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Originally posted by inconspicuous hence why I said 'pretty much.' that is one of the only things that manufacturers can't manipulate & skew to the point of utter uselessness (like 1000w HTIBs & subwoofers). even with efficiency, though, it's great if the speaker sounds good. Klipsch makes ridiculously efficient speakers, but they sound like cramming shards of glass into your eardrums imo. also, those ratings should give you an idea of how full of shit most power ratings are, because if speakers actually played at 100w, you would go deaf instantly. 130db is a plane taking off, and you can get there with 4-5w (rated properly) on most speakers iirc.

Watts are cheap. dB efficiency becomes much more serious when discussing prosound where you're on the level of many many many many kilowatts.

For a speaker to put out 130dB @ 4w/1m @ 1kHz it would need to be 124dB @ 1w/1m @ 1kHz. That's approaching prosound/PA type levels.

A speaker at 100w will not make you go deaf instantly. I'm doing tests with stuff in the hundreds of watts, and hitting 1kw peak regularly.

Peak power is what you need to pay attention to. Dynamics, folks, dynamics. Music is frequencies and dynamics.

Remember that the room dominates the low end. Going from crappy placement to proper placement in a room can make you go from "I need a sub" to "I... don't need a sub."

If you're willing to spend some extra dough, I recommend this: http://www.soundstage.com/diwhy/diwhy200804.htm If I wasn't going to build my own speakers with my own driver designs, I'd get these and a simple two channel amplifier.