Yea, that cannon explosion has been the audiophiles Holy Grail since Christ lost his sandals.
Can you rig handle it? Back in the day it was the big test of needle tracking on vinyl.
Along came the Telarc CD, and it was the ultimate test for bass extension and power of a serious system.
"The 1812 CD (from June 1984, Vol.7 No.3):
This was reviewed in its analog form in Vol.4 No.5, and there is little to add to that review except to say that the hard-to-track cannon shots on analog are absolutely lethal on CD—though not hard to track! If your power amp is capable of ripping your woofers apart, the cannonshots will give it the opportunity to do so. Telarc's warning in the booklet (and on the album cover) should be heeded. Despite the in-house presence of two 200Wpc power amplifiers, I have yet to hear these appalling thuds reproduced at higher than modest levels without obvious evidence of something overloading. And if anyone can assemble a system that will reproduce those sounds cleanly, and without attenuating their low end, I would not at all be surprised to hear about broken windows.
The recording is typical Telarc, with all the positive and slightly negative things implied thereby. As usual there is that tendency towards steeliness when the whole violin section digs in, but considering the bulk of material released on CD to date, this is one of the best orchestral CDs you can buy. As with the analog version, this is still an almost ridiculous challenge to a reproducing system-a challenge which, if met, would prove nothing of musical worth about the system's fidelity.
The attention this recording has received because of the 1812 has tended to obscure the fact that the Capriccio is one of the best renditions of this warhorse that has been recorded in recent years—better in some respects than the one with Fiedler on the Crystal Clear label. The Cossack Dance, on the other hand, is a bore.—J. Gordon Holt"
If I was an audio writer, I'd go write something like "...thanks to the Morphoptanium woofers in the UKantAffhort DominuX speakers, I could finally establish the cannons in Julius Insanitus' 1946 recording of the 1812 Overture were indeed restored French Gribeauval 12 pounders ..". :-D