I am about to buy some home audio gear. I have picked a receiver, but I’m confused about the speakers.
Speakers have specs like: Power Range, Frequency Response, Sensitivity, and Impedance (Ohms). I don’t know what some of this means.
I understand that how power range relates to my amplifier, but I don’t understand the relationship of the other categories. What do I need to consider in my receiver if speakers have a certain Impedance or Sensitivity?
Am I allowed to link to crutchfield for informational purposes? I would like to get a sanity check on the receiver, speakers and sub-woofer I plan on buying from someone who knows home audio before I lay out my money, so if it’s not against board rules to link to the gear I’m looking at, please let me know and I’ll do that.
Frequency Response: The wider the better, generally.
Sensitivity: This is closely related to the efficiency of the speaker; a more sensitive speaker tends to be more efficient from a “power in” vs. “power out” perspective. A more sensitive speaker is also better at reproducing very low-level signals.
**Impedance **(Ohms): This is one you have to be careful with. An amplifier will specify the lowest impedance it can safely drive. If, for example, the lowest impedance your amplifier can drive is 4 ohms, you need to make sure the impedance of each speaker is not less than 4 ohms.
You could just post the model names and numbers of the gear, and we can look it up.
The problem with buying speakers from specifications is that they don’t really tell you what the speaker will sound like. Two speakers with identical specifications can sound radically different. Some very high quality speakers have poorer specifications in some areas than cheap ones do.
What I’d like to know to give you some solid advice on speakers is this:
What’s your budget?
What do you want them for primarily? Movies? Music? Gaming?
How big is the room you’re putting them in, and where do you sit in it?
Do you have walls on either side of your sitting area, or is it open on one side or both?
What’s the receiver you are going to use?
With that info, we can steer you to a good choice.
Movies and Gaming, mostly. The receiver will be connected to the home theater stuff and gaming consoles.
There are two rooms where this will be used. One is very large with a high ceiling. Probably about 25’x25’x20’. I’m going to be using this at my (small) wedding coming up soon for dinner & dancing music.
At home, it’s actually a small rectangular room. I sit on one of the long sides and the screen and main speakers sit on the opposite side. I intend to buy more than I need for this particular room, since I don’t want to have to upgrade when I move in the future, and so I can use it for the wedding.
There’s a wall about 10 feet to my right, and it’s open for almost 20 feet on the left.
Definitely audition the speaker/receiver combination before purchase. Most decent audio dealers will let you listen in store and if the results are satisfactory will allow you to try it at home for a few days before you commit. Against a deposit usually.
Also, they will generally be aware of ‘happy’ combinations and those that will turn out to be a headache, in more ways then one.
I bought some speakers “sight unseen” (sound unheard?). This isn’t my usual way to buy speakers, but AFAIK, they aren’t available through dealers. They are Rocket ELTs from ACI, and I’ve been extremely happy with them. People who come over to watch movies at our house always comment on how great the sound is.
Okay. You can get a reasonably good setup for that.
Okay, I wouldn’t worry about this application at all. You don’t need super high fidelity sound, so whatever you get for the other room will be just fine here.
There’s a wall about 10 feet to my right, and it’s open for almost 20 feet on the left.
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Okay, this presents a bit of a problem. Where did you intend for your surround speakers to go?
A bit of background - there are two basic types of surround speaker. One is a dipole, meaning there are two full sets of speakers in the same box - one pointing forward, and one pointing back. These speakers are designed to sit on the wall and radiate sound around the room, creating the ambient sound field. For these to work properly, they should be located above ear level when sitting, and directly across from the seating position mounted on a wall. This realy requires a room that’s fully enclosed to work properly.
So you want standard, single-speaker surrounds. With these, you want them slightly behind the seating position, several feet away on each side, and aimed at the listeners. This works far better in a room like yours, because the speakers aren’t using the walls to create the sound field - they’re just aiming the sound directly at you. These speakers can be set up on stands or mounted on walls, so they can accomodate almost any room configuration. But you’ll have a speaker on a stand with a cord running from it out in the room a bit, if that’s okay.
Also, don’t shortchange the center channel. When watching movies, the majority of the sound energy comes out of the center channel, so don’t skimp on it.
In the end, my recommendation is that you get a satellite/sub speaker system with four matched speakers and a center channel, or five matched speakers. Plus a subwoofer.
I highly recommend these. I have the Paradigm studio series surround system in my home theater, and it’s astonishingly good. Paradigm routinely wins expert reviews for their speaker systems. The mini-monitor setup is $1665, which is a little over your ceiling, but you should be able to find them at any audio store with a discount that puts it under your ceiling. Paradigm also has systems at lower price bands. All of them are good value for the money.
Other brands to look at: Definitive Technology, KEF, NHT, Energy, Boston Acoustics, BMW, Klipsch. Search for some reviews of them, and you’ll find comparisons to other speakers to add to your list.
I would avoid Bose speakers. They seriously under-perform for the dollar compared to these companies.
Just make sure you get A) matched speakers, B) a good center channel, and C) direct surrounds, and not dipoles. I’d also stay away from any tiny cube speaker system. You want your main speakers to have at least a 4.5" driver in them, or you will wind up with unnatural sound.
To give some further information on the sensitivity of the speakers, you will usually see the sensitivity quoted as something like 99 dB 1 W/1 m. What this means is that when the speaker is fed 1 W, the SPL is 99 dB 1 meter away from the speaker. As Crafter_Man said, the higher this number, the more efficient the speaker is.
You can also use this number to predict a maximum SPL at your listening area if you feel like doing a little math. As a rule of thumb, doubling the power provided to your speaker will increase the level by 3 dB, so if you are providing the speaker with 16 W instead of 1, your level at 1 meter will be 99 dB + 15 dB (5 doublings of power) = 114 dB. Then, for every doubling of distance, the level decreases by 6 dB, so if your listening position is 4 meters away from the speakers, you will lose 12 dB for a total of 102 dB or so at your listening position.
A note on power ratings. Usually you’ll see several different numbers for power ratings, something called continuous power, program power, and peak power. The number you typically will want to use to match your amps and speakers power wise is the continuous power number. This will allow for safe long-term use of the speaker/amp combination.