High Efficiency Speaker Asylum

Need speakers that can rock with just one watt? You found da place.

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RE: High efficiency loudspeaker options

Posted by Paul Joppa on May 15, 2020 at 17:56:42:
I don't have a list, but I'll offer an overview of the landscape, which I hope will help focus your research.

As I see it, there are two main branches - vintage mainstream speakers and modern boutique speakers.

Fifty to a hundred years ago, high efficiency speakers were the mainstream. Since then, the economics have changed - amplifier power has become much less expensive. It started late in the tube age, but the big change was the advent of transistors.

(You might reasonably add a third category of commercial sound - discos, concert halls, theaters, recording studios, etc. - intended for larger spaces than homes, so efficiency is again economical. These are big, often ugly, and expensive - things the limit their appeal.)

Klipsch is mainstream and still has a focus on efficiency - kind of the exception that proves the rule. It's noteworthy that they continue to develop updated versions of several of their classic designs, as well as more conventional speakers.

So, there are two notional lists - the currently-popular vintage (Altec/Electrovoice/JBL/Klipsch et. al.) and the esoteric boutique. It seems to me that most of the boutiques are either modern horn designs or a subset of the single-driver approach. I think that's because non-horn tweeters are rarely efficient.

It may be helpful to define "efficient". There is no real consensus, but to me high efficiency means 96dB/watt/meter, low means 89dB or less, and the middle ground of 90 to 96dB wanders among both camps, never quite at home in either.