Dynamic headroom is very important handling all classical well including symphonies and other large scale works. If the amp runs out of gas driving the speakers properly during crescendos the result can be a muddled mess. Likewise the speakers need to handle those dynamic crescendos well without undue compression so even very good quality smaller speakers may be handicapped except perhaps in a smaller room. Room size and how far away from speakers you are matters. Crescendos should be able to go at least into the 90db spl range for any sense of realism. Use a sound meter or sound meter app on a smartphone to measure. Louder is better (live symphonies will frequently exceed 100db by a good margin) but once you get past mid 80s db spl regularly you are into levels that can be harmful to hearing. Once the amp and speakers are up to the task then you might play with tweaking the rest to personal taste. If the rig can handle the large scale works the easier smaller scale ones will come naturally perhaps with just a tad of tweaking in many cases. Room acoustics are always a big factor and varies case by case.
What are the characteristics of Hifi geared towards good reproduction of classical music?
Hi everyone, I mostly listen to classical with some jazz and wondering how I should build my system. What should I look for? How much power do I need, and what brand speakers are specifically a good match for that?
Thanks everyone in advance for your time and expertise...You guys are a great source of Hifi info and ideas!
Happy holidays everyone!