whats your idea of loud music.

I've always considered loud to be when I start having trouble hearing myself talk.

I've never run into a conservative dealer. The good ones set you up in a room by yourself and let you have at it solo.

Loud to me includeds the predominant volume level, not the transients. My usual listening level is between 75 and 85 db with peaks to 110. My equipment includes 4x1000 watts to power the 4 15" subwoofers. I'm told that the speakers are 99 db efficient.

So, I figure I'm using about 1-2 watts out of the 4600.

I do sometimes like to play LOUD!!!

That's more like 100-110 db with peaks to 150 db.

We had Sousa and those KODO people in the room recently an it's emotional. It's like being on the field of a big college football game with the 100 person marching band.

Great music = moderate listening levels
Fun music = Loud listening
Drunk listening = what was I talking about?

I must be somewhere in the middle of the loudness preference scale.
Went to a dealer and was able to listen to some Wilson Audio Maxx speakers. The sales guy wouldn't turn the volume up enough for me to experience any of the bass slam and dynamics I know the speakers have to be capable of..He said they actually are playing louder than they seem because they do not distort. There may be some truth to that but I wanted to feel some of the energy but, noooo.
Then on the other hand I was invited to go listen to a nice fellows system that had some Revel Salons with Meridian and Levinson gear. He played the music so loud I thought my brain would explode. Owwwch! I kept reaching for the remote. I could not hear a word he said the whole time we were listening and he sat only about 4 feet away.
I do like to feel the music a bit, dynamics, bass and drums and such.
But no screeming stuff and if it's going to be loud no harsh garbage please!

"im not looking for a right or wrong answer im just curious as to what other guys consider loud to be defined as." 85 db and up, with good, crisp, accurate reproduction is loud for me. In certain musical passages, I'll push the volume higher for the dramatic effect, but that may not be what the performer had in mind. The remote volume control can be good and bad.

For an extended listening session, I put on the CD, close my eyes and with the volume set on the low side I begin to slowly increase the volume (via the remote control) until the sound "snaps into focus". When it just sounds right to my ears on that listening session, the volume is right. That is how I do it.

I mostly agree with the above. But since when does WPC indicate loud? Good sounding loud any way. Driver excursion, SPL, and control is far more important than WPC, any day, and this requires amperage, not just voltage.

BWOE, I have experimented with a pair of AB International 1100A's that I have vs. the pair of Protons I use, the Protons sound much more musical, and have the same output dB as far as my ears are concerned, given my listening rooms size. The Protons are 110wpc, the AB International's are 550wpc. Different amplifiers obviously, but they both do the same thing.

There comes a point when a room can only tolerate "x" amount of SPL, any more than that and it sounds like crap, imaging goes out the window because your ears can not decipher the music from all the reverberation due to inherent room acoustics.

It took me quite a long time to get my cross-overs "tuned" or dialed in to my particular room w/my given drivers of choice. Move to the middle and the sound was ok, move to the back and it was bass heavy, and so on and so forth. The wave form created by a specfic speaker driver became completely different depending on placement, and crossover point. Where I wanted a given freq. with in the room was a chore to say the least.

All this is very driver (raw) dependent. Even with all the experimenting I did, certain electronics, esp. speakers have a sound of their own, no matter how much power you add to the mix.

Why did I ramble on? Because loud equates to SPL IMO, not WPC. So, for a given person, 90dB might be loud, but for people like myself, I prefer "live" levels, because I listen to a lot of "live" recorings. But studio recorded music (atleast for me) doesn't require the same power to be enjoyable. For me the essence of the source material is different, and my ears tell my brain this when I listen to a given type of music, loud is dependent upon the music type there fore, and not WPC.