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


I put this question under speakers because I assume "slam" is mostly a function of the speakers, but perhaps a certain level of amplification is required. The only places I have experienced slam is listening to certain demos at audio shops, and some live music. Most speaker demos I have heard over the years did not produce slam.

So, what mostly accounts for a system producing that "slam" you can feel in your chest? Is it that certain speakers are "voiced" with a mid-bass hump that causes it? Do they EQ the signal to produce it? Do they employ super powerful amps?

Secondly, how accurate is slam? How much of a goal in speaker selection should the ability to produce slam be?

The reason for the questions is that I am getting close to being in the market for new main speakers. My current amp is a McCormack DNA 1, BTW. Thanks for any info!


mtrot
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.
Its a catchy, marketing term that sounds a lot sexier than dynamics....which it essentially is...similiar to acronym PRAT...just clever verbage
Slam is a description of bass performance, like crunch, best shown off with recordings of stream locomotives, atomic bomb tests, the T-Rex running in Jurassic Park, Mickey Hart drum recordings, soundtrack to The Terminator 2, things of that nature.
Remember that in real life the SPL of individual drums being hit reasonably hard (slam would imply more than soft gentle drumwork) is going to be over 100db. Well over. Most speakers simply don't have the ability to convey music that loud without a lot of distortion. Most audiophile speakers just won't do it.
Also a term that became popular during the advent...of the HT era...iI dont hear it that much in audiophile circles....