I am a dedicated low volume listener as my ears have become sensitive with age and past youthful abuse. I have been through a number of speakers with mixed results, trying to find one that sounds good at low volumes. Note that this is not my only criteria for speaker choice, but it ranks high. Frequently it is stated that high sensitivity speakers are good for low volume listening, but I feel there is no connection between the sensitivity rating of a speaker and how it plays at low volumes.
Speaker sensitivity is typically measured in decibels produced with one watt of input using a 1 kHz tone with a microphone positioned at one meter from the speaker. Roughly useful for determining the kind of amplifier that might be required to drive the speaker, but not an indication of of how it will perform across the audible spectrum with one watt of input.
For those who have owned or demo'ed a number of speakers, I think we are all aware that each speaker "opens up" at a certain level. By open up, I mean the sound becomes fuller across the spectrum. Good low volume listening speakers obviously open up at lower dB levels.
What would be a proper means of measuring the level at which a speaker a speaker "opens up"? Technically, in my mind, this would be the dB level at which it delivers roughly linear sound across the audible spectrum, or some reasonable sub-range like 40-10,000 Hz. Call it Spectral Sensitivity. If we send a white noise signal using a select range or spectrum, at what dB level does the sound become linear, i.e. a (roughly) flat line on the graph.
I am aware of Fletcher-Munson curves, but this does not apply, as we are not talking about human perception, only about the dB level at which the speaker produces the full spectrum of sound presented to it.
I am not a speaker designer, and there are greater minds in this forum. Does something like this make sense?
