensitivity. This specification is commonly misrepresented as "efficiency" which it most certainly is not. Loudspeakers are terribly inefficient and it is likely that virtually no consumer has ever been given an actual efficiency specification. The most efficient loudspeaker designed to date was the Altec Lansing Voice of the Theater, which had an efficiency rating of approximately 3.6%. No loudspeaker manufacturer would ever publish an efficiency specification because it would discourage and mislead consumers. Be clear on one point: sensitivity and efficiency are not the same thing. Even when using a solid state amplifier, one cannot necessarily equate high sensitivity to high efficiency - the physics are simply more complex than many manufacturers, and sadly reviewers, lead us to believe.

Instead of efficiency, loudspeaker manufacturers provide a sensitivity specification. This figure is supposed to indicate how loud a speaker will play when fed one watt of power, or 2.83 volts, listening from one meter away. The problem with this measurement is that the conditions under which it is to be recorded are not well defined and hence the figure does not provide a consistent "apples to apples" point of reference. For one thing, the input sensitivity (gain) of the amplifier used to measure the sensitivity is unknown and unspecified. More importantly, while the specification calls for measurement at one meter away, the conditions of the listening room are not defined. It is not clear whether measurement is to occur in an anechoic chamber, a concert hall, a coat closet, or a gymnasium. Each of these rooms will yield remarkably different sensitivity readings at one meter from the speaker.

The most important lesson to learn from the above discussion is that for the purposes of determining tube-friendliness, sensitivity is essentially meaningless. Many tube gurus insist that one must use speakers with sensitivity ratings of 90 db or higher. This is simply not true. Many speakers with high sensitivity ratings are poor choices for tube amps, just as many speakers with low sensitivity ratings often work quite well. Why is this so?"

I suppose the word efficiency should really be changed to "ease of drive" since according to the above all speakers are not the least bit efficient - however a speaker of 85db sensitivity can be a LOT easier to drive than a speaker rated at 100db sensitivity.

So we need a word that illustrates this "ease of drive" attribute. Simply playing loud with 1 watt doesn't mean it's playing well with 1 watt.


Edits: 08/14/11
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