Once rid of artificial loudness cues, the normal urge is to turn up the volume.
Absolutely!
Distortion is what makes 99% of systems sound extremely loud when they are not. Either distortion from the system itself or distortion on the recording itself (often from compression which is necessary because most music is heard on crap systems).
An acoustic drum set can hit 115 db SPL if you stand close to it - so can a grand piano and a trumpet...sure it takes effort to play that loud and it will rarely last more than a few seconds or the performer will be quickly exhausted and so will the listener (or you are at a Metallica concert which is a marathon of loudness which the only the young may endure).
The reality is that to convey the entire musical performance and get those final crashing crescendos and "accents" to the music then you really do need something that can do a whole lot louder than 85 db spl max and even 100 db SPL is severely limiting in many instances (if a realistic reproduction is desired).
Imagine you are in a jazz club and you happen to be standing in front of Miles Davis... when he lets it rip we are talking about 140 db SPL at four feet (in the direction he points that trumpet)...for sure at 20 feet it will be a lot less maybe only 110 db SPL as he would bounce the sound off the ceiling (he is entertaining you and not trying to deafen you).
The 100 db SPL maximum that most consumer dynamic speakers will achieve (if lucky) at the typical listening position is missing a whopping 20 db of dynamic range! This is some 30% of useful dynamic range (above the noise floor) that just ain't there.
This shortcoming (be it most speakers or that over compressed modern pop CD) is the "elephant on the table" that hardly anybody dares talk about anymore because horns have been largely displaced from consumer markets and nobody likes to bring it up (especially reviewers)
