"Slam"--what is it, is it really accurate?

It's the room before the rest. Then it is the proper pairing of speakers and amp.

Case in point, when I first moved into my room, my system sounded fine but the bass response was not very good. I added treatments installed a proper rack dialed in the speaker position and then voila, Slam!

My system is nothing outrageous but I think that I am fortunate to have found a good synergy between all my components.

My slam test reference recording is the overture to Verdi's Rigoletto, the London Symphony Orchestra with Bonynge conducting, London FFRR OSA13105.

http://www.stereophile.com/content/sounds-audio-glossary-glossary-r-s

I don't believe "slam" can be accurate unless you have the very best components and a very tweaked(professionally) listening room. Even with great speakers that i've heard several times... IRS-Omega/KEF 207 I felt the "slam" was compacted and slightly over exaggerated when compared to live music? Maybe a super system with Wilson Grand Slams or an Infinity IRS ect. are needed to accurately reproduce slam. I think we need to hear from Albert Porter or Mike Lavigne regarding this topic.

The recording as much as anything else will determine how the "slam" goes down, track by by track.

More slam than ever in many modern recordings these days. Slam sells! Even good headphones like most Sennheiser phones these days do it VERY WELL!!!!

Home audio buffs: beware! Portable audio is cutting into that turf more and more these days (along with all the rest), so best to get it right and at an affordable price.

Slam to me is the ability of the system to reproduce soft to loud passages and back again. For an example, I use a track with two acoustic guitars. During a passage with both guitars strumming, one guitarist is wrapping his hand/knuckles ont he guitar. I was thinking about how hard could a person strum and wrap his hand on the guitar and how loud would and should that sound versus the rest of the instruments that were playing. In the beginning I thought wow that guitarist is really knocking on the guitar. Then I thought to myself, man that has to be a really close miked wrap or my system is not reproducing that correctly. I also play guitar so I used that as my comparison. I thought that was slam. When I switched to a more refined speakers that sound changed to less hit me in the gut sound and the wrap seemed to come more from the location of the one guitar, had less overall hit me in the gut impact, but it seemed to me that the "slam" was much more correct. The speakers were similar in design, both time aligned but the one pair had a more solid cabinet that the other which seemed to deaden the sound, some may call it having less of an impact or maybe even duller, (not as dynamic), but the more I listened the more I thought that the sound was more accurate. Kind of like first row presentation versus 15th row. The sound was fast and dynamic with the right amount of slam for what I thought could be reproduced by the wrapping of the hand on the guitar. So that is how I would define slam. How fast can the system go soft to loud and back again and retain the tone and resolution of the sound.

Happy Listening.