Loudspeaker sensitivity and dynamics: are the two inexorably linked?

I drive my 91dB B&W 804S speakers (plus REL T5/x) with 12 glorious tube watts from an AudioNote Oto Phono SE. I’m very happy with the combo. Should I upgrade my speakers to something different? Probably. But for the moment I’m good. Dynamic range is excellent.

@bobbydd wrote:

I’m not referring to maximum loudness or volume, rather that the music sounds less reproduced and more that the instrumentation and vocals are more real sounding through higher sensitivity speakers.

Is this a real phenomenon? Or is it more the particular gear I’ve experienced?

Oddly it’s rare to read such fine expressions uttered here, what sounds "less reproduced." It says a lot without stepping into the realm of pretending what’s heard is a facsimile of a real, live acoustic event, and yet it’s at the heart at what can be more readily offered with the attainment of certain physical attributes of a speaker, of which dynamic capabilities are a core aspect and intricately linked to both high sensitivity and prodigious air radiation area.

It’s also about how one assesses and is habitually exposed to ’dynamics;’ I’ve heard quite a few low eff. speakers that, on the face of it, sounded rather dynamic, but when compared to larger and more dynamically capable speakers (because such, factually, there are) it becomes obvious that the latter is somewhat more relaxed yet visceral, effortless and "liquid" sounding in its dynamic portrayal, which to me can be condensed into a more singular impression as a "less reproduced" presentation.

I’ll concede to poster @mijostyn’s findings on at least very large, high-passed (and properly subs augmented) ESL’s that can be dynamically astute, but they also have plenty of displacement to yield while being transiently excellent (with narrow dispersion) - a powerful combo on top of being a crossover-less speaker plane. I do believe the Soundlab’s aren’t that inefficient but rather in the 90dB range? So hardly a typical representative of a low eff., direct radiating speaker - of limited size, no less.

As others have already said, low efficiency does not translate to lack of dynamic range.

Dynamic range in lower efficiency speaker, given high power, high current amps, can, and does equal the dynamic range of high efficiency speakers. 

And for me, that 'liveness' that people talk about with high efficiency speakers (although I don't concede that this is an attribute of high efficiency), comes at the expense of too many other attributes, for me to make the trade off.

I've heard plenty of high efficiency speakers: Klipsch Forte, Heresy IV, La Scalla, etc., JBL L82, Zu, and others, and all the ones I've heard,  trade off their efficiency for (IMO) less than optimum timbral accuracy, lack of a focused and layered soundstage, greater frequency response aberrations. And most of them, to me, seem to create a veneer of sounding like a PA system, that overlays everything. 

Unless one gets into the higher echelon of high efficiency speaker; Cessaro, Acapella, AvantGarde Acoustics, etc, at which point, there seems to be no real tradeoffs between high efficiency, and most of those other attribute missing from most of the other high efficiency speakers, at lower price ranges.

@bobbydd Wrote:

Loudspeaker sensitivity and dynamics: are the two inexorably linked?

I think George Augspurger article below makes sense:

Mike

https://www.lansingheritage.org/html/jbl/reference/technical/efficiency.htm

@ditusa —

+1