Is this clipping?

Psag,

I think it is a safe thing to say that it is generally harder and more expensive to get a system to sound really good when played (realistically) loud than unrealistically soft.

Louder requires more power than soft. That is pretty intuitive, right?

Well, a lot of new recordings are louder overall, so more power than ever is now required as well.

Efficiency helps. Suitable degrees of efficiency overall to deliver loud recordings without clipping can be achieved readily these days with a more efficient amp, like Class D, and/or more efficient speakers.

Psag, while that might be true for some systems, why do those recordings sound so damn bad on systems that can handle dynamic range.
They're supposed to suck?!

Here is an interesting site to find out more about dynamic range of specific recordings:

[url=http://www.dr.loudness-war.info]Dynamic Range Db[/url]

Lots of red and much less green in recent years.

Still, you can't generalize that recordings in general old or new are good or bad. It depends which ones specifically.

Any particular examples in mind Unsound that others may have also to offer an opinion on?

There is no doubt that most pop/pock recordings these days, including newer remasters of old stuff, are louder overall in general. Some are also clipped. Most are compressed to some degree. Some sound very good. Some sound more "average". Most are enjoyable to me and have at least some good qualities although many are far from perfect.

In lieu of crunching the numbers, I think a greater % of new recordings that I buy sound good than ever before. Some of that is the sysem I am playing them on these days, but that alone would not save them if there was no merit otherwise.

Then again I am a music lover and will listen to almost anything once unless it is just so noisy, distorted or poorly produced that I can't handle it. That occurs rarely.

Unsound, Its probably a matter of your personal preference. Some of these recordings are supposed to sound loud and compressed. For better or worse, that's the artist's vision. The traditional criteria for a 'good' recording don't apply.

My guess is that the speakers, more than anything else, are the culprit. I've heard a number of single driver speakers. I love the detail, clarity and liveliness (incredible dynamics within a somewhat restricted absolute volume), but, they tend to favor smaller instrumental groups, vocals and jazz. Anything that requires a really wide frequency response (particularly deep bass) and weight and power (orchestral music and rock music) does not fair as well, regardless of the absolute volume.

Have you tried these speakers with other amps that have enough power to rule out clipping as either a contributor or the cause of the sound you are hearing with rock music? The sound you described could be symptomatic of an amplifier reaching its limits. Single ended triode often can becomed strained and sound as you described without producing the obviously harsh sounds of hard clipping.

I run 6 watt/channel amps with 99 db/w efficient speakers. I hardly ever hear really obvious signs of strain with rock music. What really taxes my amps is choral music, particularly, choral music without instrumental accompaniment. At what seems to be somewhat low volume, I can hear the sound become murky.