Topic: More watts aren't necessarily better

[rjp]

Resonant cabinets are making a significant comeback in stereo playback these days, as people are moving away from high wattage amps, and going for micro-wattage, literally .75w amps.

That's very interesting; I've never liked the "more watts are better" arms race. Speaker efficiency is far more important than raw wattage, as far as I'm concerned. When I had my first car, I fitted it with a Pioneer radio/cassette unit that had all of six watts per channel, and a pair of Jensen 6x9" 2-way coax speakers in the rear deck. My friends' heads just about exploded when I told them the wattage - that little Pioneer could CRANK, and give very good sound while doing so. They had trouble believing that so few watts could push out lots of sound.

It certainly didn't hurt that I used (and had already learned how to use) good equipment to make my mix tapes.

[mfrench]

I've been hanging with some esoteric tweakers. But yeah, a couple of them are sub-single digit wattage. Some are in the low single digit watts.
They're running single speakers so there is no need for wattage to drive through a crossover.
The speakers of choice are quite old, paper speakers, and a variety of different arrays, such as the mentioned resonant cabinets, horns, and open baffles.
There is a cool American company called Wild Burro Audio that is selling modern updated versions of the old drivers. I'm all about these speakers, as I'd like to eventually get around to building a tube amp kit, and the simplest kits are really low wattage, so speaker efficiency needs to be high.

www.wildburroaudio.com

[twatts (pants are so over-rated...)]

I keep telling my wife that, but she still wants more kids... 

Terry

[Gutbucket]

^^
heh heh.

Speaker sensitivity and the power required go hand-in-hand.  There are things to be said for eliminating the passive crossover from a speaker and using a single driver and one of those is requiring far less power to reach the same SPL.  A big part of that is the need to pad the other driver to match the least efficient driver in the array, as well as losses in the passive crossover itself.

The engineering factors that have driven the world towards less sensitive speaker designs are overall extention of a flat frequency response from speaker cabinets of small size.

That's not to say that low powered single driver systems can't sound absolutely fantastic, but if the goal is an flat, extended frequency response from a small speaker which can reproduce reasonable listening levels, then it takes power to make that a reality.

"I canna change the laws o physics, Captain!" - Scotty

[mr qpl]

more wattage, please

[Church-Audio]

Resonant cabinets are making a significant comeback in stereo playback these days, as people are moving away from high wattage amps, and going for micro-wattage, literally .75w amps.

That's very interesting; I've never liked the "more watts are better" arms race. Speaker efficiency is far more important than raw wattage, as far as I'm concerned. When I had my first car, I fitted it with a Pioneer radio/cassette unit that had all of six watts per channel, and a pair of Jensen 6x9" 2-way coax speakers in the rear deck. My friends' heads just about exploded when I told them the wattage - that little Pioneer could CRANK, and give very good sound while doing so. They had trouble believing that so few watts could push out lots of sound.

It certainly didn't hurt that I used (and had already learned how to use) good equipment to make my mix tapes.

#1 Frequency response
#2 distortion @ a given level almost never see this spec
#3 Sensitivity SPL @ 1w @ 1m
#4 Size because the wife will only let you buy a speaker so big.... I know this from personal experience lol...

Wattage how much you need depends on # 3 and what kind of listening level are are going to be running at.
I basically do this if my speakers can handle RMS (not music power) 50 watts I want to avoid distortion I will get a 100watt amp to drive them I might also use a 250 watt amp if that's all I have available. Provided that you understand that you have enough power to send the speakers flying across the room.

But again you might get away with a 10 watt amp if your speakers are very sensitive and you dont crank it.. The major problem with speaker companies is the specify the sensitivity at 1k..... At 50hz... that figure is going to be much lower depending on how your room interacts with your speakers. So going by sensitivity by it self unless its averaged * and it almost never is * misleading.

[Gutbucket]

Improving #1, #2 and #3 tends to lead to larger speakers.
Improving #4 means smaller speakers and trumps everything else.
The main way to try and maintain #1, #2 and #3 with smaller speakers is by re-engineering things in ways that use copious amounts of juice.

