My experience is that this is all very deceptive. I have found 85 db sensitivity speakers that played much louder than 91 db sensitivity speakers.
How is this possible? Very simple...the 87 db sensitivity had much larger Xmax specs on the drivers....this meant that at high power the drivers were still efficient at turning amplifier power into music whilst the high sensitivity speaker just compressed everything as the driver went outside the linear magnetic field.
So be careful....you can't simply extrapolate speaker sensitivity to dynamic SPL output! (another factor is thremal compression that does not show up in speaker sensitivity)
Audition, audition, audition.....
How is this possible? Very simple...the 87 db sensitivity had much larger Xmax specs on the drivers....this meant that at high power the drivers were still efficient at turning amplifier power into music whilst the high sensitivity speaker just compressed everything as the driver went outside the linear magnetic field.
So be careful....you can't simply extrapolate speaker sensitivity to dynamic SPL output! (another factor is thremal compression that does not show up in speaker sensitivity)
Audition, audition, audition.....