This thread made me think about the time before I had a full set of room treatments in my room. Back then, if I turned up the volume past a certain point, the room would ‘overload’ and the ringing at various frequencies would skew the musical balance and the ‘fatigue’ that some mention would set in pretty quick.
When measuring to check in preparation for my big room treatments saga, I found that as the volume increased in certain mid and high frequencies, my particular room would start to build up some pretty nasty modal ringing. At around 3 to 4Khz, it was really pretty bad at 89dB. While not hugely loud, that’s a level frequently hit by peaks when listening at a more moderate average level.
The point is, if the room has resonances in the bass, and ringing in the highs at various power levels, the system will sound dramatically different when it’s below those thresholds than when it is above it.
This is why we occasionally see some ESL user saying they can’t be played loud, or that they ‘distort’, etc. etc.
Unless one knows how they have set them up, how the room is treated (or not), and a few things about their gear (some distortion is often from overdriven amps), hearing them say that level X is max is not something that can be generalized.
For instance, even though from 2005 to now, my amps and speakers are substantially the same (repaneled Monoliths in 2006), placed the same and in the same room; yet I’ve been able to dramatically increase the total SPL level at which my system can perform cleanly by over 10dB. How?
Appropriate room treatments.
The system now has a much more uniform sonic signature and performance from very low levels to what most people would identify as loud (avg in the high 80’s low 90s). The funny thing is it’s hard to tell when it’s playing loud now. And I get to see my favorite effect: one person turning to another to say something, and realize they can’t even hear themselves
