Thanks for the lengthy reponse Bombaywalla!
Most of my daytime listening is around 80db to 85db according to my ratshack meter's C weighted average mode. I really have no idea what the true peaks would be. I think most music I listen to wouldn't have anything too extreme. Listening to the 1812 overture is a compromise though... I like to turn that up so that I can hear the quiet passages, but my amp is running out of steam for the canon shots.
Having realistic playback levels sounds like a worthy goal, but to give you an idea about my hearing sensitivity, I often wear musician earplugs to play my grand piano because it's too loud for me.
I feel like my system is most coherent and enjoyable at the 80ish db level. Brass and other instruments are really vibrant, and even startling at low volumes. I'm not sure if that's primarily because the amp has an abundance of headroom at this level, because the room gets overloaded with slap echo and wall vibration at higher volume, because humans have a different hearing response curve at different volumes, or if it's a combination of all three or other factors. I'm really pleased that my system sounds very dynamic to me even at 70db, and my fiance probably appreciates that at 2am even more than me.
Do you think the dynamics would take a turn for the worse at 80db in comparison to my current M106 speakers?
Is it harder for an amp to send a 25hz signal to a small speaker like the M106 that can't reproduce that, or a speaker that can? Does the crossover actually trim that out of the small speaker and make it easier?
