Crank it up just once

The rule of thumb is that if your volume knob goes to 10, never go past 9. If it goes to 11...you ROCK!

Afraid of frying something??

Come on! While I don't routinely crank my system to the 100dB level, it sees it enough.

Elizabeth, like the Barber of Seville, when I lived in St Louis we used to play our own music for the fireworks @ the arch every night, scarily people in our building started giving us requests... You could hear that stereo from the 17th floor blocks away....

Go for it but be careful!

You will hear much more detail when you play louder as the dynamic range expands above the noise floor of your listening environment.

Volume control setting is meaningless, as the volume dial is all relative - some music will blow speakers at the same setting that sounds ok with other music - so watch out for loud passages. Get a ratshack meter to gauge true SPL levels but you should trust your ears...distortion sounds like increased loudness and most systems distort badly long before they exceed what your ears can comfortably handle in clean sound (which is why most people play music at modest levels when the distortion is lower and the sound is comfortable). Distortion at high listening levels is what most often blows speakers.

Hi Jsd52756, The first thing you need to do is buy the radio shack or some other SPL meter. I prefer the analogue meter.Do this first and then let us know the level when you have it at 1:00 etc. Also all systems sound different when playing at different volumes due to room and speaker/system frequency response etc. The ultimate goal is full range freq response at a natural volume level and then the recording is the limiting factor. Listen to all recordings at the same volume control setting. Some recordings got the dynamics and levels correct, most do not. If you then want to listen to loud or soft recording it is up to the recording, not your volume control.
Bob