[2bigears]

  getting older now and don't want a hearing aid no way no how.  We all know music sounds better with the volume up a bit,, maybe a bit to much.  What speakers if there is such a thing,, sounds full and robust at medium listening levels ?  Do they have to be bigger to get there ?  Dam this getting old stuff ,  ha. 
     It doesn't help I listen to old rock of the 60's and 70's.  I guess that was made with volume in mind to begin with.  This may be a futile pursuit 

[Wind Chaser]

Electrostatics!

[Tyson]

I find having the ability to boost the bass a bit at low levels helps a lot.  Part of the reason I run speakers that have powered bass sections built in (at least my speakers in my main system downstairs allow this). 

[PS]

The brain is a phenomenal organ and an essential audio component.  If you "tune" your system to your ears the brain will understand and compensate accordingly.  Living longer is a much better way to view your reality than is "getting older." 

[2bigears]

  yes Tyson,,  that's the best bass in any speaker I can imagine. Unless your talking way out there stuff.  Rich boy 1% people.    But even your speaks are getting up there.  I really need to hear a pair of those.   Is the top end like Maggie's ?  I once had 3.6's,,,,, they were pretty dam nice ,, no bass compared to yours. 

[JLM]

I'm so with you.  At wifey's insistence got my hearing tested last summer and the results were described by the doctor as typical for a 62 year old, very much not audiophile grade.  And like you can't stand earplugs, IEMs, or the idea of listening to my nice system via a hearing aid.  Best to avoid exposure to extended periods of high sound pressure levels.  Wear hearing protection while mowing the lawn since moving to a "estate" sized yard 14 years ago and haven't been around other loud equipment or heavily amplified concerts for years.

Remember loudness control?  (That button all the mainstream receivers had in the 70's.)  It compensated for the ear's loss of sensitivity to frequency extremes at lower sound pressure levels.  All as per the Fletcher-Munson curves published decades earlier.  Unfortunately the purist trend killed it.  And frankly it was only a compensation for one assumed source output level/volume setting/speaker efficiency/room size.  Plus it was easy to overdo. 

Nowadays you could try compensating with EQ, but be careful.  dB's of gain are in a logarithmic relationship to power (watts), so a 10 dB increase equates to 10 times the watts and a 30 dB increase equates to 1,000 times the wattage, a great recipe for clipping amps and burning out voice coils. Room EQ Wizard (REW) and Dirac are room correction softwares that could be used/abused for hearing loss and/or low sound pressure compensation.  But again you'd need to adjust for each dB output to get the ideal compensation.  Another obvious option (at least for low frequencies) is use of a subwoofer. 

As far as speakers affecting loudness, I'd lean towards higher efficiency.  In my experience low efficiency speakers are less dynamic and take "extreme" amounts of wattage to "wake up" (if they ever do).  A more dynamic presentation tends to sound louder (not much of a help for the rock genre with its typical limited dynamic range).  And according to the laws of physics that generally means displacement (bigger cabinets and bigger/more drivers).  Heard Classic Audio Loudspeakers this past weekend: big, highly efficient, and expensive; brute force definitely in play.  But they are at their best in a huge (by residential standards) space.  A good substitute for most spaces/budgets would be my old JBL 708P's. 

[charmerci]

Remember loudness control?  (That button all the mainstream receivers had in the 70's.)  It compensated for the ear's loss of sensitivity to frequency extremes at lower sound pressure levels.

Yes, I do. And everyone I saw who had this would have it on or all the way up - and then cranked up the sound! 

[Tyson]

yes Tyson,,  that's the best bass in any speaker I can imagine. Unless your talking way out there stuff.  Rich boy 1% people.    But even your speaks are getting up there.  I really need to hear a pair of those.   Is the top end like Maggie's ?  I once had 3.6's,,,,, they were pretty dam nice ,, no bass compared to yours. 

The Super 7s are nice because they are very high efficiency and have super clean spectral decay (ie, settling time).  They are maybe the most detailed speakers I've ever heard and they do NOT have that bright/analytical tuning other speakers use in order to try to sound more resolving than they really are.  Just natural detail, clearly rendered.  And since they are so high efficiency, you don't have to turn them up very loud to get them to come alive.  Or even use a very big amp to drive them.  I use a couple of monoblocks at only 10 watts.  If I really want to go crazy with the volume, I can pull out my solid state amp that has a whole 30 watts! 

High efficiency is key.  I also use the Klipsch Forte III in my 2nd system and it's the same - the ability to hear EVERYTHING makes for a nice listening setup for late at night at low levels. 

But the Super 7 is a kit you might not want to mess with that.  And the Forte IIIs, for all their strengths, do NOT have a flat frequency response (boosted midbass),  so if you were looking for a speaker that was current production that gets close to the Super 7, I'd say the Spatial Audio X3 is pretty close.  The tweeter it uses is maybe the only tweeter in the world I've heard that's better than the OB NEO 3 used on the 7s.  It's also very high efficiency AND is has self-powered OB bass.  I wish Clayton had brought them to RMAF this year so I could be 100% certain, but just based on design aspects, it does just about everything right. 

[rollo]

  +3 for high efficiency speakers. Try listening at lower levels for awhile. Your brain/ears will adjust.

charles

[Tyson]

Oh, and try to do things to quiet the room.  Heavy drapes or roman shades over windows.  Thick carpet.  Absorbent panels on the wall.  The quieter you make your room, the less noise floor the speakers have to overcome. 

[Wind Chaser]

Except for the incredibly loud noise in the head of one with severe Tinnitus. 

[Elizabeth]

Right now I am playing Rock music at avg 65dB 'C' weighted with Radio Shack meter (just checked)
The main thing IMO is listening to lower levels a the time.
Music is full, and complete..
If you usually play loud, then turn it down.. Well yeah it DOES SUCK. Because your ears are just not used to it, and because there is a time it takes to get over loud, for any ears.... Couple of hours?
Anyway,  listen at low levels and the music is LOUD!!!!! If  crank it up to 80dB (opera arias only!!) it is blasting...
PS I own Magnepan 20.7 speakers... 
I have not played loud since in my 30's// I am now 70.

[rollo]

Right now I am playing Rock music at avg 65dB 'C' weighted with Radio Shack meter (just checked)
The main thing IMO is listening to lower levels a the time.
Music is full, and complete..
If you usually play loud, then turn it down.. Well yeah it DOES SUCK. Because your ears are just not used to it, and because there is a time it takes to get over loud, for any ears.... Couple of hours?
Anyway,  listen at low levels and the music is LOUD!!!!! If  crank it up to 80dB (opera arias only!!) it is blasting...
PS I own Magnepan 20.7 speakers... 
I have not played loud since in my 30's// I am now 70.

  Well stated. Agree 100%.

charles

[sebrof]

A lot of my listening is early morning. Like wake up, put on a pot of coffee and warm up the system early. On those mornings I play music much lower volume because similar to my eyes being more sensitive to light, my ears are more sensitive to sound. But once I turn it up loud it's like turning on the lights bright, hard to turn it down again.
Later in the day or in the evening I probably play 10 + db louder for similar perceived loudness.

[2bigears]

 . All good points,,  those X3's look very interesting.  10,000.00 bucks is getting up there. 

[Doublej]

Have Danny Richie build you a pair of speakers with the midbass and midrange tipped up a bit and the top end tipped down a bit.

[AudioDwebe]

I've always felt Vandersteens (2ce sigs and 3a sigs) sound wonderful at lower volumes.  They're musical comfort food for the soul.