Loudest Sound Ever?

For me the loudest sound I can recall, would be from a RAF Vulcan bomber displays at the Abbotsford Airshow back in the 1970's. Those Rolls Royce Olympus engines at full thrust howled and ripped the air. It was an impressive part of the demonstration. Honourable mention would be the SR-71 demo at the 1986 Abbotsford Airshow. With both engines in  afterburner  that aircraft roared to impressive levels, very exciting.

 

Also to add, back in the day of my hi-fi retail and car audio, it was the in thing to have DB contests. Our shop ran one and  I had the setup to mic each car competing. Of course all these cars were insanely loud.

 I recall one kid (20 something) as I set up the microphone on the passenger seat and asked if he wanted to put on the industrial grade over the ear hearing protection. To which he looked at me and said NO. I thought he was nuts but so be it. I got out of the car and closed the door and off he went.

The booming bass notes from the audio he was playing was literally and visibly  shaking  the whole car, rattles and such abound. I looked inside and  figured this kid wants to be deaf before he was 25. I mean outside of the car it had to be well over 100db. I'm tying to remember  how  loud the decibel  meter was showing... I'm  sure it was like 135db. I COULDN'T  BELIEVE THIS GUY WAS INSIDE HIS CAR RUNNING THE AUDIO SYTEM!

@reubent   The Southern Nationals at Atlanta Dragway raced for the last time earlier this year and Houston Raceway Park in Baytown is closing up shop for good following the running of the Springnationals a few weeks ago. We had just crossed the state line into Florida on the way to the Gators in Gainesville in 2019 when we heard that they'd pulled the plug due to CV.

The Ramones at The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in the 1980’s. The Civic is a horrendously bad sounding room, a large cement bunker.

Prior to that, it was the night I did an 8-hr audition for a really good San Jose band, from 9 PM until the Sun came up. One of the two guitarists had placed his Fender Twin Reverb amp (fed the signal from a Guild Starfire guitar) facing right at me, about ten feet away. After the last song of the evening ended, a couple of the guys starting talking, and though their lips was flappin’, I couldn’t hear a word they was sayin’. Frightening! By the way, I passed the audition ;-) . That guitarist is very Jazz influenced, and now makes his living accompanying a female singer, performing standards from The Great American Songbook in supper clubs around the Monterey Bay area.