So, for the purposes of this article, we are going to assume that you will, at least occasionally, play your system at foreground level.
What about orchestra-in-the-room level? Although a popular advertising gambit, this is an absurd notion. To be mundane about it, there simply isn't room for a symphony orchestra in the average home, so even if it were possible to re-create the original volume of the orchestra as heard from the conductor's podium—which it is, but it takes scads of power and a highly efficient speaker—the effect could not be realistic. It would also be very un-neighborly. A solo performer, or a chamber group, could be in your living room, and sounds very convincing when so reproduced. But recording engineers realized long ago that orchestra patrons listen from out in the hall rather than from the podium, so they do their microphoning to convey as well as possible the illusion of listening from a mythical "best seat in the house." Their recordings sound best when reproduced to scale; higher volume levels make them sound overblown and unnatural.
As sound waves travel away from their source, their total acoustical power remains essentially the same, but as each wave spreads out over a wider area, it thins itself out. Thus, the actual intensity of a sound some distance from its source will be considerably lower than its intensity right at the source. For this reason, we measure sound intensities in a concert hall in terms of variations in air pressure (or the sound pressure), rather than in terms of watts of acoustical power. The original power at the source can then be computed, if desired, by a simple formula based on the fact that sound pressure weakens by a square root function as its distance from the source is doubled.
What about orchestra-in-the-room level? Although a popular advertising gambit, this is an absurd notion. To be mundane about it, there simply isn't room for a symphony orchestra in the average home, so even if it were possible to re-create the original volume of the orchestra as heard from the conductor's podium—which it is, but it takes scads of power and a highly efficient speaker—the effect could not be realistic. It would also be very un-neighborly. A solo performer, or a chamber group, could be in your living room, and sounds very convincing when so reproduced. But recording engineers realized long ago that orchestra patrons listen from out in the hall rather than from the podium, so they do their microphoning to convey as well as possible the illusion of listening from a mythical "best seat in the house." Their recordings sound best when reproduced to scale; higher volume levels make them sound overblown and unnatural.
As sound waves travel away from their source, their total acoustical power remains essentially the same, but as each wave spreads out over a wider area, it thins itself out. Thus, the actual intensity of a sound some distance from its source will be considerably lower than its intensity right at the source. For this reason, we measure sound intensities in a concert hall in terms of variations in air pressure (or the sound pressure), rather than in terms of watts of acoustical power. The original power at the source can then be computed, if desired, by a simple formula based on the fact that sound pressure weakens by a square root function as its distance from the source is doubled.