Quality speakers for classical music with high output/volume

[sejarzo]

This is true at any budget. It doesn’t become untrue at a certain low budget, so your budget comment is irrelevant. It’s not about perfection and infinite cost, it’s about relative standards, and the relativities exist at every budget level.

That’s why I sometimes challenge this line of commentary: it seems to be a proud announcement that “I don’t care, and I don’t see why I should, in fact it’s silly to care because, y’know, nothing’s perfect”. In which case, why be here? What is the point? As far as I can tell, the point is to refuse learning, ie denial that they would prefer better reproducers. Why do that? Hmm, maybe to defend past choices born of ingrained bias instead of their own true preference for sound waves.

cheers

I didn't read @Chaconne 's original comment here to mean he thought it was "silly to care" because he also stated "More power to you, I say."

It is possible to be an audiophile in your book if one is satisfied with less than fully realistic peak levels, correct, knowing that within one's means, that's a tradeoff that one has to accept? I've been at this since before The Audio Critic started publishing, and I jumped on that publication when it became available, and had what I think was their "Reference B" system at one point--the best for the money. It certainly wouldn't play as loudly as their Reference A system, but "the great unwashed" would usually tell me that it sounded better than anything they had ever heard.

I don't think @Chaconne ever claimed that he wouldn't prefer a system that would replicate concert hall levels with commensurate quality. Perhaps he has always lived in an apartment or condo where it would indeed be silly to invest in something that could never be fully exploited.

EDIT: And all that being said, I would think most true audiophiles have not owned as many capable speakers as he has over the 50+ years he's been an audiophile.

 

[Newman]

I didn't read @Chaconne 's original comment here to mean he thought it was "silly to care" because he also stated "More power to you, I say."

IMHO that was inconsistent, a bit of hand-over-the-backside while still implying the opposite.

 

[excelsius]

Why do you keep banging on about this? I don’t see any practical relevance to your choice of loudspeaker.

Like I said in my first post on this thread, over 400 posts ago, the practical demands on a loudspeaker’s SPL capability are in the bass, because music overall contains most of its energy in the bass. That’s the type of music you need to be discussing if you want to discuss SPL capability.

Prove it to yourself: find anyone anywhere with a decent sound system, take over to them a CD of “music with little bass” and have a SPL app loaded on your phone that shows peak RMS decibels. Play the music and have the owner turn up the volume as much as he or she is willing, with the aim of getting to 115 dB. See how close you get before you start saying to yourself “this is pointless”.

As for the academic aspect of your questions, all well and good, but it isn’t very helpful (if I understood a couple of posts) to extrapolate backwards from instantaneous SPL readings eg 117 dB to a power demand on amps or speakers eg 8000W. Power demands should be correlated to RMS dB because power is a rate and pressure is a level.

There is every chance that one doesn’t even perceive instantaneous peak SPL or the sound that is causing it. Perception is better correlated to RMS levels.

The practical relevance is that the discussion in this thread is specifically about (mostly) low bass music, with some exceptions. If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that most of the SPL is coming from the bass and not higher frequencies. But if so, if the discussion is about music without much bass, maybe you agree that adding a sub would not contribute much to the SPL? But even more importantly, maybe there is a bit of miscommunication here in light of what serjado also posted about perception of different frequencies, which I didn't know until then. In other words, maybe for the higher frequency ranges, 80dB or some other value would in fact be considered "very loud." For example, according to that perception chart, 50 Hz requires 50dB to be audible, vs 30dB for 200Hz (-20db). Ignoring more detailed calculations for now, can we say that if a bass of 110 dB is considered loud, only 90dB of higher frequencies would be equally loud? In other words, a speaker that can produce even over 80dB in higher frequencies could be considered perhaps very loud.

This doesn't make SPL irrelevant to the discussion. It simply says that we need some sort of normalization to scale it with human perception. Maybe there are already graphs like that, if anyone is aware. Alternatively, this could be perhaps extrapolated from the graph of frequencies based on minimum SPL for audibility.

