How to get the impact of a live concert?

Music is only composed of harmonic content so yeah...but I don't think distortion necessarily increases perceived loudness. Example: I can play electric guitar cleanly or with various types and degrees of distortion (ss stompbox FET or Mosfet, or amp tube overdrive) and keep the loudness the same, and the level sounds the same...doesn't cut through a mix any more or less. Also, "loud and clean" can be perceived as louder since nothing is compressed...distorted tone will get lost in the mix easier. I might be wrong, but this is what I've experienced as a guitar player and live sound mixer for decades...If I'm mistaken please deduct 6 points from my score.

There are certain parts of the sound spectrum (upper mid range I believe) that human ears, particularly male, are more sensitive to. Distortion that occurs in this range is of most significance towards a pleasant listening experience.

Thanks to evolution and natural selection, this range also happens to correspond to that of the female human voice. Apparently, someone out there wants us guys to respond when our wive's are calling. Strange, but true.....:-)

See This interactive chart for more details.

Easy, you just need 80,000 watts.

Wolf, General Electric proved that that the human ears uses odd ordered harmonics to determine the volume of a sound back in the mid-60s. Its not really open to debate anymore- its more about- what to do about it?

IMO what their research indicates is that you really don't want to add any odd ordered harmonic distortion, even in vanishingly small amounts if you can at all help it. BTW this is why two amps can measure the same bandwidth on the bench, but one will be bright and the other not.

*Real* dynamics are indeed the difference between loud and soft, but in audio it usually is more about the distortion. When you get rid of it you find that the system can play any volume without sounding loud- its always relaxed, yet there is plenty of punch, enough to shake the walls.

Now there are ways that audio products take advantage of this psycho-acoustic phenomena. An example is the SET amplifier. They have high distortion at full power and unmeasurable distortion at low power. As the music plays louder, the transients are where the real power comes into play. At low power what distortion the amp makes is mostly lower orders (2nd harmonic) but on transients where more power is required the odd orders come into play. This results in the loudness cues being present on the transients (as far as the ear is concerned). This is why SETs are known for being a lot more dynamic than their small output power would seem to indicate. Effectively, the distortion is masquerading as dynamics.

If, on the same speaker you then substitute an amplifier that is lacking the odd ordered harmonics, you will find that you have to turn the volume up considerably higher to get the same apparent volume. But if you measure it with a sound pressure meter, then you will see what is happening.

I find that getting as much bandwidth as possible, along with the no odd ordered harmonics is the key to getting life-like presentations. This is very hard to do with transistors, as the non-linear aspects of the devices themselves contribute to odd-ordered harmonic distortion (and to be clear, we are talking about vanishingly small amounts such that it is difficult to measure, but our ears are more sensitive to these harmonics than just about anything else), making is very difficult to build a transistor amp that does not come off as bright or harsh (both are indicators of the presence of odd ordered harmonics).

This is not to say that you can't do it with transistors, its just that its a lot harder. I can count on one hand the number of transistor amps that do what tubes do easily in this regard, with fingers left over.

IOW this requires a re-think of how we do things. Take a look at this article:
http://www.atma-sphere.com/Resources/Paradigms_in_Amplifier_Design.php

The Power Paradigm is all about obeying human hearing rules, the Voltage Paradigm is about making the equipment look good on paper.

If anyone is having difficulty understanding how the ear uses odd ordered harmonics, there is a simple test I can outline that demonstrates it very effectively.