I don't think so ....
Have a misunderstanding that is , it is as you say , if you fix the numbers as you have , that is not what was being discussed, we have two speakers @90db/2.83v/m one 8 one 4 ohm, the 8 ohm version has a higher efficiency at .6%.
manufacturers specs are about sensitivity , efficiency is expressed in percentages , this is what is being discussed ...
regards
We are supposed to be nice here.. but seriously: Efficiency is expressed in db. In your example, the 8 ohm speaker will be found to be 3 db more efficient. Do the math: 2.83 volts into 4 ohms is double the amplifier power. The 4 ohm load is getting 2 watts instead of one. The 8 ohm speaker needs only 1 watt to do the same thing. The 4 ohm speaker's efficiency is thus 87db. I think many audiophiles are dismayed when they discover that the speaker's ability to be driven by an amplifier is padded in this fashion.
No Ralph ,
There are still toob amps around today because people like them, the same reason why people own SS amps , more so than toobs , they like them too...
But, we digress ...
I see where you are trying to steer this , the same hi-z /otl straw-man conversation we have had for years. 4ohms don't manifest itself as brightness and harshness no more than 8 ohm tends to sound dead and cloudy, a bad amp is just that...
The irony is you think 2%thd @8ohm is good and .01% @2 ohm , bad, when in fact the only reason why you crave high -z loads is due to the high output impedance of your amplifiers, it works for you , nothing more...
Anyway ,
What toob amp are you using to drive your cutter .... ?
Higher impedance works for
any amplifier. I have a class D amplifier with which we have been experimenting. The 4 ohm distortion curves are obviously showing a greater amount of distortion. Sure enough when you compare operation between 4 and 8 ohm speakers, it sounds smoother on 8 ohms. This is true of any solid state amp. You might be able to weld with it, but the amp is made for making music- why stress it out in the slightest?? You want the amp to have an easy time so it makes as little distortion as possible.
You seem to be missing my point about what sort of distortions the ear cares about and those that it does not. The ear uses higher ordered harmonics to calculate how loud a sound is; it is more sensitive to higher ordered (especially odd ordered) harmonics than anything else: it is more sensitive to them than most distortion analyzers! That is why we can often hear things in amps that don't show up on the bench. This is why transistor amps often sound bright, even when on the bench they are perfectly flat.
The ear translates distortion into tonality.
Since higher orders (5th and beyond) are not present in most tube amps they way they are in solid state, the result is that the tube amps sound smoother. So this is very relevant to the discussion as tube amplifiers often have a greater percentage of
usable power (this being the range of power available before the system becomes unpleasant due to distortion,
even though the amp is not clipping). When higher orders of odd harmonics are the primary distortion component, even in trace amounts it can render the system unpleasant long before clipping. This is why tube amplifiers are still around (although you don't have to know anything technical in this regard, all you have to know is economics: the market has spoken in the face of nay-sayers). The implication for solid state is to keep the load impedance up so the amp will sound as smooth and detailed as possible.
We have used a variety of amplifiers tube and solid state to drive our cutter head. It only takes a few watts before destruction, so we have been successful cutting tracks with 10-watts SETs. The issue with any cutting system is that the amplifier must have plenty of overhead such that distortion is minimized so cutter amps are often 10x more power than they would ever need. The issue is such that with many push-pull amps, the area in which the cutter operates is at such a low level that the distortion of the amplifier is actually higher than if a little more power were to be used. This is why we have been experimenting with SETs and our amplifiers (which are push-pull) since both have a distortion character that decreases linearly to unmeasurable as power is decreased. This is ideal for the LP, which so far is king when it comes to low level detail; any distortion will of course obscure detail via the ear's masking principle.
Incidently the Westerex 3D cutterhead is a power paradigm device so this works quite well with our gear, see
Voltage and Power Paradigms
What I do suspect you really like Ralph , is the sound of your amplifier when clipping , that euphoric 2%, well unless using the bad boy 500 watt version, I guess you could build a big Un speaker system for it by going series/parallel ...
You should bring that one (500 watter) out more often, it must be a beast ...
Actually you are entirely incorrect with this assumption. I like to run the amps with plenty of headroom just like you do (BTW that 2% figure is from a 25-year-old amp and current models have much lower distortion as pointed out earlier) and so tend to use speakers that are higher efficiency. My speakers at home are 98 db 1 watt/1 meter and go from 20Hz to 35Khz. I like to use our MA-1s (140 watts) on them as it is impossible to clip the amps in my room.