I think you have already picked this up, but just in case:- if a 6” driver is trying to cover 20-2000 Hz without a sub, and most of its movement is trying to deliver bass tones, then there is limited additional movement available to cover the midrange tones (at the same time in complex music). But if you hive off the bass to a sub, the driver could now deliver much more excursion playing the midrange musical component. Similarly, if the drivers are actively amplified, the driver’s amp has much more headroom for midrange tones.

This point is perhaps similar to the point below.

The pertinent part of the info in that link was the graph that I pasted in. EDIT that somehow disappeared, I see....

View attachment 275009



Even above the super low non-musical frequencies used for effects in movies, we need significantly higher levels of real energy from our music systems to sense equal loudness as the fundamental decreases.

Measurement microphones sense real energy, not what humans sense as loudness. That's why most people find it necessary to use an EQ curve that boosts the low end. Part of the disparity is made up with room gain, but then we have room modes, which is where the desirability for multiple subs enters the equation. Flat below 120 Hz on the Klippel with "estimated in-room response" or in an anechoic chamber sure as shit does not translate to flat in a real room.

The +10 dB requirement, as far as I know, is so a subwoofer can reproduce low frequency effects at the +10 dB level they are mastered at with respect to the balance of the audio.

Wouldn't then a manufacturer like Neumann be expected to produce a sub that is about 10dB above the SPL of the speaker it's supposed to complement? In fact, given that graph, +10dB for base is likely not nearly enough.

All that being said, removing musical energy below 80-100 Hz from mains allows them to play louder without distortion or clipping on transients and let a sub that is designed for those frequencies bear that load.

Maybe it's similar to the point made above by Newman. As was discussed in previous posts, removing bass does not make the speaker louder. Do you agree with that?

 

[excelsius]

Yes, Bach's Passacaglia BWV 582 is an excellent test of bass. Some of those pedal notes can go as low as 4Hz. Even my system with 4 subwoofers isn't capable of producing that!

For an even deeper bass, check out Hurford's performance, if you haven't already:

 

[Newman]

Not standards; limitations. The vast majority of us must live with limitations, either imposed by our situation or our finances.

No, that's more about achieving standards. I'm talking about having them.

I really don't understand where you get this "great unwashed" idea. It almost sounds as if you're equating "audiophiles" with the upper crust, the elite few, and people who can't fit into that as being a 'lesser" people, an inferior caste. You surely didn't mean that, did you?

(a) you did see the humour note? If yes, I can't see why you are being so jolly humourless and PC and taking me to task. (b) Of course not! Gee wiz. All I mean is that audiophiles (us) are a tiny, tiny part of the very large proportion of the world's population that loves listening to recorded music. The incredibly overwhelming majority of music consumers listen on the earbuds that came with their phone, or on the car radio, and love the music but couldn't care less about the sound quality per se. In fact, according to some of my audio friends, outing oneself as an audiophile in social circles can result in people looking at you as if you are some sort of nut. If you gamble on horses, fine. If you collect classic cars and your yard is full of expensive rusted-out 'projects', fine. But if your speakers cost over $1000 and you have 2 versions of the same album, then you are most peculiar and a very strange fellow indeed.

How many people live their whole lives in apartments or connected spaces? Wanting realistic dynamics out of speakers in a situation such as that may get you evicted. Most apartment dwellers who want "realistic dynamics" can get them from headphones.

Well there you go: headphones. The person I was commenting on made no comment about whether speakers or headphones are used.

Are you willing to consider that you might be making unwarranted assumptions about the motivations of "these people"?

Such as? I'm not making any assumptions at all. If it wasn't true that chasing sound quality is of interest to a tiny few, then audio gear would be as popular as cars or smartphones.

Preferring the "better reproducers" may mean a great number of things, and it may mean them to many different people. It may mean, specifically, that realistic levels of dynamics were of primary importance, and then again it may not.

It's all laid out in the research and the books, I don't need to go over it, nor do I need to accede to your claim that it could mean many things, when its meaning is explained in the source material.

