How loud is loud?

I once put two pairs of 8ohm speakers on a Krell 700 cx stereo amp on the Bi-amp speaker connections, man, If I did not know any better, It seemed the amp droped down to 2ohms or something crazy like that, Till this day, That was the loudest home stereo I have ever heard, in this case, run from!, till I came to my sinces and turned it down, and un-hooked all the speakers, I felt like the maxell tape comercial, LOL!

It depends on the recording. Constant high level will numb your ears and reduce dynamics. Rock bands often start at lower volume adding more later. Once I attended concert that was so loud that I could not open my mouth because my lungs were vibrating. I don't want that at home (not to mention my neighbors) and I don't want to be deaf.

Zavato, I agree with your assessment of loud. And I DO enjoy lots of music approaching those levels, or just below; that's where a good system can reproduce the energy of a live performance. I ensure that I'm not disturbing anyone, and carefully limit my exposure to such levels (I'm not a high-hours daily listener). And music rapidly becomes very unappealing as you push beyond this level.

My problem with systems that do low levels well is that they're usually the result of a modified response curve that complements our own hearing's non-flat response curve at those levels -- the Fletcher-Munson curves are oft-referenced here (though they may not be very accurate). That's not a route that I prefer; I like gear that yields fantastic realism at loud levels and is completely non-fatiguing -- so in most cases bright sounding gear doesn't gel with me.

Hey Mulveling,
If you our talking about high end equipment I don,t know of any that still have a Loudness control button. Some cheap equipment have that and it increases low and high end to compensate the drop off in our hearing of bass and treble as volumn goes down which is the Fletcher-Munson curve. remember if your listening to a live concert and volumn gets very low the same fall off of low and high frequencies occur. Regarding what is loud, if after listening to music your ears are ringing it was too loud. You will damage your hearing
Alan

Yes, if you experience any fatigue and/or loss of hearing sensitivity after a session, then it was definitely too loud, and care should be taken to not repeat those circumstances. If you ever experience ringing, then it was WAY too damn loud, and permanent hearing damage may have occurred.