Loudspeaker marketing generates more myths per square centimetre of specification sheet than almost any other area of audio. Some of these myths are harmless; others lead buyers toward poor decisions and mismatched systems.
Myth: A bigger woofer always produces better bass. Driver size influences low-frequency extension and maximum output capability, but it is far from the only factor. Cabinet volume, tuning, driver excursion capability, and the acoustic loading provided by the room all determine how a speaker performs in the bass region. A smaller, well-designed driver in a well-engineered cabinet will frequently outperform a larger driver in a poorly designed enclosure — especially in a treated listening room where room gain cannot compensate for cabinet design deficiencies.
Myth: More watts means louder sound. Loudness scales logarithmically with power. Doubling the amplifier’s wattage produces an increase of only 3 dB — an audible but modest change. To produce a 10 dB increase in loudness, which listeners typically perceive as roughly “twice as loud,” you need ten times the power. The much larger lever for loudness is speaker sensitivity, not amplifier wattage. A 3 dB difference in sensitivity between two speakers has exactly the same effect on loudness as doubling the amplifier power.
Myth: Frequency response tells you everything about how a speaker sounds. On-axis frequency response is one data point among many. Off-axis behaviour, directivity, waterfall decay, distortion at realistic levels, and impedance characteristics all contribute to how a speaker performs in a real room. A ruler-flat on-axis measurement from a speaker with chaotic off-axis behaviour will sound coloured and uneven in any room that isn’t completely anechoic. Full-sphere measurements and directivity plots reveal far more than a single on-axis curve.
Buy with your ears — but make sure you understand what the measurements are and are not telling you.