dave weil wrote:

On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 18:43:37 -0500, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

My own personal main speakers have similar efficiency ratings, and they get
only get what I consider to be moderately loud with a 125 wpc amp.

Is there any formal definition of "moderately loud"?

Hope you catch my drift here. I think you just answered your previous
question.

I am not sure about Arny (who no doubt experiments with
high-power amps and high-power requirements much more than I
do), but it is a rare day indeed when the peak SPL levels
hit 100 dB with my music listening.

Most of the time, 90-dB peaks are the limit with all of my
musical listening, and with a lot of the baroque stuff I
listen to peaks in the neighborhood of what Sander gets with
his package are the norm.

Basically, this means that for music the somewhat more than
1,800-watt, surround-sound total I have available from my
main system (and even the seven channels plus subwoofer 920
watts I have from my middle system) is overkill in the
extreme. My living room system, with about 700 watts on five
channels, plus subwoofer, is probably powerful enough for
just about any musical use, with room to spare, actually.

Admittedly, when watching DVD action movies the levels get
somewhat above that (making some of the extra power on hand
possibly justifiable), but many audio buffs listen to
classical music at much higher levels than what one
encounters at live performances. I suppose that rock, and
even some jazz (my mind goes back to a Stan Kenton concert I
attended years ago) gets a LOT louder.

Howard Ferstler