Interestingly, using active crossovers and mutilple amps, with each amp attached directly to each individual driver, allows for using far lower powered amplifiers, but is complicated to set-up and use so that approach is usually hidden within 'all-in-one' active speaker designs.

[Jimna]

funny thing is I want to go the other way.   Ive been thinking about attempting DIY electrostatic panels.  they can be some of the most inefficient loads out there.

[mfrench]

These are the modern resonant cabinets that I referred to, designed for old german radio speakers (see image below)
They are called Reso's and are designed for Saba speakers, though the designer is working on a baffle to fit other drivers.
I'm hardly able to comment on not stripping out old gear, given my mono buildout; but I'm not comfortable with the wholesale gutting of antiques for eBay profits. That is what Saba speakers are.
Thats where the WildBurro speakers come into play for me, as well as the Fostex speakers.
The guy that is building these cabinet kits is redesigning the face panel baffle to variable dimensions for alternate sourced speakers like the WBA stuff. So I'm watching in anticipation.
The OP of the thread is a gent named David Wong. I met David here in SoCal, in his travels, but he lives in Hong Kong. Hes a civil engn'r with tons of massive bridge design work. He now runs a medical instrument manufacturing biz in HK.  Hes deeply involved with audio fanatics from around the world, amazing audio travels, always listening to, and posting about amazing systems - and having a really impressive system of his own building, including some beautiful horns, and a really slick system for improving on Denon DL103 stereo cartridges (long story of removing the plastic housing and replacing it with one of his custom aluminum bodies).
David bought a Reso kit and speakers and has been raving about it. There are a bunch of other people raving about the design, and sound.
So, I'm listening, watching, reading, learning.  I'm leaning more towards an open baffle, for ease of building, but will likely complicate it by using stone or unobtanium,.... But this kits is said to be quite a nice project for a speaker build.
This is a two driver version. There is a one driver version, I think? People also use these in vintage design cabinets like some from Western Electric.



personally, I'd like to see something different for legs, but not sure of what. The speaker is open on the bottom, utilizing the floor reflection as part of the design theory. So it needs to stay open. The legs also lean the cabinet back, exposing the open cavity outward toward the listener.
The designer monitors and participates extensively in the thread, and does a far better job of explaining it than i ever could.

thread begin:
http://www.lencoheaven.net/forum/index.php?topic=1738.0
assembly of kit "tutorial":
http://www.lencoheaven.net/forum/index.php?topic=1738.msg23386#msg23386

[it-goes-to-eleven]

Linn has done a lot with active crossovers, with one amp for each driver..

Don't resonant cabinets create lumpy frequency response curves at the resonant freq?

I was once impressed by highly efficient speakers, like Klipsch.  But then I decided they didn't sound that good, and spl/watt was not that important to me.

[Church-Audio]

These are the modern resonant cabinets that I referred to, designed for old german radio speakers (see image below)
They are called Reso's and are designed for Saba speakers, though the designer is working on a baffle to fit other drivers.
I'm hardly able to comment on not stripping out old gear, given my mono buildout; but I'm not comfortable with the wholesale gutting of antiques for eBay profits. That is what Saba speakers are.
Thats where the WildBurro speakers come into play for me, as well as the Fostex speakers.
The guy that is building these cabinet kits is redesigning the face panel baffle to variable dimensions for alternate sourced speakers like the WBA stuff. So I'm watching in anticipation.
The OP of the thread is a gent named David Wong. I met David here in SoCal, in his travels, but he lives in Hong Kong. Hes a civil engn'r with tons of massive bridge design work. He now runs a medical instrument manufacturing biz in HK.  Hes deeply involved with audio fanatics from around the world, amazing audio travels, always listening to, and posting about amazing systems - and having a really impressive system of his own building, including some beautiful horns, and a really slick system for improving on Denon DL103 stereo cartridges (long story of removing the plastic housing and replacing it with one of his custom aluminum bodies).
David bought a Reso kit and speakers and has been raving about it. There are a bunch of other people raving about the design, and sound.
So, I'm listening, watching, reading, learning.  I'm leaning more towards an open baffle, for ease of building, but will likely complicate it by using stone or unobtanium,.... But this kits is said to be quite a nice project for a speaker build.
This is a two driver version. There is a one driver version, I think? People also use these in vintage design cabinets like some from Western Electric.