If your comment means that everyone, of any budget, will aspire to the best sound even though they cannot afford, then you are correct. If, on the other hand, you mean that many people's choices are not controlled by budget and living situation, then I must disagree. Please clarify.

Nothing I said is consistent with the second part of your comment.

I don't see anyone denying that they would prefer better reproducers. And I don't see that anyone is refusing to learn .... unless they are a troll. What I see is a segment of our members who are in situations where they cannot afford to indulge in aspirations beyond a certain point.

So you reckon all audiophiles have optimised their sound systems to produce the best sound possible (in terms of sound waves alone, not sighted listening) for their budget? That's ludicrous. You "don't see anyone denying"? You don't see people defending their brand against poor SQ ratings? Or insisting that 'we all hear differently'? Or trying to pick holes in research that doesn't favour what they already have? Nobody resistant to MCH for music? You and I must be reading interleaved pages of the threads on this site!

Addendum: forty years ago, I lived in a neighborhood where a young man (no, not me) tried to achieve "realistic levels of reproduction". The cops put a stop to that.

Funny. Did the cops pass the hat around and buy him a pair of Beats?

cheers

 

[Galliardist]

Yes, Bach's Passacaglia BWV 582 is an excellent test of bass. Some of those pedal notes can go as low as 4Hz. Even my system with 4 subwoofers isn't capable of producing that!

4Hz? That's a modern 128ft register, very rare, and wouldn't do much for Bach's music. The lowest Bach would have had would have been just under 15Hz (32ft register, lowest C is 16Hz but the organs Bach would have had access to were tuned lower, which gets forgotten in these discussions).
The Passacaglia is in G, and I would have thought that the lowest note is low G which is somewhere around 20Hz, and just over on a modern organ tuned to current concert pitch. There's probably a score available somewhere online.

The point being that those 32ft pipes feel different when you hear them, to 64ft pipes (and I've never heard a 128ft register but guess things would be different again), and it's how you feel ultrasound that gives some of this music a "profound" feeling.

Reproducing organ properly at home is something that I've never really considered. You have to have no neighbours if you want to do it really seriously.

 

[Keith_W]

4Hz? That's a modern 128ft register, very rare, and wouldn't do much for Bach's music. The lowest Bach would have had would have been just under 15Hz (32ft register, lowest C is 16Hz but the organs Bach would have had access to were tuned lower, which gets forgotten in these discussions).
The Passacaglia is in G, and I would have thought that the lowest note is low G which is somewhere around 20Hz, and just over on a modern organ tuned to current concert pitch. There's probably a score available somewhere online.

The point being that those 32ft pipes feel different when you hear them, to 64ft pipes (and I've never heard a 128ft register but guess things would be different again), and it's how you feel ultrasound that gives some of this music a "profound" feeling.

Reproducing organ properly at home is something that I've never really considered. You have to have no neighbours if you want to do it really seriously.

I have been lucky enough to stand next to a pipe organist, and directly in front of the pipes, while it was playing. I was given hearing protection to wear. Even then, the sound is unbelievably loud, it literally vibrates your lungs. I didn't have an SPL meter, but I would guess easily > 100dB.

 

[Galliardist]

I have been lucky enough to stand next to a pipe organist, and directly in front of the pipes, while it was playing. I was given hearing protection to wear. Even then, the sound is unbelievably loud, it literally vibrates your lungs. I didn't have an SPL meter, but I would guess easily > 100dB.

I've been close, but not that close. Yes, organs are unbelievably loud close to the pipes. Being loud and impressive was their job.

I've found as well that often music of the period when the organ was built (or the type of organ being used was in fashion) works best on that organ. Recordings don't usually cut it for the big stuff.

A piece that sticks in my mind is "Rhapsody on a Ground" by Heathcote Statham. When I was in the UK in 2015 there happened to be a recital on at Hereford Cathedral when I was there so I went along, and that piece was played. I don't actually remember much of the other music played.

