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Loudspeakers

We do not sell speakers. Yours decide what the rest of the system has to do.

not sold here

Why this is here at all

Everything we carry sits between the recording and the loudspeaker. The loudspeaker is where all of it ends up and the only part of the system that has to move air in a real room. Which one you own sets the amplifier you need, and it sets how much of the rest you will ever hear.

We do not sell speakers. There is no brand here we are protecting and nothing we gain from what you choose, which is the useful part. What follows is what we have learned putting our own electronics in front of other people’s.

The back of the speaker decides the amplifier

Sensitivity

Decibels for one watt at one metre. It says how much sound you get for a given amount of power, and the scale is steep: every 3 dB is a doubling. An 87 dB speaker needs four times the power of a 93 dB one to reach the same level. Two speakers at the same price can sit six decibels apart, and that is the difference between a 20 watt amplifier being ample and being out of its depth.

Impedance, and where it dips

The figure on the box is nominal, an average across the range. What decides whether an amplifier copes is the minimum. A speaker sold as 8 ohms can fall to 3 through the bass, and the bass is where the energy is. An amplifier that measures well into a fixed 8 ohm resistor can still run out of current there.

Phase angle

Impedance says how much current the speaker draws. Phase angle says how badly timed that draw is. Four ohms at a 45 degree phase angle asks a great deal more of an output stage than four ohms on its own. Most makers do not publish it, which is why the honest answer to “will this amplifier drive these speakers” is sometimes that it has to be tried.

Watts is the number on the front, and it settles the least

Doubling the power buys 3 dB, which is a change you have to listen for. The step from background level to properly loud in a real room is closer to 10 dB, which is ten times the power. So when an amplifier is struggling, more watts of the same kind is rarely what fixes it. Current into a difficult load is.

Half of it is the room

The same speaker a foot from the wall and three feet out measures differently through the bass, and that gap is wider than the frequency response difference between most amplifiers. Boundaries reinforce low frequencies. The distance to the wall behind, to the side wall, and to your chair decides where that reinforcement helps and where it becomes a hump no amount of equipment will remove.

None of it costs anything, and it is worth doing before you spend, because it changes what you will conclude about everything you spend on.

Headphones are the same argument, smaller

Sensitivity and impedance again, on a driver an inch from your ear. A 300 ohm dynamic headphone wants voltage. A 32 ohm planar wants current. A socket that is comfortable with one can be the wrong end of the problem for the other, which is the same mismatch as a hard speaker load and a small amplifier, in miniature.

A headphone output is an amplifier with a smaller load on it, and what is written on the back decides it in exactly the same way. That belongs to the amplification pillar.

What we have had in the room

Makes we do not sell, filmed in our own room over the years: taken apart, listened to, unpacked. This is the part of a distributor’s knowledge that usually stays in the demo room.

What we will and will not tell you

We will tell you whether an amplifier will drive the speaker you already own, and we will tell you when the answer is that nothing needs to change. That is a question with an arithmetic answer and we are happy to do the arithmetic.

We will not tell you which speaker to buy. We have not heard yours in your room, we do not stock any, and a recommendation made without hearing the room is a guess with a logo on it.

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