At first glance, comparing the specifications and measurements of different speakers might seem like an easy and effective way to evaluate their capabilities.
However, there is a fundamental issue: there are no mandatory standards that manufacturers must follow. Each company is free to use whatever metrics they feel are appropriate or even omit important specifications altogether.
As a result, if you’re comparing specs, it's crucial to ensure you're comparing apples to apples.
Let us take SPL (Sound Pressure Level) measurements as an example.
In the following, you see three big Tower speakers.
1.
The first one shows a bass-limited signal, only going from 100Hz up, that avoids a lot of the most demanding frequencies and highest distortion. Basically like using a high-pass filter to cut off the lowest frequencies. That will of course result in a much higher peak SPL number and will keep the distortion lower. Nothing wrong with doing it like that, but for someone who wants to use the speaker full-range in Stereo, for example, those peak numbers have no real value.
2.
The second speaker has an unusually high peak number for its size of drivers and technology.
The description does not tell you anything other than you have to look up the AES75 paper and read through many pages to understand what it is all about.
What you find is that the Audio Engineering Society (AES) is trying to establish a standard to compare speakers and their SPL capabilities.
Unfortunately, for that to work, everyone will need to use it, so it might take some time till more companies adapt to that.
The TLDR is that this standard is much less demanding on the speaker and the SPL numbers will be much higher.
3.
The third one is our reference 1528 Tower 8.
At first glance, you might think the second speaker will play much louder, but if you look closer you will discover a very important detail.
What we are displaying here is a real torture test. A full-bandwidth signal, even with the lowest bass, with peak and RMS variants, following the IEC60268 norms. Companies like Klippel (known for their Near Field Scanner) work within the same guidelines.
Of course that will result in lower numbers, but we feel this is the most accurate representation of the speaker's capabilities.
So in conclusion, make sure you are comparing specs that are made under the same circumstances, or even better, made by the same third party.
Most importantly, real-world SPL numbers, with music and movie content, two or more speakers, and typical room acoustics, will look much different from what you see here.
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