If you grab one of the YouTube versions of it, and compare to the Bach Passacaglia (and it can be, since both are on a ground bass) you'll think that it's a nothing, the composition is at times mechanical and has a lot of mid 20th Century "messing around". In the cathedral, the piece had a sense of foreboding running through it (it was apparently written during an air raid in WW2): it was a physical experience rather than just listening to music.

I've never heard Bach on the organ do that: in part it's a case of "wrong organ" I suspect, but Statham may also have had the advantage of living with the noise of a more modern life and so speak to us differently. I tend to think that Bach's music on those then new organs must have had that sort of physical effect on listeners in his lifetime, and I wonder if the different stops and tuning, and the different buildings the organs he wrote for were housed in, whether I've just missed out on that aspect.

 

[fineMen]

It's a mere discussion about the science of the speakers, which at least to me is interesting regardless of budget or even if I was not buying any speakers at all. The hobbies you mentioned can be much more expensive than this one. In the end, this is just another hobby based on personal preference.

Frankly, there is very little science in speakers. It is about engineering. To put it very simply, question is how far in terms of exactness one has to really replicate the electrical input as acoustical output. Or the other way round, what errors could one get away with, so nobody would notice-psychoacoustics.

As I mentioned several times before, the exactness is not measured against the actual, original performance. The speakers at home should make you feel very much like the sound engineer felt about his recording in the studio. Because he is the wizard who translates the performances (several takes, merged together?) to a record, that he hopes would again translate to your home.

It should be easy to conclude that the crucial question is, how far you can replicate the studio set-up. Which properties of a studio set-up can be sacrificed in favour of having money and time left for some real life. Maybe you even give up on "stereo" and prefer the freedom of chosing your happy seat besides the (in)famous sweet-spot-triangle.

If you are going to make the decision making your hobby, all the power to you! But it would need a guideline in form of objective measurements. You are prepared with the microphone you ordered. I recommend to wait for the arrival. Because, you know, the guideline is missing at least until then.

( E/g, the "bass" got in focus. Problem is--and I would have told you that, not the harmonic distortion. Didn't I mentionit already? This might be 'classic' specific because of the greater level of harmonics (sic!) with mechanical instruments as opposed to synth-bass. Intermodulation is grossly ignored due to ignorance. Find some info there, still good ol' engineering: https://purifi-audio.com/2019/12/12/imd/. You may feel to discuss this here. You'll find yourself alone then. Anyway, my problem solving recommendation for a three-way, e/g from Adam Audio, or Dynaudio, was utterly ignored. )

 

[Sokel]

All this debate...
Classical is my life,I've chasing what makes it sound "right" for years.Mostly following the objective route combined with looks that is my weakness and it's irrelevant.
Yes,someone can enjoy it even in it's phone's speakers,I get emotional by that too when it comes to such beauty of music.
But I never-ever found a small two-way sounding "right" when I wanted some serious sound.Despite the room and conditions.

Classical music's energy is in the lower midrange.You can't get away by it,it will chase you endlessly.
You can't fix it with subs,subs don't go to 150-250Hz unless you stack them under the mains.

All the above are emotional and after listening to A LOT of speakers,most of the neutral,some of them studio monitors,etc.
Smaller ones wouldn't cut it,plain and simple.And I'm not talking about high levels,I'm talking any level.

Maybe it's me but I know I'm not,classical lovers are a strong community and we talk about it all the time.
I have found some explanations about it here by the very educated members and the funny thing is that the same midrange need applies to the old rock lovers where slam is critical.

Again,all the above are emotional as I would really like to help,take it or leave it.

 

[mj30250]

Thank you. And a big thank you to everyone here who patiently tolerated my sometimes uninformed questions. I learned a lot, especially from the disagreeing points of view. As long as we understand this is not personal, it's all good. Members here are really passionate about the music technology, and it shows.

Also a big thank you to @mj30250 who pointed me to Thomann for a much better deal on the KH-150. Without that, I was dismissing these speakers as out of price range since all other sources I saw had them for $800+ more.

