AKdead wrote:so how is the JBL louder?
Speakers have a couple of values to look at... Impedance and Power tell part of the tale. They say at the rated resistance, the speaker can handle so much power.
It does NOT tell you what the final result will be!
That is the speaker sensitivity... Rated in dB and measured from 1 meter away when applying 1 watt of power. From there you can do the math to tell what kind of SPL the speaker will push. Every time you double the power, you gain 3dB SPL @ 1meter...
The JBL is rated for 103dB of sensitivity... at 1 watt!
So 2 watts of power yields 106dB. 4 watts yields 109dB. 8 watts yields 112dB... etc... By the time we get to 128 watts of power, that JBL E-120 is producing 124dB SPL!
NeoMags are a direct replacement for a D-120, which has a sensitivity of 97dB.. so at 128 watts, it would be pushing 118dB SPL.
The E-120 at 6dB SPL louder is TWICE AS LOUD, it's all in the math... same power and impendance, same sized speakers... that 6dB of sensitivity translates to a speaker that's twice as loud.
Or a different way of looking at it... The same amps pushing a D-120 and an E-120... the D-120 will require 128watts to sound as loud as the E-120 pushed by 32 watts! That would be a "same volume" speaker comparison... But's it's really not the "same volume" since the volume knob won't be in the same place...
Weber does give an oblique answer to this on their website...
http://www.webervst.com/spterm.html#spl