fill35U

Another new arrival! In case you've forgotten, or have never known, this album has terrific dynamics. And insanely low frequency bass in some tracks. Play it loud and enjoy, but don't blame me if you break something!

Speaker sensitivity probably has the most to do with volume potential of a system. Home hi-fi speakers might be as low as 85dB/W@1m, whereas serious pro speakers are better than 115dB these days. The home speakers would need 1000W to put out the volume the pro speakers could with 1W! But the Loudness War is really about prerecorded music... The best practical place to control system volume is at the input of the amp. Slightly less-optimal choice is at the preamp's output to the amp. There are lots of articles on how to set up the gain stages in systems: What Is Gain Structure at diyaudio.com Setting Sound System Level Controls at rane.com BTW, compressors and limiters can be fancy and fascinating, but there are "automatic volume controls" as well: AVC-2 from Formula Sound Useful for pro applications where you want to automatically cap the volume of the music, but allow speech (PA) between songs to be loud and intelligible.

Article at Sound on Sound, explaining how overall it's not the overuse of compression tools that resulted in reduced "dynamic range" and increased loudness. It's actually stylistic changes in popular music: 'Dynamic Range' and the Loudness War at soundonsound.com

Just came in the mail today. Telarc, Toccata & Fugue in D minor with 32 foot pipes! Sustained top LED's on all amps!

Looks like my living room...

Ministry - Psalm 69

Slayer - Seasons in the Abyss

A while back I came across this "oldie but goodie" about cutting vinyl: Producing Great Sounding Phonograph Records Interesting that the cutting heads use 100-400+ watt amps to drive helium cooled coils!

$34 for all that? Nice hunting!

A gift from dcl - thank you! This guy is amazing!