Should I measure my speakers?

[Dave Bullet]

More generally I've noticed that many commercial speakers are sounding dull and lifeless these days. They just don't have that zing and sing that was the hallmark of the 1970s and 80s speakers. They also seem to need a lot more power in order to be dull sounding... This I think is largely because of fading efficiency in crossovers and perhaps in drivers themselves.

This is why my suggestion that we should worry less about small issues and tread speakers as the broad instruments they are...

One possibility is the need to tame the brutal masterings we are faced with so the speaker "is nice to listen to" across the widest spectrum of music.

 

[Douglas Blake]

One possibility is the need to tame the brutal masterings we are faced with so the speaker "is nice to listen to" across the widest spectrum of music.

Yep, that's one possibility.

It comes across as a lack of ambition. The old school stuff almost screamed "Hey let me loose!" but the new stuff seems to be saying "Well, if I must." My Heresys would get right up and dance on 5 watts, on 10 watts I'd have the police at my door... My current SP-FS52s have to be pushed pretty hard to get to a decent listening level. I've never set my gain controls higher. They sound great except for a general sense of lifelessness about them.

 

[chris661]

Just to make one final point, while I can...

The major concern I have is the loss of efficiency. Shunt components --the ones connected to ground-- can and do carry current. The only source of that current is the amplifier. The more shunted current the harder the amplifier works, the less of it's energy actually gets to the drivers and the more heat is generated.

In extreme cases, an inefficient crossover can kill an amplifier... and I've seen it happen.

More generally I've noticed that many commercial speakers are sounding dull and lifeless these days. They just don't have that zing and sing that was the hallmark of the 1970s and 80s speakers. They also seem to need a lot more power in order to be dull sounding... This I think is largely because of fading efficiency in crossovers and perhaps in drivers themselves.

This is why my suggestion that we should worry less about small issues and tread speakers as the broad instruments they are...

I see your point, but I'd place the blame squarely on the drivers. We've always been up against Hoffman's Iron Law:

- Small, efficient, low bass - pick any two.

In the 1970s and 1980s, amplifier power was relatively expensive, and people didn't mind larger boxes. Efficiency, then, could be (and often was) fairly high.

These days, it's all about squeezing every last bit of bass out of the smallest cabinet volume possible. Amplifier power is cheap, so efficiency is allowed to suffer.

A prime example would be the 6.5" Tang Band mini-subs. I ran them, for a while, in a 2-way system with a full-range driver crossing at about 400Hz. The low-frequency section was probably 80dB@1w.
There was plenty of "life" in there, but you had to (almost literally) put a rocket up them to get anywhere. I was lighting up the -6dB light on a Behringer NU6000, for about 500w peaks into those drivers. Of course, they wouldn't take that sort of power if it was sustained, but the occasional peak did need large voltage swings.
Once that sort of power was being delivered, though, the results were impressive - lots of deep bass from a couple of large shoeboxes.

An 80dB@1w speaker would never have worked in the 1970s and 1980s, but sacrificing in one area does open up some options in others.

I'm not saying that low-efficiency speakers are better, just that they represent a different set of compromises.

Chris