we DEFINITELY exceeded 95 db peaks. I shoulda taken photographs of the emims and emits before and after. Next time I'm over I'll do so.
Those Watkins were MOVING an incredible amount, especially on napalm for breakfast, I'm talking not quite as far, but nearly as far as my JL audio Fathom does when I play Napalm on it. it was stunning, and not a little nervewracking. I hovered over the mute button for the biggest strikes on the beam.The amp ran out of steam before those woofers did, and every wall in that house was vibrating, not just the windows, the walls themselves.
Now that I know how well they rock, next time I'll be listening at lower levels and to more delicate music. I never did get to play my infamous liszt recording. (infamous because it still is simply the best recording of a grand piano I've ever heard, and I've played it on every one of my top speakers I've owned, or just lusted after since oh, 1986 when I bought it.) I simply forgot to add it into the usb stick I had all the wav albums on.
I took that recording with me to the massive Wisdom set up in the Clark County Library during CES in 2002, and, to my ears, the music that was played before AND after me, that array just didn't sound... 'right' (as many reviewers noted at the time) but I tell you what, I played that recording of Liszt's hungarian rhapsody 2 and 6(I think) and I'll be damned if a piano didn't acoustically appear dead center on that stage. I mean it WAS a piano, you just couldn't see the damn thing. everything from the p and pp to fff it was correct. it's one of my main reference recordings to suss out crossovers and driver transitions, because they become glaringly obvious to my ears.
Live at Pompeii, my own 'rip' from the original dvd release years and years before Pink Floyd did an 'official' release sounded amazing, you could 'see' that amphitheater they recorded that show in. It was spooky headphone good, with really beautiful melodic and powerful bass and percussion, not to mention Gilmores guitar....
Primus really boogied on 'eternal consumption engine' every instrument was clear and distinct from each other instrument, and it sounded like they were all there in the room...
The only bummer was I accidently turned my main gain down without noticing it, and when I played Roy Buchanan's cover of Leonard Cohen's Story of Isaac, with Charlie Daniels singing it wasn't quite as loud and impactfull as I wanted... (doh! I never claimed to be smart) Didn't notice that was the 'problem til we were rocking out to Lou Reed singing Busload of Faith, totally felt stupid. I mean, I could hear the lack of db (worried something had been damaged) but couldn't figure out why.... I'm a dumbass.
OH, and I played Laurie Andersons 'O Superman' because it's got such interesting and delicate parts, and the bass synthesizer creeps up on you and all of a sudden it takes this weird dark emotional turn.. and the zen or koan of the "hah hah hah hah hah hah" sequencer that plays all the way through the song is really cool. you sort of fall into a trance state if you let the song take you.
and I'll let
@7.62 chime in with his impression of Lateralus from Lateralus, by tool. I was completely blown away by it, I think he was too.
ok, quick rundown of hardware
Crown amplifier (I'll edit the correct model in later)
shen something tube preamp(I'll edit the correct model in later
Lenovo laptop running debian linux sending the wavs via usb to
HiFimeDIY UAE23 USB DAC (ESS Sabre ES9023+Savitech SA9023)
really mondo upc power cords, they were huuge!
dunno what the 1/8 (3.5mm) to rca cord was, it was also very nice.
the passive crossover on the 4.5 was used, not the active electric crossover that also comes with the speaker.
yeah, it was damn fun.