Small loudspeakers are highly compromised designs the bologna of audiophile products. Designed just as much as sound quality to fit a certain num on a pallet. More effort goes into making a small marketable product as does sound quality considerations. The consumer is told large is bad in modern design. But when dealing with wave reproduction small just doesn't cut it we hamstring our loudspeaker designs by making them overly small and requiring much power to function. This heats up VC causing listening fatigue small bass systems have much higher distortion, large sensitive loudspeakers do not suffer from such but can be large, and large is not a design problem it's the way it should be.
Downside of sensitivity?
I'm new to world of audio, and still puzzling out a number of things. One question in particular that I have concerns speaker senstivity. It seems as though higher sensitivity is a positive, i.e. it allows one to use lower-power amplifiers, sound is more relaxed, generally more flexible with equipment. Yet there seem to be a large number of quality speakers with lowish sensitivity. Given that speaker design seems to be an exercise in compromise (short of the cost-is-no-object level), what qualities does one give up with higher-sensitivity (say, > 91db)? Conversely, what qualities does the speaker designer gain with a less sensitive design(86-87 db)? I've quickly learned that there are no absolutes when it comes to audio equipment, but any thoughts as to the trade-offs in general? Tks.