In Reply to: Re: good news and bad news posted by Jerry Parker on June 20, 2002 at 18:43:14:
when driving my "quasi" 4 Pi Pro's (jbl 2035 woofers) with a Fisher 500S tube receiver. If that ain't loud enough, buy your buddy a hearing aid!Seriously, a modest amount of tube power works well with 100dB/watt speakers such as Wayne's designs, as long as the drivers z is benign.
But connect a 200watt or greater SAND amp, and those babies will sing at rock concert levels with minimal distortion. I run out of tolerance for the spl's way before I run out of amplifier gain, even when wearing 30dB ear muffs.With a 100watt amp, at 2.5 on the preamp, average MEASURED spl (fast, c weighting) is 100dB. At 4.5 on the pre, spl was 110dB. At 8, the 1% distortion lights on the amp were blinking, spl was a steady 120dB, but I would not run my gear that hard for long (and my ears were still getting 90dB!). Oh yeah, 100watts will rock your socks off, definitely. With my 200watt amp, I could run those speakers at 120dB INDEFINITELY. And believe me, Stevie Ray Vaughan at 120dB is rocking...
And with Wayne's crown amps, I could "get that last 8 or 10 dB" of pure power output from these guys, and hit 125 to 130dB. But how loud is enough? I usually listen at 70 to 80dB maximum, unless I'm trying to convince the neighbors who home school their kids that Ozzie Ozbourne was a genius with the guitar...you just gotta hear Black Sabbath's first album at 100dB plus to understand, track 5 was playing one night, and suddenly we noticed, hey, there are some pretty good licks hidden in that old metal "noise".
Oh yeah, at 120dB, the sound did "become slightly congested", to tell the truth. I think the spl's were starting to shake the cd player by then :( Sam
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