Round Two: Best Speakers for LOUD music and rock??

buy yourself a used pair of piega p-10s' and i guarantee you will not be unhappy. they are better then all the speakers you mentioned except the one i have not heard,that being the vmps.i have a friend who sold his dunlavy sc-vs' after talking with me about them and has now upgraded to the new c-10 ltds.if you haven't heard the piega line you need to before you make a decision.your room is about as big as mine ( actually my ceilings are 6' higher) and the piegas'fill them easily. good luck

Hi, Jeff:

While it is certainly not my personal business, and I mean no disrespect to you, I must urge you to use caution about the volume levels you are apparently using when listening. There is substantial research evidence that shows you will sustain permanent hearing loss, often at an early age, by listening at high sound pressure levels. (As an interesting aside, Richard Vandersteen includes a note with all his speakers regarding the problem of premature hearing loss due to exposure to high sound pressure levels.)

As a rule of thumb, if you listen to music at an average level (not occasional peaks) of 90 db or higher, you are almost certainly contributing to your own early hearing loss. Unlike other organs that return to normal over time, damaged hearing does NOT get better -- only worse.

That said, and given your music tastes, your AR mono amps ought to have more than enough juice to drive a wide variety of speakers. If speaker efficiency is an issue due to the size of your room, you might consider one of the top speaker models from Coincident Technology (http://www.coincidentspeaker.com/), Montana (http://www.montanaloudspeakers.com/montana/) or VMPS (http://www.vmpsaudio.com/index.htm), or perhaps one of the better horn-based systems such as the Avantgarde Uno or Duo (http://www.avantgarde-usa.com/home.html).

You may also want to consider getting one or two good subwoofers to handle the deep bass. Getting a lot of slam and tight bass is a tall order for just the main speakers, even from moderately expensive ones (say, up to $10K).

One of the best overall speakers at around the $10k level is the Vandersteen Model 5, which has an excellent built-in proprietary subwoofer with its own 400 watt amp. The Model 5 is a superbly musical speaker, but is not ideally suited to sustained listening at very high volume levels. You may find, however, that having really outstanding speakers that reproduce sound accurately makes it more enjoyable to listen at lower volume levels.

I don't mean for any of this to sound "preachy", but it concerns me when I hear music lovers/audiophiles talking about listening at volume levels that almost certainly will cause incremental hearing damage. Men usually begin to experience hearing loss much sooner than women because we expose ourselves to loud sounds much more frequently, but we are also at risk simply due to biology (too complicated to go into here, but it has to do with the effects of male hormones).

Before you make a final decision on which speakers to buy, you should try to audition them in your own home, and make a point to crank the sound down to see which speakers perform best for you. If you really love music, then you may want to ensure that you will be continue to hear it as you get older.

I must be missing the point here completely. Sounds as if you are desiring live performance levels but with high end imaging, depth and they just do not exist together. When was the last time you attended a 'Tower of Power' concert and got imaging and tight sound staging.

I would build this system entirely differently with say Hafler DH-500s and Klipsch Horns which would play loudly enough to break glass.....literally! Tubes are not meant for this style of playback. Good luck sir.