rooms and sound levels

You can definitely overdrive a room. Unfortunately it's not a simple answer or magic bullet that will tell you when and how. Taking relatively advanced measurements and looking at decay times will show you what happens, but usually it's caused by a few frequencies that are ringing or loading and not decaying properly. What those frequencies are depend on the room, speaker placement, listener location, acoustics, etc. In general this is a very common and can be difficult problem in smaller rooms, which from a design point of view means that to overcome the problem in small rooms usually means shorter RT times.

Thanks for responding. At the moment I have a Yamaha 5750 AV reciever and a JVC DVD which I can't remember the model number at the moment. When playing Eva Cassidy's, Live at Blue's Alley at the 30 setting, the music sounds so good it's almost erie. Turn the volume above 25 and the clarity starts to disappear. Turn the volume above 15 and the system really seems to blare. It doesn't sound loud but a walk through the house, even when it sound like it's not loud reveals that it's much louder than believed. The system is not expensive, yet for some reson it sounds better than some systems that I have heard in high end stores. Can't figure that one out. I will be replacing the dvd player soon and adding a good cd player. Then I will replace the reciever with an amp and preamp/processer, I'm leaning towards Anthem. What I experienced at home I also experienced at a high end dealer Who was demoing Anthem's D2, P5, P2 and Paradigm speakers (signature series). Room dimensions are listed on my post, room treatment, which is recent. I'm also about to enter CEDIA university. I'm an official addict.

Had a monster HTS 3500 mkII which sacrificed itself during a surge of power. Nothing else was harmed. Fried the power supply. I found the unit didn't do a thing for the sound quality. System sounds just as good without one. I bought a monster HTS 5000 mkII to replace the 3500 for less than $200 just in case the voltage increases to 240 again.