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In the wild and reckless days of my youth, AR's sales literature pointed out that there's no such thing as a speaker good for this but bad for that, or vice versa. A good speaker was good with anything, period. The rest were bad speakers.
Makes perfect sense to me. Although in practice it seems that certain designs seem to subjectively suit one style of music over another I think ultimately if a speaker does not perform properly with a certain musical style then it cannot be truly considered a "good" speaker. The general assumption is that rock requires more\better bass than say jazz or vocal music etc. Phooey. Really the only requirement that rock would have over other genres (maybe) is volume capability, which IS a definite weakness in ...
at 1 m. For comparison's sake:1. The loudest peaks at rock concerts which have been recorded hit 112 dB, as compared to symphonic orchestra peaks which go "only" up to 110 dB, 2. A jet engine going full blast will produce 111 dB ...
1. The loudest peaks at rock concerts which have been recorded hit 112 dB, as compared to symphonic orchestra peaks which go "only" up to 110 dB, 2. A jet engine going full blast will produce 111 dB ...
The first step in the determination of the required dynamic range for apparent noise-free reproduction of music signals is the examination of the peak levels found in actual music performances. Although most information on sound levels is focused on average levels and hearing damage, a number of studies have examined peak levels. An early paper by Sivian et a!. [ provided absolute peak acoustic level data for classical music with two piano solos measured at 103 and 104 dB SPL, two 15-piece orchestras measured at 112 dB SPL each, four examples of a 75-piece orchestra measured at 107, 112, 113, and 114 dB SPL, and two pipe organ examples measured at 106 and 116 dB SPL. Another study, by Lebo and Oliphant [ presented peak data of 101 dB SPL for classical and 114 or 122 dB SPL for popular music.Meares and Lansdowne [ in a paper on sound levels in broadcasting studios, gave data for peak sound levels in recording studios at 111, 113, and 118 dB SPL for recital, orchestra, and dance band music, respectively. Ahnert [12] studied sound energies and peak levels of classical music, combining the results of a number of German investigators: peak levels between 86 and and 125 dB SPL were reported for recording locations. The author has also examined the question of absolute peak acoustic levels and has performed two studies. The first study [4] measured levels of 122 dB SPL for percussive classical and 124 dB SPL for electronically augmented country music. The second study by the author [ was more extensive, surveying over a 1-year period. In this study 47 music selections played during 36 different performances were examined for peak sound levels. An acoustic peak measuring device capable of measuring 90—130 dB SPL was used by the author sitting at favored listening locations. This produced peak levels ranging between 90 and 129 dB SPL. 22 classical music selections were measured, covering a range of 90—118 dB SPL, 11 rock music selections measured covered a range of 115— 129 dB SPL, six jazz music selections produced peak levels in the range of 114—127 dB SPL, whereas the remainder produced peak levels of between 116 and 127 dB SPL. A combination of all the studies mentioned is presented in Fig. 2, which is a histogram showing the number of music examples versus peak acoustic levels. Fig. 2 really consists of two histograms, one on top of the other. The first is a combination of all lightly and darkly shaded bars. It represents the absolute peak level distribution for all 72 examples surveyed. The second histogram is only composed of the heavily shaded bars and represents the 51 examples surveyed that did not include any electronic augmentation (that is, amplifiers and loudspeakers). Inspection of this figure shows that many music performances have peak levels in the range of 120—129 dB SPL and that a number of these do not include electronic augmentation. The major reason for the existence of such high sound levels is the use of instruments capable of producing high sound levels. Most notable are drums, which are capable of producing sound levels of 138 dB SPL at a 1-m distance (see Sivian et al. [ for more details.) The major conclusion drawn from the study of Fig. 2 is that the reproduction of music performances at natural levels requires the ability to pro duce very loud sounds in the range of 120—129 dB.
JohnR,IMO those stated spl's are too high, but perhaps they represent the very highest (unweighted) peaks.
To produce 125 dB in a typical room would require around 100 wpc from a pair of 105 dB/w/m speakers, 1,000 wpc from a pair 95 dB/w/m speakers, or 10,000 wpc from a pair of 85 dB/w/m speakers
Remember that long term exposure to spl's of 85 dB or higher WILL result in hearing damage/loss.
I heard a pair of Kappa 7's back in the day with a sub, and it was very good.
