How loud is loud, What DB is actually loud?

">>01-07-11: Systembuilder
I was looking at the quad esl's and people say they wont play loud but how loud is loud? Is more of a question of House party loud or just rocking out?"<<

Drop $35 or whatever on a Radio Shack meter and you'll have your answer.

Weseixas & Viggen900, one 100db/100W speaker will put out a certain small number of acoustic watts, in response to the 100 electrical watts that are being fed into it.

A second 100db/100W speaker, also being driven with 100 electrical watts, will put out that same small number of acoustic watts.

If the two speakers are at identical distances from the listening position, the number of acoustic watts arriving at the listening position will be double what it would have been with one speaker. Twice the number of watts (acoustic or electrical) corresponds to a 3db increase.

You may be thinking of the fact that a larger driver will tend to be more efficient than a smaller driver, everything else being equal, producing more acoustic watts for a given number of electrical watts. However, that has no relevance to the question being considered.

See "Multiple Sources" near the bottom of this page:

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/CCRMA/Courses/152/SPL.html

Kijanki's post and my previous post are correct.

Regards,
-- Al

there are vehicles now that score well over 170db in these competitions

I had absolutely no idea this was a realm of human aspiration. I must not get out enough.

"Takes all kinds to make a world," my old man used to say. :)

John

Kijanki...

If you double the area and power remains the same , the increase is 3db or you half the distortion at the same db as one.

regards,

Al,

Play your system in mono, turn of one channel , guarantee you will have more than a 3db loss, even after factoring losses you will still have a 4.5-5 db min drop, the theoretical difference would be 6 db.

regards,