Loud Snap at High Volume

Just out of curiosity, what is the specific Mahler 8th recording that does this? It'd be interesting to look at what's in the recording at that point.

@misstl I misspoke at the onset.  It is Shostakovich's 8th (The Stalingrad) not Mahler's 8th.  The 2016 DG recording with Andris Nelsons conducting the Boston Symphony.  It is approximately 2/3 of the way through the final movement, Allegretto. There are a succession of drum rolls followed by crescendoing strings, winds and horns.  It is on the third crescendo that I get the snap.  Be interested to know how your speaker handles it at 95db!

I wouldn’t expect speakers in that price range to have trouble handling 95 db peaks. Most mid fi gear can coast through that.

OK, just listened to the piece. The drum rolls occur between 9 minutes into the piece to just over the 10 minute mark. There is an incredible amount of very, very deep bass involved, but I heard no cracks or snaps of any type on my stereo.  My system is a pair of Ohm 1000s powered by a Schiit Lyr 3 with a Multibit DAC and Aegir amp. I also have a GE Supersub X to handle the low end. The Ohms have an active high pass filter at 70 Hz to let the sub do the bass work. 

I didn't pull my sound level meter out, but I listened at my preferred level, which is typically in the 80 to 85 dB range, which is as loud as I want to hear music these days.

I also downloaded the track and looked at it in Adobe Audition. The track is just over 16 minutes long. The dynamic range is quite amazing -- you don't see many recordings like this. 

 -- Over the entire track, the =average= level is -30 dB
 -- The first seven minutes has an average level of -35 dB
 -- The last five minutes has an average level of -42 dB
 -- However, the average level of the range from just past 9 minutes to about 10.5 minutes has an increase in the average level to about -20 dB
 -- The drum strike peaks jump all the way to 0 db, so you are talking about a 30 dB peak over the average level of the whole piece, and still 20 dB peaks over the middle section.

I also looked at a frequency analysis, and the vast majority of those big drum peaks are in the low frequency range with the highest point well below 100 Hz. Audition doesn't give a lot of graphic resolution under 100 Hz, but it seemed pretty clear that it wasn't rolling off in the subsonic range.

The thing you need to look at is how your are listening to the soft parts. What is the listening level for the first seven minutes? If you are listening to this section at 90 dB, you are asking the speakers (and amp) to reproduce a 120 dB kettle drum strike with a ton of bass energy.  That's a challenge for most any system. Interesting, in terms of dBs, all of the drum strike sections peaked right at 0 dB, but the bass energy differed slightly between them, with the third one having a slightly higher bass profile. 

@msstl  Interesting analysis.  Thanks for doing it.  Explains a lot.  Because this movement starts so softly, my tendency was to begin listening at around 80db, which meant--because of the extreme dynamic range--by the time I hit the peaked highs I was pushing 100db, when I would hear the snap.  And, again, this snap comes at the peak of the highs not during any of the drum rolls or beats.

@ozzy62 As I mentioned, it seems that I can play my system at a sustained 95db.  It is just when there is a peak beyond that coming from a sustained and building wall of sound that I get the snap.  Still, you would think the Z2's could handle this.  I posted my experience thinking that other folks with ribbon tweeters had encountered similar issues.