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whats your idea of loud music.

ok here' what got me thinking about all of this.

i was in a dealers show room a while back checking out his ar monoblocks(sweet)& he put some smooth jazz on for me,the maggies sounded fantastic & i asked him to turn it up to a loud volume so i could see how the maggies responded.

after he gave me a stupid look he turned it up a notch & then stepped away & covered his ears like they might rupture or something & were talking about the volume being at the point where i could of heard him fart from 5 feet away,i asked him why he wouldnt turn it up loud & he told me that he wasnt sure what i thought loud was but the volume he had was more than enough for anybody.

i also see threads where guys reccomend these low power amps that i have owned with speakers i have owned & they say that the amp speaker combination can obtain listening levels that are not only louder than anybody would care to listen but unsafe levels to boot & when i had the same gear i thought the combination was way under powered & no where near being loud.

i consider loud to be when you can feel as well as hear the music & not from sitting right in front of the rig,i also consider loud to be when things on the walls move & my coffee cup has a little ripple on top of the coffee or when the dog runs for cover,i also consider it to be not loud if somebody in the same room can talk to you from 5 feet away & be heard.

im not looking for a right or wrong answer im just curious as to what other guys consider loud to be defined as.

mike.
128x128bigjoe
alpha_03
39 posts
 
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.
jefff1
32 posts
 
My wife and I of course differ over what loud is....my definition is not being able to hear the phone ring 2 feet away when I'm listening to my favorites..A person's rig should be able to satisfy at all levels....Live music is not a quiet affair...this will be an interesting thread
jaybo
4,478 posts
 
go back to the dealer with humble pie/rockin the fillmore and crank it up until he cries like a little girl. remember, the flea-watt amps where originally built for and by a generation that thought vaughn monroe was a god.
eldartford
4,262 posts
 
An interesting fact is that the human ear perceives "Loud" by when distortion occurs. In other words, a system overloading at 85dB will sound louder than clean sound at 95dB. (Don't quote me on the exact numbers).

Some music needs to be felt as well as heard. In my case this is organ and sometimes massed choral, but I recon that pop would also apply. My system includes, in the front, three 12" and three 15" drivers working in conjunction with three MG1.6, with six 600 wpc amps powering the whole mess. The surround channels are only four 7" drivers and 450 wpc. With the right recording, I can just begin to feel a real pipe organ at work. If you doubt this, consider for one moment the "drivers" that the organ uses!

Sometimes I realize that I am playing the music too loud. The way I notice this is by focusing on a soloist, for example a violin or vocalist. I know how loud a single violin can play, and if the reproduced violin is louder than that I turn the volume down. Unfortunately this depends on how the recording has been mixed. Many times the soloist is boosted relative to the orchestra, so that if the soloist is right the total sound is too quiet. (One advantage of multichannel is that, if the mix puts the soloist in the center channel, which is usual practice, you can rebalance a recording with overemphasis on the soloist by turning down the center channel).

Finally, I do have tools to measure SPL. IMHO, over 95dB, neglecting brief peaks, is too loud.
the_kid's avatar
the_kid
465 posts
 
HAHA.. Good thread. I listen at moderate to moderately loud levels but the mood strikes I love to crank it up and "feel" the music.

I do have this buddy who runs a Cary SLI-50 (30WPC) and runs a pair of Tyler Linbrooks. He listens to stuff LOUD period. It always amazes me how loud and clean his stuff will play without strain.

My idea of Loud?

The Foo Fighters Concert at the 930 club here in DC last month. My ears rang for days...

Chris
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