With a plethora of brands and models of speakers available serving so many different purposes, choosing which speakers to buy can get quite confusing. When you step into a store, or browse company websites, you might will yourself inundated with various criteria, audio-related jargon,and specs that you might not know anything about. Even if you do, perhaps you don’t know which specs to really consider, and what should matter to you the most. Speaker specifications are easy to misunderstand so knowing what to look for is key. That being said, always remember that specifications can never tell the whole story, and the best way to understand a speaker is to hear tracks you’re familiar with on it!
Often, much of the talk around speaker specifications is about power and sensitivity. There is a lot of misinformation as well as confusion around this topic. Let us try and explain these terms better.
Power handling or power rating is specified in Watts (W), and it indicates the amount of power a speaker can handle without getting damaged. Two power ratings are usually specified – RMS or continuous, and peak. The RMS rating refers to the continuous power a speaker can take, while the peak rating is the maximum upper limit the speaker can handle for a single instant, say when there is a loud bullet shot in a movie clip. The peak rating is always higher than the RMS rating.
Contrary to popular belief, a speaker’s power rating does not define how loud it can play. Asking for a speaker that can handle 150W is actually not very useful-because a speaker that has a power rating of 100W may play louder than a speaker that has a rating of 150W! Most often when people ask for high power speakers, they are actually asking for speakers that can play loud and clean. Also, it is higher power speakers definitely don’t sound better across the board – think of the megaphones and loudspeakers used during an election campaign, that grate on our ears.
Ok so power handling isn’t that important. Then what is?
Sensitivity is an indicator of how loud a speaker plays with a given input power. Technically, how loud a speaker plays is called the sound pressure level (SPL). SPL is measured in decibels or dBs. One important thing to remember is that decibel is a logarithmic and not linear unit unlike say centimeters (cm). We know an object with a length of 10cm is twice as long as an object with length 5cm, and an object with length 20cm is four times as long as an object with length 5cm. With decibels, however, a difference of 3dB indicates doubling – so an SPL of 90dB is twice as loud as an SPL of 87dB, and four times as loud as an SPL of 84dB! Sensitivity of a speaker is written as SPL@1W/1m or to take an example 98dB@1W/1m. What this means is if you feed 1W of power into the speaker and stand 1m from the speaker, the SPL will be 98dB. We fix the input power and distance because the SPL varies with both – the higher the input power the higher the SPL, and the further we stand from a speaker the softer it gets and the lower the SPL.
Now that we’ve gotten all the technical stuff out of the way, let’s get to the most important part – why should you care about sensitivity?
Sensitivity represents the efficiency of the speaker. Efficiency is how effective the speaker is in converting the input power or electrical energy into sound energy. The more efficient a speaker, the less input power is wasted, and the less power is needed to produce the same SPL. In other words, a speaker with higher sensitivity needs less power to produce the same SPL, as a speaker with a lower sensitivity! Higher sensitivity means the speaker is more efficient which means less input power is wasted in the form of heat. More efficiency also leads to cleaner sound because the wasted heat energy can sometimes heat the voice coil leading to higher distortion.
If all this is too technical, the easiest way to understand this is with the example of light bulbs. Old school halogens used to be 100W. LED bulbs nowadays are 7W and 11W and produce the same amount of brightness. How does this happen? LED bulbs are way more efficient at converting input power to light, and waste minimal energy as heat. Halogen bulbs waste significant energy as heat. People have accepted LED bulbs despite them being lower power, because when it comes to lighting people care about brightness, not power. Similarly for speakers, people care about loudness, not power.
Therefore, the spec to first look at for a speaker is sensitivity and not power. Speakers with higher sensitivity will be more efficient, which means they will require less power than other speakers to play at the same level. They will have less distortion and will play cleaner, giving other benefits such as a wider dynamic range and the ability to uncover all sorts of details in whatever you are listening too. And don’t forget – If a speaker requires less power than other models, you can save money on the amplification you need to drive the speaker.
Masters of Sensitivity
Klipsch has always been known for designing speakers with ultra-high sensitivity. The Klipsch range of speakers are among some of the most efficient home speakers in the market today. Sometimes they are up to 10-15 times more efficient than any other competing speaker system in the segment. Klipsch’s hallmark horn technology, their use of materials such as Cerametallic woofers, and indeed every aspect of speaker design is thought out to delivery high efficiency speakers that play louder, cleaner, and with less distortion than the competition. Klipsch’s first speaker the Klipschorn that is still in production today will make your hair stand on end when fed just 1W of power!
At Cinebels we are well placed to not just help you choose well, but also to educate you about the finer technical details and facts, so you feel empowered to make the right choice. We will not oversell unnecessary amplification, because we will give you speakers that are highly efficient. Apart from designing a system that sounds great, we will ensure your total cost of ownership is lower than from anywhere else!
As much as this blog has been about specs, we still stand by our founding principle – the best and only indisputable way to judge a speaker prior to purchase is to listen to your favourite tracks on it so you can compare it with other speakers. That’s why we always welcome you into our showrooms – so you can make a decision that you will be happy with for years!
