power

This is a key problem with speakers - especially audiophile designs. At higher levels they compress and sound dull and flat. It is a problem in Xmax excursion of the drivers as well as overheating issues prevalent in small voice coils (less than 4 inch diameter). It is extremely expensive to make good drivers that still sound great when pushed hard and therefore designers most often choose cheaper parts (cheaper speaker parts can still sound great at lower levels but the sound falls apart when really pushed). Note that speaker efficiency is only measured at 1 watt so it does not tell you if the speaker can play very loud cleanly (lower efficiency designs with better parts may play much louder than high efficiency designs with cheap parts).

A very powerful amplifier is actually safer for the speaker as clipping at lower power can damage tweeters more quickly than clean signals at higher power. As Falconquest notes above - 4ohm speakers are much harder to drive than 8 ohm and will benefit from a beefy amplifier that can handle extreme levels of current necessitated by the very low impedance....

Soundstage speaker measurements show a test at 90 dB and at 95 dB and many audiophile designs show compression and high distortion levels at a mere 95 dB - so transients more often than not are a problem that the amplifier cannot fix as it is an inherent limitation of the accuracy of the speakers themselves. Here I am referring to high end audiophile favourite designs like Wilson etc.

@kost_amojan

Not sure where I said 2 watts. Speaker drivers have an Xmax after which they are nonlinear and compress dynamics.

Speaker voice coil could run at 100 degrees and may be rated up to 200 degrees. 98% of power into a voice coil is dissipated as heat.

Your knowledge of Amps may be outstanding. However many or most people have a lack of understanding of speakers and make the mistake of treating them like linear devices with no power handling issues....

@wolf_garcia

Soundstage readily admits that many speakers deviate from linearity at 90 dB and most will deviate significantly at 95 dB. Few if any audiophile speakers that Soundstage have tested can handle 100 dB.

Take a $5000 audiophile speaker like the Monitor Audio PL100

Examine Chart 4 - Linearity at the following link

http://www.soundstagenetwork.com/measurements/speakers/monitor_audio_pl100/

Is this a crap speaker or simply a very common issue with audiophile speakers? 4dB of compression (non-linearity) at 95 dB shown on the chart for BOTH the woofer AND the tweeter response!

OMG and Soundstage says it is common and they have tested thousands of speakers.

Quote "Many speakers show slight deviations at 90dB. Most speakers start to show serious deviations at 95dB. Very few speakers can be tested at 100dB without damage. "

If most speakers can’t even cope with the dynamic range needed to represent realistic sound levels of real instruments and audiophiles are not even aware of this issue then "Houston, we have a problem."

.....perhaps people get so used to distortion from compression as a lot of pop and rock is compressed to begin with.....

I welcome comments but I don’t regard a speaker as "high fidelity" if it can’t accurately represent real music...so big power amps will only go so far unless the speaker is a very rare bird indeed.