Agreed,It means we need a beefy amplifier to drive the speakers in a well treated room? Will the room sensitivity of 94db be enough to fill a medium sized room(250-350 sqft) with minimum treatment ? Sorry if my questions are too noob to ask... Learning a lot from this forum
In Indian HT scenario well treated rooms are nothing short of anechoic chambers ( joking ).
But yeah.. a good HT room will have a reverberation time under 0.5 and above 0.3.
I wouldn't be much bothered about the acoustics (which I do) and sensitivity relation.
What is to bother about it the distance from the speaker.
Consider this condition:
If we sit 4 meters( 13 feet) this is a fairly common usage distance.
SPL loss due to distance would be anywhere between 8-10db.
So a 94db/watt sensitivity speaker would need clean 150 watts of power to reach reference levels that's without any headroom.( yeah who needs to reference level playback might be the question) - capability to reach reference level with clarity makes difference at relatively low level listening.
Now coming to speakers with anechoic sensitivity of 95db. It will have in room sensitivity of at least 98db- I'm being conservative.
This speaker would need just 60 watts to achieve same SPL.
High sensitivity speakers play effortlessly and with ease which is clearly audible even at kid's friendly volume levels.
An AB comparison cleared all doubts for me.
In short for movies and high level music listening high sensitivity speakers are a must unless one has lakhs to spend on a high power amplifier and a speaker which could take that much power without compression or distortion.
