Your favorite musical non fatiguing speakers?

Geoffkait, everything is involved in increasing distortion when the volume goes up.

First is your impression, even the base level of distortion becomes more intolerable when the volume goes up.

Second, the transducers, the speakers or headphones, absolutely rise in distortion with higher volume levels. Most speakers compress badly, and when compression is involved there is a lot of distortion going on.

Third, the distortion of the electronics goes up in almost all cases. There are exceptions for electronics, where the distortion goes down as power output goes up, but that's not normally the case.

Kiddman, if your theory is correct, that gross distortion in an audio system is produced at louder than normal volume by rising distortion in the speakers and distortion in the components, let me ask an innocent question: Why would anyone in his right mind spend $10K, $25K, or $100K on a system that is unlistenable at higher volumes?

Because that elevated distortion, let's say .01% for argument's sake, might not outweigh the higher SPL experience for any particular listener.

Glad to help.

Geoff, not everything is black and white. Systems do not go from "nice sounding" to "intolerable distortion" over a 1 db range. It is a gradual thing. But the ear does tend to suddenly notice things when they get to a certain threshold, just as the eye does....we don't sense things linearly.

In the last 20 or 25 years, it has certainly not been a huge priority of high end to get extremely loud playback at low distortion levels. Producers have been fixated on imaging, pretty female vocals, lots of deep bass, and maybe above all "high definition" or lots of detail, because reviewers and audiophiles fixated on that stuff, especially the detail.

Remember, most of the folks spending the big bucks are heavily influenced by the reviews and manufacturer hype. I think most of the expensive speakers have plenty of problems, the least of which is rising distortion with louder playback levels. Pricing has gone crazy, but sonic quality has not kept pace on a linear level with pricing.

In the last 20 or 25 years, it has certainly not been a huge priority of high end to get extremely loud playback at low distortion levels. Producers have been fixated on imaging, pretty female vocals, lots of deep bass, and maybe above all "high definition" or lots of detail, because reviewers and audiophiles fixated on that stuff, especially the detail.

I can't completely agree with this. I have heard Wilson Alexandria X-2s and XLFs that definitely reproduce the full dynamic range of a big band or 100-piece orchestra at close range without distracting distortion, and I'm confident that top line products from Magic, Focal Utopia, and others can achieve the same sensation.

That's what the big bucks should buy you--range, both frequency response and dynamic range. Many speakers can recreate solo acoustic guitar or voice realistically for $2K or less. The air gets rarified when you look for a speaker that presents the same sense of reality for an orchestral/choral reproduction of a Mahler symphony, Holst's "The Planets" or Mendelssohn's "Elijah," or of the Ellington or Basie big bands in full swing from the front row. I've gotten that sensation from the Wilson Alexandrias and I'm sure others here have experienced (or own) this sensation from other fine full-range loudspeakers properly amplified.