Speaker Sensitivity Explained | Home Theater Specs

You want a speaker that is as loud as an ambulance siren. Can your speaker do it? The Sensitivity spec will be able to tell you.

When you have the speaker's sensitivity, and the wattage of your amplifier or receiver, you can tell exactly how many decibels your speakers can pump out. In this video, we'll explain how to do that.

If there are any home audio or turntable specs that you would like clarification on, then leave a comment below. We'll be sure to get around to them in a future video.

Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:19 How Speaker Sensitivity is Measured
01:06 How loud is X dB?
01:42 Wrap Up

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TRANSCRIPT:
You're sitting at home and you're looking to buy some speakers online, and you've got a couple in your cart, you're going back and forth, and you notice the sensitivity spec is different. What is the sensitivity spec? We'll tell you.

Sensitivity is how loud a speaker will be, given a specific wattage. Take the XL8 Reference Series Floorstanding speakers for example. If you look at the sensitivity, it will read 87 dB @ 1 W/1m.

This means that if you power the speaker with 1 watt, and measure with an SPL meter from 1 meter away, it will produce 87 dB.

What do you get when you up the wattage to 2W? 90 dB. That's because every time you double the wattage you add 3 dB. So in this case, 2W will give you 90 dB, 4W will give you 93 dB, 8W will give you 96 dB, 16W will give you 99 dB, 32W will give you 102 dB, and 64W will give you 105 dB.

To give you an idea of how loud that is, normal breathing is about 10 dB. A refrigeration hum is about 40 dB, a washing machine is about 70 dB, a lawnmower is about 80 dB, a car horn is about 110 dB, and an ambulance siren is 120 dB.

There are a couple of ways to measure sensitivity. One is in an anechoic chamber and one is an in-room measurement. The anechoic chamber will give you more repeatable results because you're not dealing with reflections, but an in-room measurement will give you more real-world results. In-room measurements tend to add about 3 dB to the rating.

Now any specs that we haven't explained, but you want to hear baout., leave a comment below and let us know and we will cover it in a future video.

As always, thank you very much for watching, be sure to hit subscribe, we'll see you next time.

Видео Speaker Sensitivity Explained | Home Theater Specs канала Fluance Audio