This is a placeholder topic for “Enclosed Speaker - 8 Ohm, 5 Watt” comments.
Turn your projects up to 11, this 5W speaker is perfect for bringing life to a project!
Read moreI plan on using the Enclosed Speaker - 8 Ohm, 5 Watt as output from a ReSpeaker pi hat that only delivers 1W @ 8 ohms. Only need this for confirmation of prompts for voice control of home automation. Will this thing have enough sound output at 1W or does it need an amp?
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Since it runs at 5W, I don’t think this speaker will give proper output at 1W.
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5W is the maximum power handling. It will work with only up to 1W input - the question is whether this will be loud enough to be useful (it is dependent on the sensitivity of the speaker). It only needs to be loud enough for notifications (equivalent to normal speaking voice). Does anyone have any experience with this?
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Yes I do 
I have a few of these at home and I use them in many of my audio projects.
Let me test one for you and I’ll get back to you this afternoon.
I’ll just drive it with a small amp and measure 1 watt with my multimeter.
Then I’ll check the db for you with my level meter. 
My prediction is 1W is going to be on the edge of what you’ll find satisfying.
Maybe it will depend on your amp and the RMS of the input source?
Watch this space.
Pix 
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Hi All
And depends somewhat on your ears.
The "db"measurement is not going to mean much here. The listening test will be the ultimate decider. If you are only in a relatively small space the 1W could blow you away. If you are out in an open field you will hardly here it.
Cheers Bob
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1 watt gave me a reading of 68db averaged over 1 second. The meter was about 1.5 meters away. In my opinion that’s actually about perfect for your home automation environment.
- I was playing a saw-tooth wave, not human speech.
- I’m in a quiet studio environment with no competing noise sources.
As proof of concept, I’m game to say it’ll work.
I ran 5v and my amp pulled 180ma.
Good luck.
Pix
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Absolutely love it!
Hi Pix
Just a bit of trivia regarding speaker sensitivity…
All the figures I have seen on this measurement are with 1W sine wave at 1kHz and a distance of 1 metre. Now I don’t know if this a laid down “standard” method or not but seems to be somewhat universal. I have seen some upper market speakers state the measurement criteria on the info plate so maybe it is not a laid down method.
I believe this measurement is made in an acoustic “dead” environment. As these will probably never be used in such a situation I am not convinced as to the usefulness of such a figure to the average Joe.
Certainly useful for design work for a large concert hall or public address systems where in the case of a hall echos and standing waves can be somewhat controlled. The design boffins can pretty accurately say what level of sound is available in any area of said hall.
In a nutshell for the average user I don’t think you can go past the old listening test.
As for the Decibel (db). This is a POWER ratio and unless it is referenced to something is meaningless. I think for this type of measurement this reference (0db) is the threshold of human hearing which I think is generally accepted to be a sound pressure of 20 Micro Pascals. As I say I THINK that is the figure, I am sure Wikipedia and other sources will have plenty of information on this subject if you are interested
All of this does not matter and is probably Swahili to the average listener but it does not hurt to have a general idea as to what some of these numbers mean. What the end result sounds like is still dependant on the individual ear. I know with my ears I would be lucky to hear 12 or 15kHz at all with a speaker of some 90 or so db sensitivity…
As you say. These “5W” speakers should be fine at 1W.
Cheers Bob
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There is a frequency response graph in the listing. It shows not much going on below 300Hz, reasonable output to over 10kHz. That sort of response is OK for speech but lacking in bass for music. If it is used for confirmation tones as Nick243828 intends, 1W should be more than enough. People hear their mobiles “ring” when reproduced by smaller speakers than this, and with power not much greater than 1W. There’s an interesting article at Phone Speaker: Watts and Decibels Across Different Models about mobile phone speakers.
A lot depends on the environment in which the speaker will be used. If it is a normal domestic situation the background is 40-60dB (relative to 20 μPa, the units in the supplied graph) and the speaker should deliver over 80dB (according to the graph) with 1W and frequencies over 300Hz. Easily heard over the background.
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Thanks for testing this @Pixmusix - much appreciated 
I ended up buying a 3W “mini hamburger” active speaker instead which runs off the line-level output. Its the same size and only slightly more expensive. The passive speaker would probably have been ok under most conditions, but dont want the annoyance of missing notifications due to intermittent ambient noise.
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Hi Nick,
We’ll love to see it in action once you’ve got it together!
