The AR-90s are not a real high SPL (sound pressure level) speaker compared to many others on the market during their day, such as Klipsch. They also have a very different sound than the Klipsch, JBL etc. If your main goal is to play them extremely loud, then you might want to consider a different speaker that was designed to give you concert-level sound pressure. I believe the AR-90s only produced about 84-87 db at 1 watt input, which, if you want to play them at very loud levels of 110-115db, they will require between 500 and 1000 watts of power. They were not designed for this type of abuse, and you will more than likely damage them. On the other hand, if you want to play at these same high volume levels with a speaker like some of the large Klipsch models which are much more efficient, like 99-101db at 1 watt input, you would only need a mere 30 to 50 watts to get them to play at the same volume.
A 250 w.p.c. amp will only get you a clean 105-108 db of sound pressure out of you AR-90's. If you push the amp beyond that, you will risk clipping the amp (distortion), and damaging the speakers. Also, sustained listening at these levels is very bad for your hearing.