Congratulations on moving forward with a decision, and I hope you enjoy the speakers as much as I have!

This discussion went in a crazy amount of directions, so I don't know whether you confirmed what your source will be (Bluesound Node?), but if you plan to stream from a Windows PC or similar, have a look here:

Ending the Windows Audio Quality Debate

A debate has been long raging in the audio community that Windows isn't fit for use in a high resolution audio system. Sceptics counterargued that bits are bits and Windows audio degradations are a figment of an over-active audiophile imagination. I decided to investigate this as I kept...

www.audiosciencereview.com

I personally use Amazon Music HD and toggle on "exclusive mode" within the app.

 

[fineMen]

...
You can't fix it with subs,subs don't go to 150-250Hz unless you stack them under the mains.
...
Smaller ones wouldn't cut it,plain and simple.And I'm not talking about high levels,I'm talking any level.
...
I have found some explanations about it here by the very educated members and the funny thing is that the same midrange need applies to the old rock lovers where slam is critical.
...

Righty right. I even added a dedicated 30cm (12") mid to an already capable 12" bass/mid to astounding results, all checked objectively. The resulting clarity with human voice just talking is revealing the tiniest modulations in timbre, pace conveying, you name it, emotion. A very small 3-way (9liters internal, sealed) trended in the same direction, only lacking a bit of the uumpf.

The "excellent two way" approach that the BBC brought up in the late 1960s found its limits in what it could do.

We appreciate a new form factor for the studio: https://higherhz.com/adam-audio-a77h-review/

 

[rdenney]

I have been lucky enough to stand next to a pipe organist, and directly in front of the pipes, while it was playing. I was given hearing protection to wear. Even then, the sound is unbelievably loud, it literally vibrates your lungs. I didn't have an SPL meter, but I would guess easily > 100dB.

No pipe organ I've ever seen put the console anywhere near the longest diapason pipes, simply because they wouldn't fit. Very few organs were ever made with 64-foot pipes, and those are usually placed horizontally, or even bent in curves to fit into the upper recesses of the choir loft. 32-foot pipes are much more common, but still not common in baroque and earlier organs.

I have a recording somewhere of E. Power Biggs playing pieces on a range of historical organs in Europe going back to the earliest example that was made in the 1300's or 1400's. Those organs have quite a different sound than the orchestral monsters of Victorian and later periods, which my memory dimly recalls as being the first appearance of 64-foot pipes.

Rick "the organs were the only single instrument that could balance a large choir back in the deeps of time" Denney

 

[rdenney]

All this debate...
Classical is my life,I've chasing what makes it sound "right" for years.Mostly following the objective route combined with looks that is my weakness and it's irrelevant.
Yes,someone can enjoy it even in it's phone's speakers,I get emotional by that too when it comes to such beauty of music.
But I never-ever found a small two-way sounding "right" when I wanted some serious sound.Despite the room and conditions.

Classical music's energy is in the lower midrange.You can't get away by it,it will chase you endlessly.
You can't fix it with subs,subs don't go to 150-250Hz unless you stack them under the mains.

All the above are emotional and after listening to A LOT of speakers,most of the neutral,some of them studio monitors,etc.
Smaller ones wouldn't cut it,plain and simple.And I'm not talking about high levels,I'm talking any level.

Maybe it's me but I know I'm not,classical lovers are a strong community and we talk about it all the time.
I have found some explanations about it here by the very educated members and the funny thing is that the same midrange need applies to the old rock lovers where slam is critical.

Again,all the above are emotional as I would really like to help,take it or leave it.

I've posted this before:

It's a spectral analysis I performed many years ago on the low (nominally 58-Hz) Bb played by me on a contrabass tuba. Note that the 4th and 6th overtones are stronger than the fundamental.

