The Best Sounding Systems can Play Loudly with Low Distortion

@alaric62 

"A lot (most?) of us were exposed to loud stereos before we experienced good stereos. At an early age we learned to equate loud with distortion, and can hear surprisingly loud, distortion free music without realizing how loud it really is. We don't get the signals that originally told us it was "loud". That was an interesting discovery for myself and several others over the years, and probably contributed heavily to my tinnitus."

Individuals who subject themselves to excessively loud levels almost immediately begin to suffer an effect known as listening fatigue, wherein the ear's sensitivity to the onslaught decreases and the listener tries to compensate by continually increasing the volume. After the volume pot reaches a certain rotation, they begin to hear excessive clipping and breakup as the amp tries to keep up with their loudness demands and runs out of power leading the listener to conclude they need a bigger amp.

I think that the ability to generate clean, great sound at high output SPL’s is the toughest challenge any audio system faces, be it home audio or professional.

Any decent home system should be able to reproduce enjoyable sound at low to moderate or even high moderate levels, but if you are looking for convincing real world output levels that sound great, that would take a very special system indeed.

I think that it is possible to put a system like that together, but you would have to be willing to step outside of the conventional audiophile rule book box to do it.

Individuals who subject themselves to excessively loud levels almost immediately begin to suffer an effect known as listening fatigue, wherein the ear’s sensitivity to the onslaught decreases and the listener tries to compensate by continually increasing the volume. After the volume pot reaches a certain rotation, they begin to hear excessive clipping and breakup as the amp tries to keep up with their loudness demands and runs out of power leading the listener to conclude they need a bigger amp.

IME this typically happens for one of four reasons: the speakers are non-linear in response, the amp is too low in power to really control the woofers, the speakers are poorly placed in the room creating significant bass nulls, and/or they have poor distortion performance to begin with. The bass null problem is especially common. 

Not requiring a system to play music at a high volume allows getting the best sound at. lower price

@helomech 

"IME this typically happens for one of four reasons: the speakers are non-linear in response, the amp is too low in power to really control the woofers, the speakers are poorly placed in the room creating significant bass nulls, and/or they have poor distortion performance to begin with. The bass null problem is especially common."

Rationalize it any way you want.