whats your idea of loud music.


ok here' what got me thinking about all of this.

i was in a dealers show room a while back checking out his ar monoblocks(sweet)& he put some smooth jazz on for me,the maggies sounded fantastic & i asked him to turn it up to a loud volume so i could see how the maggies responded.

after he gave me a stupid look he turned it up a notch & then stepped away & covered his ears like they might rupture or something & were talking about the volume being at the point where i could of heard him fart from 5 feet away,i asked him why he wouldnt turn it up loud & he told me that he wasnt sure what i thought loud was but the volume he had was more than enough for anybody.

i also see threads where guys reccomend these low power amps that i have owned with speakers i have owned & they say that the amp speaker combination can obtain listening levels that are not only louder than anybody would care to listen but unsafe levels to boot & when i had the same gear i thought the combination was way under powered & no where near being loud.

i consider loud to be when you can feel as well as hear the music & not from sitting right in front of the rig,i also consider loud to be when things on the walls move & my coffee cup has a little ripple on top of the coffee or when the dog runs for cover,i also consider it to be not loud if somebody in the same room can talk to you from 5 feet away & be heard.

im not looking for a right or wrong answer im just curious as to what other guys consider loud to be defined as.

mike.
128x128bigjoe
Im 27, and I prefer to listen to most music about 65-70db (listening position).
When I do crank it up, I rarely go much more than about 80db at the listening position... and 80+db often seems too much.

Will
Hi

a link to a post on another forum I jsut posted re this topic

http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/652982/ShowPost.aspx
Seems to me there is some difficulty with what a dB is and how it relates to the ability of the human ear, and hearing. 80dB is not very loud at all, but then is 150db loud to a jet mechanic? Not to me- I wear ear phones.

The source may PEAK at 120-150dB, but real music is not a peak measurement, it's dynamic, soft vrs. loud, that is the output level I speak of, not some constant number that means nothing to the listener's enjoyment, or real world or live listening levels.

I wonder if all the musicians on the planet that play live shows at 150dB car hear, um, yes, and some of them own very nice ultra high end systems and tell the diff. when a particular note was missed.

Hmm?
I'm listening to Suzanne Vega right now at 60dB. Sounds fine since there is low background noise and clean power late at night.
Over 75dB is loud to me.

To the people who listen at 95dB for years with no hearing loss: some people smoke 2 packs a day and live to be 90. Some folks can beat the odds, I'd rather not even try only to find out in 20 years I'm half deaf or dying of lung cancer. I enjoy music way too much.
I tend to listen at about 75 when she's in and 90 when she's out. I occasionally push it louder for fun, but not very often. Bearing in miond this is all @ 1m and it's not a large room. I figure 110dB in a large room / hall would not be too loud.