That Bb is an octave above the 26-Hz open pedal of the instrument--the lowest note the instrument can play on the open bugle (It can go lower by adding valve branches to the bugle). But a pedal tone has even less energy in the 26-Hz fundamental, and much more energy in the overtones. But what makes it sound like a pedal Bb is that those overtones are spaced at 26-Hz intervals, just as the overtones in the spectrum above are at 58-Hz intervals. Those differences create difference tones that tell the listener what note is being played. What makes performers good is the ability to line up those overtones with the resonance of the instrument itself by buzzing the appropriate frequency accurately.

The lowest tuba note I've seen in orchestral music is a low C#, in the middle 30's Hz.

Only the contrabassoon in an orchestra can play lower than the tuba, but it's tone is even more dominated by upper overtones and less likely to have much strength in the fundamental.

Tuba players always talk about "rich in fundamental", but that is just their lack of understanding of acoustics. What makes the tone rich-sounding is that big stack of well-tuned overtones. I have played clean 26-Hz sine waves into bigger speakers with some power, and the amount of excursion required to be remotely audible was visually terrifying (at least to the owner of the speaker--me). It's a good test of the surround on the cone, however. My current theory is that most of what people think they need bass extension that low for is to emulate the room resonances in a large concert hall. Maybe a symphonic bass drum has important content that low (a set kick drum does not) but event then, I suspect it's the concussive effect rather than anything that could be described as audible. Getting that concussive effect is what people hope to achieve with subwoofers, I suspect. But it doesn't happen much in classical music (Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and Beethoven's Wellington's Victory being obvious exceptions that used concussive explosions in the score). Even the big timpani solo in Shostakovich's 5th Symphony never comes across to me as concussive when I've heard it in a concert hall.

So, I'm agreeing that the bass capability of the main speakers is critically important to classical music. That said, my old Advents were considered bookshelf speakers, but with 10" woofers could go low enough for classical music. They were a lot bigger than what most people think of as bookshelf speakers these days, however.

Rick "who has played 1812 accompanied by real 105mm Howitzers before" Denney

 

[sejarzo]

Addendum: forty years ago, I lived in a neighborhood where a young man (no, not me) tried to achieve "realistic levels of reproduction". The cops put a stop to that.

I hope the OP's dogs don't put a stop to it LOL. Our dogs would go nuts above what most of us think is moderately loud music.

 

[Galliardist]

No pipe organ I've ever seen put the console anywhere near the longest diapason pipes, simply because they wouldn't fit. Very few organs were ever made with 64-foot pipes, and those are usually placed horizontally, or even bent in curves to fit into the upper recesses of the choir loft. 32-foot pipes are much more common, but still not common in baroque and earlier organs.

I have a recording somewhere of E. Power Biggs playing pieces on a range of historical organs in Europe going back to the earliest example that was made in the 1300's or 1400's. Those organs have quite a different sound than the orchestral monsters of Victorian and later periods, which my memory dimly recalls as being the first appearance of 64-foot pipes.

Rick "the organs were the only single instrument that could balance a large choir back in the deeps of time" Denney

That's right. The first 32 foot pipes appeared in Germany, where Bach and Telemann were working: because they were writing sometimes for organs with those pipes and sometimes not, and because the organs themselves were built at different pitches, the music can be quite different. Because the bass is marked as such, these things occasionally get missed and the wrong register used. Bach's music seems to survive this mostly. I dismissed a lot of Buxtehude's music until I heard some (in a recording) on the "right" organ and what sounded wrong became very effective.

Even if our equipment doesn't produce the fundamental for these low notes, we seem to realise what they are in recordings from the overtones. There's an element of that even hearing an organ play those bass notes live, but we get to feel the note's presence even if we can't hear it. And that plays through to smaller speakers in letting us get a grasp of the music, even if big speakers do "more". I don't believe it's a lost cause as a general case with smaller speakers.