personally, I'd like to see something different for legs, but not sure of what. The speaker is open on the bottom, utilizing the floor reflection as part of the design theory. So it needs to stay open. The legs also lean the cabinet back, exposing the open cavity outward toward the listener.
The designer monitors and participates extensively in the thread, and does a far better job of explaining it than i ever could.

thread begin:
http://www.lencoheaven.net/forum/index.php?topic=1738.0
assembly of kit "tutorial":
http://www.lencoheaven.net/forum/index.php?topic=1738.msg23386#msg23386

I can tell by looking that these speakers would sound like turd. yeah they might look cool but they appear to be designed by some granola chewing socks with sandals MF, the huge problem with this idea is you want to let the speakers do the work not the cabinet every time a cabinet vibrates you are removing efficiency. Furthermore the fact that the speakers particularly the tweeter is behind the baffle also causes increased distortion and time alignment issues.These are things that were not thought about when these speakers were designed.
Looks like something from Ikea.. Maybe we should call it the fartinhocker?

[mfrench]

Chris,

remember, you listen with your ears, not your eyes.
these things have guys selling off *six figure speakers.


* I wish that I could link you to the rigs that I'm referring to. They are in the members only section at lencoheaven forum.
David, the gent that I referred to, is part of an audio club in Hong Kong. I don't know if you're familiar with the audio scene in the asian countries, but, they bought up all of our classic gear when were weren't looking, and we got caught with our pants down. Across the boards,... the best of the best of the best in classic audio went to asia.
David is deeply involved with these collectors, and has posted volumes of listening sessions that he's been involved in, where there are twenty of the worlds finest speakers in one listening space, speakers that run the gamut from antique theater Voice of the Theater/Western Electric systems, Altec Lansing, early JBL,... the classics; on through Martin Logan panels, Quad ESL's (extremely early electrostats), ProAc's,.. I'm struggling to come up with names here, as there are so many represented.
David has sat these mega-collectors down to these Reso cabinets, and they're flat blown away.
Are these guys literally selling off the classics - no way! We'll never see that old iron again here stateside without spending massive fortunes to get it back. But they are making room for them in their flyweight single digit wattage systems.
The beauty for guys like myself - they can be DIY'd, or, even with the kit purchase and shipping, you're still looking at under a grand for speakers; cabinets and drivers in total.
Now, I find this highly intriguing as a DIY'r

[it-goes-to-eleven]

I have serious trouble believing those spindly legs are optimal.  And the way the drivers, especially the high-freq, is recessed into the cabinet is contrary to decades of logic; why mask the tweater down in a hole?  As Chris mentioned, different frequencies travel at different speeds.  So if you want the high freqs to arrive at the same time as the low freqs (and is there any reasons why you wouldn't?), then the design must incorporate something to achieve that.

Speaker development is an interesting endeavor.   Throwing some drivers in a box with some insulation, and a cross-over solution is pretty easy..   And it can sound pretty darn good.   Then you have the guys who have done it their entire lives, in labs, with great resources (anechoic chambers and extensive measurement gear), large budgets, brilliant designers, active crossovers, etc.  Linn is an example.   They can build dozens of iterations of a design to optimize the performance.

[mfrench]

treble probably isn't too slowed down by that 3/8" offset.
Look at the abundance of front-loaded horns burying the driver 2' or more within a horn,.. just saying, but I doubt that little 3/8" offset is going to do anything.

I agree and mentioned the legs - they're not my favorite feature. But the bottom of the cabinet is open, and assuming the legs help keep the bottom unobstructed as possible.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

The recessed high freq concern is masking and off-angle response, not 'slowed down'.

People long ago seemed to conclude that bringing the drivers out flush with the face of the speaker improves the sound.  If there is an argument that justifies a different approach, I'd like to hear it.  Otherwise, I'd guess the builder took an aesthetic/easy shortcut.   I'd expect at lease a chamfer/radius of the hard edge (but then that exposes the interior of the wood).  What other speaker designs are recessing the tweeter?