What speakers play the loudest cleanly ?

rockport arakkis!!

Acoustat6, my loud comment was half in jest (I did have a smiley after the comment), but those are the listening volumes for me especially for some of the more rambunctious guilty pleasure types of music I enjoy.

BTW, when a topic such as loudness, ear fatigue, etc. comes up, we need to consider that some to many of the responses we read have as much to do with system compression, congestion, time-smear, improper or no line-conditioning, improper or no vibration mgmt, etc., etc..

In other words, without properly addressing some to many of these elements, 65 db, can make even a fine system sound too loud. If you know what I mean.

Am I into bikes? Am I ever!!! I'll just never drive one for fear of road rash induced by others.

-IMO

Anyone know how the Legacy Focus would stack up in this respect?

I own the Legacy Focus. I own the Pass labs X 350.5 and I had a Krell KSA 250.
Both Amps could be driven with ear splitting sound if I wanted to and I did not hear any distortion.
The legacy has 3-12" woofers they can take anything you thro wat them.

I will nomiate Kef. They are very clean and clear all the time. I play mine very softly, just above a whisper and you can still make out every detail. At the same time, I've run mine in the 90 dbs and they are spot on. Not a bit of distortion. This is one of their best traits. I would have to agree with a number of the posters that in this same family would be Revel and Tannoy in my experience. One of my favorite things to show people about Kefs is how the speaker form is entirely unaffected by how loud these speakers get. You can place a nickel standing on edge, on the top of the cabinet and play as loud as you'd like and the nickel won't fall over.