I really liked the review of the Salk HT2 - TL. How would they handle the power from a XPA-2 amp? Is there a way to prevent or know before a speaker is about to destruct when turned up loud?
Not to scare you, but those Excel drivers are probably so good it'll probably sound great right until a woofer cone flies out of the box
IMO it, and their siblings the Philharmonics are great speakers but probably more suited to everyday levels. It's not a knock on the speaker it's just the design decisions made aren't well suited... I recommend sticking to things 93db sensitive or higher. It's more than just how many watts the amp is capable of - it's the amount of watts actually being drawn.
An 88db sensitive speaker, at 12 feet just for example, will draw ~25W which is a good bit of heat for a constant draw (IE a party or compressed music especially both) to keep up a ~90db level.
A 93db sensitive speaker will only draw ~8W for the same SPL. That's a third of the power!
A 97db sensitive speaker will be cruising along with only ~3W input for the same SPL!
As you can see, sensitivity is more important than the mundane "rated power handling" because the latter doesn't factor in program material.. or much at all really. It's normally an abritrary number.
It's funny, because even though it's a high-power CAPABLE amplifier, most of the music you'll listen to in parties won't be dynamic enough to hit the absolute peaks, although some can be. For the most part it'll be the constant draw that'll be a speaker killer, not the instanteous peak draw.
Mostly, it's bass that is the big draw as far as "peaks go" so you'll want lots of radiating surface area, huge voice coils, sufficient excursion on the (mid)woofers. There's very often more bass content from 80hz to 200hz than IMO there is below 80hz.
I mean, that doesn't mean high sensitivity is the end-all be-all either. It's all a balancing act
Vapor Audio Arcus $3,700 30-250 watts - solid state
Hey that's a better price than I expected. That thing has just under $2000 worth of drivers in it alone! That said lead times might be long (I don't know if he keeps the woofer in stock, and the lead times for the EXCELLENT acoustic elegance woofers can get kinda unpredictable.
BTW, don't sell the JBL LSRs short. If you took away the 20hz extension and fancy aesthetics and fancy cone materials, they're an extremely close sibling to the pricy Revel Salon 2; of which you'll find plenty of reviews if those float your boat.
In fact it's the speaker used in the Harman Kardon reference room:
Combine their very flat frequency response (with a 1db tweeter attenuation switch if you've got bright recordings), 93db sensitivity, 12" dual differential drive woofer, excellent 5" kevlar midrange with a huge voice coil, smooth off-axis response thanks to the waveguide loaded titanium dome tweeter, and there's a lot they do right. The JBL Professional stuff is well worth checking into!!