 

[sejarzo]

The practical relevance is that the discussion in this thread is specifically about (mostly) low bass music, with some exceptions. If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that most of the SPL is coming from the bass and not higher frequencies. But if so, if the discussion is about music without much bass, maybe you agree that adding a sub would not contribute much to the SPL? But even more importantly, maybe there is a bit of miscommunication here in light of what serjado also posted about perception of different frequencies, which I didn't know until then. In other words, maybe for the higher frequency ranges, 80dB or some other value would in fact be considered "very loud." For example, according to that perception chart, 50 Hz requires 50dB to be audible, vs 30dB for 200Hz (-20db). Ignoring more detailed calculations for now, can we say that if a bass of 110 dB is considered loud, only 90dB of higher frequencies would be equally loud? In other words, a speaker that can produce even over 80dB in higher frequencies could be considered perhaps very loud.

This doesn't make SPL irrelevant to the discussion. It simply says that we need some sort of normalization to scale it with human perception. Maybe there are already graphs like that, if anyone is aware. Alternatively, this could be perhaps extrapolated from the graph of frequencies based on minimum SPL for audibility.

Wouldn't then a manufacturer like Neumann be expected to produce a sub that is about 10dB above the SPL of the speaker it's supposed to complement? In fact, given that graph, +10dB for base is likely not nearly enough.


Maybe it's similar to the point made above by Newman. As was discussed in previous posts, removing bass does not make the speaker louder. Do you agree with that?

I thought that the Fletcher-Munson curves were already noted somewhere early in the thread, and are discussed quite a bit in various other threads on the forum--they are something that hobbyists and pros are well aware of before they get into higher end components and the reason receivers back in the 1960s had a "loudness" button or control. The article I linked previously was regarding perception in general, and that graph was for the lower end of the SPL range.

Look at the curve for a nominal 80 dB SPL in the midrange. It peaks at 91 dB at 20 Hz; the curve for a nominal 90 dB SPL peaks at 94 dB.

The standard for monitoring/producing music in a studio in nearfield, for which the KH150 is designed, is at an average of 80-85 dB, which is what most listeners at home consider adequately loud. Ergo, for music, a sub that can handle +10 dB is just fine for music, plus is can handle the higher SPL demands of movie effects.

Look at any major studio with multiple monitors, and you will see that smaller monitors like the KH150 are typically on a shelf above the desk and secondary to significantly larger systems such as the in-wall monitors shown on this Genelec blog page that also makes some excellent points about listening SPLs.

High SPL Monitoring: The Facts - Genelec.com

Professional monitoring is all about neutral and reliable reproduction, including the need to present transients as they really are.

www.genelec.com

You have yet to work with setting subwoofer levels using an SPL meter, right? I think virtually all folks who have would agree that when they calibrate their systems to 80 or 85 dB using an AVR, which normally plays pink noise through the left/center/right/surrounds before finishing up with the subwoofer, the output from the sub is perceived as being rather quiet.

 

[sejarzo]

Yes, ordered it with the microphone. However, initially I'm going to just listen before trying to tune it.

Have you given any thought as to where you will place the mic during that process, when you eventually get to that?

 

[ZolaIII]

@sejarzo I really tried to explain him that and how he can hear all there is to it on relatively not very loud levels of about 70 dB with equal loudness normalisation. As he never gone to read about it nor dialed down volume request (SPL) I couldn't tell him to try with midrange Yamaha amplifier.
@rdenney if you have low tone fundamental and secund - third overtones that go higher you definitely do need that fundamental is on 0 dB and not - 3 or - 6 dB (not to mention more) or it will be audibly entirely lost. A pair of good sealed 10" subwoofer's might get you to 0 dB at 30 Hz but 10" woffer's in speakers won't and I don't count port. As this is a big room far feald it needs at least two 12" sub's with healthy power in order to pull it out.

 

[mj30250]

Have you given any thought as to where you will place the mic during that process, when you eventually get to that?

MA 1 allows you to store multiple alignments, so he could take and save measurements while at the desk MLP and take and save another set with the mic placed further out into the (neighboring?) room. In doing so he could theoretically load one alignment while he's working away at the desk and switch to the other for when he's lounging further away. One of the two is still going to be much more compromised than the other, however, as without moving the speakers each time he moves, there's no way to avoid being way outside of an equilateral triangle.