Higher sensitivity - more dynamic sound?


Benefits of higher sensitivity- other than loudness per watts available?

ptss

@deludedaudiophile wrote:

"You are convincing me more and more that active is the way to go long term."

Going active will have no direct impact on driver compression effects, but if you are "rolling your own", going active may make it easier for you to use drivers which have inherently low compression characteristics.

Duke

+1 @avanti1960 

So yes, regardless of amplifier higher sensitivity can mean a more dynamic sound. 

I agree: Higher amplifier power is not a substitute for speaker efficiency, dynamics come from the speaker not the amplifier.

Mike

@audiokinesis , I was more thinking smart people, i.e. like what I see with Kii, as a start, will figure out some way to compensate for these effects in real time. From a simpler aspect, would not an active cross-over system be more immune to the effects of variable voice coil resistance on speaker response including critical crossover points?

@deludedaudiophile wrote:

"I was more thinking smart people, i.e. like what I see with Kii, as a start, will figure out some way to compensate for these effects in real time."

I think you are right, though there is a limit to how much compression "active gain riding" can compensate for. More wattage to compensate = more heat = more compression = even MORE wattage needed to compensate...

"From a simpler aspect, would not an active cross-over system be less [do you mean MORE?] immune to the effects of variable voice coil resistance on speaker response including critical crossover points?"

Yes, but if you start out with drivers that don’t compress significantly anyway, you have already addressed the crossover issue. Also, second-order and higher passive crossovers are much less sensitive to driver DC resistance variations than are first-order passive crossovers.

Duke

So now you are poking holes in those that proselytize first order cross-overs for better time alignment :-)   In many ways speakers are much more interesting that the other parts of an audio system, but so much less time seems to be spent discussing them beyond the cursory.

Aesthetically or for practical reasons, efficient speakers, which I assume are normally large, may not be practical.

I did mean more immune. Thank you for the correction.