Fear of volume control

sgreg, I think that is an idiosyncrasy of your system.

Teo_audio, what in the world are you talking about?

rvpiano, I have an set of Cesar Franck's complete organ works. There are several pieces with an A0. That is 27.5 Hz. Your vision actually blurs forget about everything in the house shaking. 

Audiophiles shunned loudness compensation in the late 70's. It was felt that any analog filtering caused more harm than good which I personally believe is true. We simply played the music at the right volume.  But, now we have digital filtering which is a whole different ballgame. Once you are in numbers you can do anything you want including programming loudness compensation to match the any volume. This allows you to play a piece at lower volumes with the right balance. Unfortunately, very few processors offer dynamic loudness compensation. You have to program you own curves and select them manually.

Not only is Fletcher- Munson at work but also the volume the record was mixed at. Every recording has a "right" volume depending. If you play a string quartet at the volume of a rock record the strings will cut your throat. If you under cut the volume of a rock record it will sound dull and lifeless. If you have loudness compensation you have a little more flexibility but still. 

People who shy away from louder volumes generally have systems that start distorting at lower volumes. Distortion is at lower levels registered as volume. Obviously, they enjoy their systems at lower levels thinking that volume hurts. Not true. You can destroy your ears, long before clean music becomes painful. This is why I use a sound pressure meter not wanting to get carried away. Very clean systems with adequate headroom can play deceptively loud. People will try to start a conversation not realizing the other person can't possibly hear them. 

This is why distortion in loudspeakers and powerful amps are so important. Powerful means power relative to the efficiency of the speaker. and and the maximum power the speaker can handle. IMHO as a rule of thumb 105 dB is a reasonable target. So, you figure out the power required to get your speakers to 105 dB then multiply by ten ( to handle transients). This is a reasonable power for your speakers. Every 3 dB doubles the power. I am of the belief the more power the better as in my experience powerful amps have an effortless quality missing in lower powered amps. I have to admit there is probably some psychoacoustics in this as I have never been blinded for this evaluation.