It’s Friday and just two weeks until Christmas. Where has this year gone! If you’re at all like me you’re amazed but never overwhelmed by the massive number of cluster fucks in progress around the world. Just when you thought things could not be worse, GEICO comes out with its Peter Pan ad. They could not have cast a more annoying little pecker head than that kid. Needless to say we had one heck of a time coming up with a useful shoot-the-shit topic for the week. So, just in time for your Holiday shopping, we decided to touch  on audio speakers.

No component of a modern audio systems is more misunderstood than the speaker system and the average consumer will usually make bad purchasing decisions. Some buyers are under the erroneous assumption that a majority of your audio budget should go into the speakers. This approach is absolutely incorrect and will almost always result in poor performance. Speakers are part of a system integration consisting of electronics and speakers.

There are two families of speaker technologies, cone driven and electrostatic panels; each has its own peculiarity but they all have two properties that we want to understand, SPL (Sound Pressure Level) and Impedance. These two measures are vitally important because they drive amplification requirements and sound characteristics.

SPL is a measure of the speaker’s efficiency. It’s a measure of sound intensity, measured in decibels,  per 1 watt of input power. The higher the value, the more efficient the speaker and the more room filling sound you’ll experience. Typical SPLs run from 80 – 125 db.

Speakers are required to faithfully reproduce a frequency range of 20Hz – 20,000 Hz they do that by converting electrical energy (current) to mechanical energy followed by acoustic pressure. Retailers will generally present a speaker as being 8 ohms, 4 ohms, 2 ohms, etc. I’ve even witnessed a sales associate tell a customer that a 2 ohm speaker is more efficient because of it’s lower impedance which is a vulgar misrepresentation.

Speakers are reactive, meaning that their characteristic impedance changes over its frequency range. Bass frequencies result in a lower impedance while high frequencies result in higher impedances. When presented with a 20 Hz bass note, a speaker’s impedance may momentarily drop to 1 ohm or less. This means that its amplifier will see an almost direct short across its channel(Right or Left) terminals, so you’ll need an amplifier that can instantaneously produce a high amount of current to avoid a highly undesirable anomaly called clipping. So, when buying a speaker you should ask for some indication of its impedance across its frequency range. Electrostatic speakers are notorious current hogs with widely fluctuating impedances across its frequency range.

Cone speakers will usually have a higher SPL and less variability across their frequency range. Therefore, if you’re after a room filling sound, like in a home theater, cone speakers will provide that level of performance and are less demanding on your amplifiers.

If you want a speaker that will precisely place the image of an artist or instrument on the sound stage the electrostatic speaker reigns supreme. They have the lowest SPL and are very demanding on amplifiers, but in a properly laidout listening room you’ll be able to close your eyes and literally feel the presence of the artist or instrument. People often select an electrostatic design because they look artsy then neglect the amplifiers, this approach won’t work with electrostatic designs. If you buy an electrostatic speaker you’ll need to purchase an amplifier capable of delivering high levels of current. Don’t by watts buy current.

We wish you all a fun and safe weekend, and as always, all shoot-the-shit rules apply so, let us hear from you!