How close to the real thing?

"You will be surprised that tremendous SPL is not "ear splitting" when it is clean, undistorted and dynamic."

I have invested a lot of time, effort and money addressing these aspects of good sound in my home system.

My conclusion is that it can be practically achieved but is not likely to happen by chance and does not come cheap.

Hello Shadorne,

I'm not using "ear splitting" as a pejorative and I have heard the studio "monitors" listed and have designed a few myself in the past, sometimes to replace, sometimes to assist those listed, so i'm aware of "loud and clean" and any system producing a continuous Din of over 117 db is ear splitting to me and i will no longer expose myself to such.

A few of those studios would record SPL's in the 138 dB + range(some could shake the console) I can bet a lot of those guys probably don't hear much today... :)

Live instrument grow with a size and power that is unique to there reproduction, to reproduce this growth will require power, lots of it and most if not all speakers will benefit from this power reserve.

Regards,

I can hit 110 db at my listening chair with ease, and the system does not strain to do it (me speakers are 98 db and the amplifiers have 140 watts in class A). In fact at that volume it sounds quite relaxed- you have no idea its making that sound pressure until you try to talk to someone sitting beside you.

So its not 'ear-splitting' bit OTOH the equipment was built specifically to not distort the odd harmonics. That type of distortion (and IM) leads to 'ear-splitting' behaviors.

One guy's 95% is another guy's 5%.

I agree with Peterayer about this. I tried to make the same point in my post on 11/27.

FWIW, I think that the recent discussion about the SPLs of real musical events vs. recorded ones illustrates how audiophiles use different standards for judging how real a system sounds. Consider the following two standards:

1. Maximum undistorted SPL.
2. Headroom.

It seems that several posters use maximum undistorted SPL as a standard (among others presumably) for judging how real a system sounds. For some kinds of music, like rock, that seems totally appropriate.

But, to me, maximum undistorted SPL is a less significant standard than headroom, understood as the DIFFERENCE between the average level and the maximum level. To me, sufficient headroom during playback goes a long way toward making a recorded musical event sound real, even if the system’s maximum undistorted SPL is rather modest. This is partly a consequence of the kind of music I tend to listen to. It is also a consequence of the mental “standards” I use for judging how real a system sounds.

Of course, headroom is largely determined by the recording (both its inherent informational limits and the elective use of compression), but it seems to me that some systems do a better job with dynamic contrasts than others, and that that capability is related to, but not identical with, maximum undistorted SPL.

Both maximum SPL and headroom fall under the general category of "dynamics." But they can have different roles in a listener's perception of how real a system sounds. As an OBJECTIVE standard, maximum undistorted SPL is a critical measure of comparison between real musical events and recorded ones. But, as a SUBJECTIVE standard, it is somewhat less relevant, at least for some listeners.

Bryon

Speaking of dynamics, can someone clarify micro (resolution an speed?) versus macro (grunt and drive?) dynamics? I was also thinking about the issue of high power amps, for some reason, lower power amps usually sound better to me, a pair of tubes per side amp seems to sound better to me than 4 tube per side versions of the same basic circuit, though the wattage is lower, must be some attribute having noting to do with SPLs.