Volume and Bass levels at LA HE Show

See these vendors miss the point. Do we really want a system that can play loud? Of course not. So why do they try to tempt us with alot of loud noise? Makes no sense to me. Just put the volume at 1/4 and let the sytem sell itself. I image they try to overwhelm our hearing to numb it, and so we really think we are getting a great speaker/system. Makes no sense to me. I have a gigantic room and a 20 watt tube amp and only play it at 1/4 volume, maybe a tad more. Never at 12 oclock. I've never understood the theory or concept of loud music. At a show its a frickin turnoff and one should run past those rooms that do so.

213Cobra,

Man, was it great to have some real rock and blues played, finally. I found a few rooms where we were able to tear the roof off the place. Globals Acoustic's Audio Aero amps and WLM speakers - Cranking Tool, Neil Young, etc. and Zu was ripping Radiohead and other alternative bands.

It's too bad most "audiophiles" are anti-rock or any modern music. There is only so much Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Patricia Barber a person can't before their blood turns to sludge.

Audio shows are quite possibly the worst place possible to make any critical decisions about equipment, so maybe everyone should stop pretending and just get on with having a good time. Crank it up and let house start rockin'

Dark Moebius,

This went beyond "analysis" or decision making. I like a whole lot of different music, including rock music, played loud enough to disturb my wife. At this show, I found the SPLs extremely unpleasant and left almost every room after a few minutes. Further, I found that the bass problems drained the fun out of party music (for me, anyway). I guess you chalk this one up to dif'rent strokes.

I've never understood the theory or concept of loud music. At a show its a frickin turnoff and one should run past those rooms that do so.
Bartokfan (Threads | Answers)

High volume in some audio show rooms may be unintentional, or forced by surrounding rooms.

Have you ever been in a room with a lot of people who are supposed to be quiet, and a few start whispering, and then a few start talking quietly, and the whisperers next to the quiet talking people start talking quietly so they can hear each other, and then the quiet talkers begin talking at full voice because they can't hear each other over the people next to them. Gradually, everyone starts talking louder and louder until the room is cacophanous. I believe this is the same phenonmenon found at the audio shows. Not all the manufacturers intend to play at loud volumes, but they all eventually crank up the volume to drown out the sound from neighboring rooms.

I went into the Mbl room and asked them to play a piece on the Pope music sampler CD. The gentleman from Mbl asked me how high I wanted the demo. I told him very low, so he pushed the volume control down what seemed like a tiny amount if at all. I asked him again to lower it way down and he told me that this was a demo room and he would not do that. Therefore, I have no idea as to the ability of his
equipment to play in real world rooms or how the speakers sound when not pushed. I left the room as soon as the piece concluded.