How Does Cordless Loudspeaker Energy Efficiency Influence Sound Quality?

If you are about to acquire brand new cordless loudspeakers, you most likely are concerned about how efficiently your wireless speakers function. Let me explain exactly what the term “power efficiency” means and also why you should take a closer look at this number throughout your selection of new cordless loudspeakers.

Numerous challenges are a result of cordless speakers which have low power efficiency: A lot of wasted power naturally means larger running expenditure which means that a more expensive set of cordless loudspeakers can in fact in the long term possibly be more affordable when compared to a cheaper type which has lower efficiency. Lower efficiency wireless speaker systems will radiate a great deal of energy as heat. Wireless loudspeakers that have low efficiency routinely have various heat sinks in order to help dissipate the wasted power. These heat sinks consume a fair amount of space and make the wireless speakers bulky and heavy. Further, they increase the price of the cordless loudspeakers. To help dissipate heat, low-power-efficiency amplifiers will need adequate air movement. So they cannot be placed in areas without circulation. Also, they can’t be fitted in water-proof enclosures.

Low-efficiency models need more total power in order to create the same level of audio power as high-efficiency models. Thus they require a bigger power supply which makes the cordless speakers more expensive to make. In addition, due to the large amount of heat, there will be significantly greater thermal stress on the electric elements as well as interior materials that might result in reliability problems. In comparison, high-efficiency cordless speakers can be produced small and light. When looking for a couple of wireless speakers, you will find the efficiency in the data sheet. This value is usually listed as a percentage. Different amp architectures offer different power efficiencies. Class-A amplifiers are amongst the least efficient and Class-D the most efficient. Typical power efficiencies range from 25% to 98%. From the efficiency percentage you’ll be able to figure out how much power the amp will squander. An amp with a 50% power efficiency will waste 50 % of the consumed energy. An amp that has 90% efficiency is going to squander 10%. What’s less well-known about efficiency is the fact that this figure isn’t fixed. The truth is it fluctuates depending on how much energy the amp provides. As a result in some cases you will find efficiency values for different energy levels within the data sheet. Each audio amplifier is going to use up a certain level of energy regardless of whether or not it supplies any kind of power to the speaker. For this reason the smaller the power the amp delivers, the smaller the power efficiency. For that reason audio makers usually specify the efficiency for the highest audio power that the amp can supply. To determine the efficiency, the audio energy that is used by a power resistor which is connected to the amplifier is divided by the total power the amp consumes whilst being fed a constant sine wave signal. Ordinarily a complete power report is plotted in order to display the dependency of the efficiency on the output power. For this reason the output power is swept through several values. The efficiency at every value is measured and a power efficiency graph generated.

When selecting a couple of cordless loudspeakers you will need to weigh efficiency versus fidelity because cordless speakers which use low-efficiency analog amps often provide the maximum audio fidelity while digital types will have larger distortion. Nevertheless, the most up-to-date cordless speakers that use switching-mode music amplifiers, such as Class-T amplifiers, offer audio fidelity that comes close to that of low-efficiency analog amplifiers and can be made extra small and light.