ICE Amps for classical music?

Weseixas: In the past , many moons ago , i used to measure avg usually 82-88db , crescendos sometimes hit a peak of 109 db from row 7.

DOB: The answer to this interesting question lies in the attendance of classical music concerts particularly orchestral, choral and operatic ones. You will be surprised to find out that SPL at your ear varies from zero to about 115 dB (if you happen to conduct the orchestra during this attendance as well).

... Keith Howard (Hi-Fi News Sept 2007) made actual measurements of peak power and peak SPL obtained using B&W805, Music Fidelity power amp and classical music recordings.

His measured peak SPL was about 110 dB.

As someone who listens to a lot of classical symphonic music, on minimally compressed audiophile-oriented labels, and who has also listened to Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" from the very first row at Tanglewood (among many other live symphonic performances attended), these numbers all strike me as about right. (Aside of course from the reference to minimum spl being 0, since ambient noise will be much greater than that, both at home and in the concert hall).

I've never used an spl meter, but I've been able to develop what I think is a pretty good sense of sp levels based on sensing the onset of clipping with amplifiers of various power ratings, and extrapolating to spl at the listening position based on speaker sensitivity and listening distance.

Regards,
-- Al

Kijanki... As I mentioned even when the SPL is only moderate the large drivers, powered with big amps, reproduce the music with an efortless sound that small drivers, pumping their little hearts out, can't duplicate.

And, when the deepest bass organ pipes are felt in your stomach they do not always sound all that loud. You can feel well below what you can hear. Real organs are like that.

I don't do pop music and never have. The highly compressed sound of pop is a different kettle of fish.

One have to be grateful for good things in life. I'm particularly grateful for not being your neighbor.
Kijanki ...

LOL

Eldartford - Not only that small portion of classical requires high SPL but there are other genres like Blues, Jazz, Folk, World, R&B, Soul, Pop, Indian Classical, Reggae, Alternative & Punk, Latin etc. where very high SPL is not desired. I listen to all of the above and high SPL music is perhaps less than 1% of total. Sure it is nice to be ready but I have other constrains (like neighbors). My new speakers, larger and more expensive than previous, have similar bass extension but much greater midbass energy and very real bass attack and decay. Designer most likely tuned them for the lowest distortion and not the extension. Bass guitar players often use bass enclosures with a lot of 10" woofers instead of 15' or 18" to achieve better definition of the bass (18" sounds "wooly") - similar principle in DALI Megaline.

Now comes the room. When I play louder imaging is getting worse. It is because my room is less than perfect and at high sound levels many more reflections are still audible. My room is unfortunately not dedicated to music alone and fixing the problem becomes very difficult (especially at lower frequencies).

As for "deepest bass organ pipes are felt in your stomach" - it would give me stomach ache, I'm sure (and wife would leave me).

I'm surprised that Maggies 1.6 can keep up with your 6 subwoofers.

Muralman1, as I am a Dvorak fan, what performance of the 9th symphony are you referring to? G.