Loud Snap at High Volume

The Borrensen web site says the tweeter crosses over at 2.5KHz.  That seems too high for the tweeter to generate a whiplash sound by itself.  However, my first guess goes with what Erik says -- a woofer bottoming out. That can make a cracking sound, particularly if the recording contains subsonic material. I heard one recording the other day where the musicians were on a wood platform. Everything sounded fine on my second system (no sub) but you could hear them stomping here and there on the main system with a subwoofer.  The sub didn't bottom out, but the noise wasn't very musical. 

If you have access to DSP or tone controls, it'd be interesting to see if the problem continues if youi back off a bit on the bass, or can cut the response below 30 or 40 Hz.

Just out of curiosity, what is the specific Mahler 8th recording that does this? It'd be interesting to look at what's in the recording at that point.

OK, just listened to the piece. The drum rolls occur between 9 minutes into the piece to just over the 10 minute mark. There is an incredible amount of very, very deep bass involved, but I heard no cracks or snaps of any type on my stereo.  My system is a pair of Ohm 1000s powered by a Schiit Lyr 3 with a Multibit DAC and Aegir amp. I also have a GE Supersub X to handle the low end. The Ohms have an active high pass filter at 70 Hz to let the sub do the bass work. 

I didn't pull my sound level meter out, but I listened at my preferred level, which is typically in the 80 to 85 dB range, which is as loud as I want to hear music these days.

I also downloaded the track and looked at it in Adobe Audition. The track is just over 16 minutes long. The dynamic range is quite amazing -- you don't see many recordings like this. 

 -- Over the entire track, the =average= level is -30 dB
 -- The first seven minutes has an average level of -35 dB
 -- The last five minutes has an average level of -42 dB
 -- However, the average level of the range from just past 9 minutes to about 10.5 minutes has an increase in the average level to about -20 dB
 -- The drum strike peaks jump all the way to 0 db, so you are talking about a 30 dB peak over the average level of the whole piece, and still 20 dB peaks over the middle section.

I also looked at a frequency analysis, and the vast majority of those big drum peaks are in the low frequency range with the highest point well below 100 Hz. Audition doesn't give a lot of graphic resolution under 100 Hz, but it seemed pretty clear that it wasn't rolling off in the subsonic range.

The thing you need to look at is how your are listening to the soft parts. What is the listening level for the first seven minutes? If you are listening to this section at 90 dB, you are asking the speakers (and amp) to reproduce a 120 dB kettle drum strike with a ton of bass energy.  That's a challenge for most any system. Interesting, in terms of dBs, all of the drum strike sections peaked right at 0 dB, but the bass energy differed slightly between them, with the third one having a slightly higher bass profile.