speakers for classical music

not all "classical" music is orchestral. among those musical selections which are written for orchestra, some do have huge swings in spl.

thus, it is possible to listen to many musical selections and achieve realism of timbre, at listening levels which never exceed 85 db.

those reading these posts realize that many panel speakers do a decent job of reproducing classical music, at levels not exceeding 85 db.

as i was listening to a cd yesterday, i was using a radio shack meter to asess the range of spl. as i was listening, my wife asked me to turn down the volume. at the time my radio shack meter registered 80 db.

what's the point ? 85 db is subjectively loud in my opinion. exceeding 85 db is unnecessary in most cases, as far as i am concerned. i usually set my volume at about 70 db. loud passages are in the high 80s.

next time i attend a symphony orchestra concert, i will bring an spl meter to determine loudness. since i sit in the last row of the prchestra, i bet most of the time, the meter reading is less than 90 db. listening louder than that is too loud for me.

Loudness is certainly subjective. 80 dB is loud, but not LOUD. If I were trying to have a conversation, 75 dB is too loud. For rock 80 dB is mezzo-piano. It's all relative.

I have thought about taking an SPL meter to the symphony many times, never remember to do it. I suspect Mr.T is correct that the level won't exceed 90 in the back row, perhaps peaks will register in the mid 90s mid orchestra and only the front few rows will get anything approaching 100.

I put on the Sheffield Drum & Track CD yesterday. Cranked it until a few peaks were just tipping an amp into clipping. Peaks still didn't exceed 100 dB at listening position and it was good'n loud— almost as loud as a drummer sitting in front of me.

Alnico magnets conduct heat away from voice coil. Alnico has benifits in sound quality to me this could be 1 reason why. Plus many alnico mag drivers are hi-eff designs so require low power again producing little heat compared to conventional dynamic designs which require massive power to produce dynamics or hi-spl. So heat in alnico mags again is a nonissue has no - effect on performance. Seems many of the problems folks like to point out about horns or compression drivers are not real performance problems. Great thing about online is you can find info to prove most any point even if said info is wrong or biased Reading about audio is great but exparamenting and actual experance is of much higher value..

And I always thought '3' was the magic number, but apparently its 85.lol

MrT, I think its all about loudness cues. The orchestra, being pure, has the least of all and so one can enjoy it being loud a lot easier than one can a stereo, which will have more loudness cues due distortion. Occasionally enough that others might object!

Once rid of artificial loudness cues, the normal urge is to turn up the volume. I would be very interested to find out what sound pressure levels you experience in your hall and with what music. I have measured 105db peaks at the 15th row. The music was Canto General by Mikas Theodorakis.