Most CRANKABLE Speakers

[Gibsonian]

Your point is taken sir on the risk part but I wasn't really rationalizing, was adding some data I thought would be useful, esp the charts reflecting continuous SPL, which is much different from music. Can't comment on your exposure, i.e. SPL levels and exposure times, but sorry that it happened to ya.

 

[t j]

I don't think I'll ever fully understand why audio folk look down on a guy that wants his shit loud, linear, and clean. When I was in my 20s my life revolved around just that. Numerous house parties with music at club levels led me to purchase quality gear - namely McIntosh and Altec. Even to this day, few things provide a mental rush like playing music at levels where it hits you in the chest.

As much as I enjoy Jennifer Warnes voice and the effort put forth to capture it in its purest form, playing Marilyn Manson's The Beautiful People at ARE YOU INSANE levels is equally as satisfying in my house. It is as much an art to assemble a system capable of linear frequency response and club level output at about 50% of the amplifier power available that can play all night long as it is to assemble a system that puts Miles Davis in the room. I have both.

OP - the simplest way for you to achieve your goals with the Pioneer receiver that you already have would be to add cone coverage. Series-paralleling four speakers of the same kind and impedance on each of the left and right channels would be the simplest. This allows you to reduce the overall power to each speaker, spread that power across a bunch more voice coils (preventing speaker damage) and increasing overall output from the additional cone coverage (doubling it twice yields 6dB). Educate yourself about the phenomenon of mutual coupling and study the concept of a line array and how it is employed in professional sound reinforcement. Set your speakers up accordingly.

And most importantly - HAVE FUN!

Most appreciated man!

 

[t j]

I ran my SX-950 pre outs to an Onkyo M-504 bypassing the internal amp completey. The 950 would heat up trying to run TF-1000s. You could do the same, run your pre out to whatever you want.

That's good to hear. Many discouraged me due to my 1250's power, saying that I'd be reducing the power to the speakers...

 

[t j]

Your Kappas are fantastic, fabulous sounding speakers, although being the middle of the road for the Kappa series, they will NOT go nearly as loud as you like. Millersound can repair the polydome. Are they .1 (ported and trapezoidal) or original (non-ported and simple rectangles) I'd suggest a few things,

1. use the Kappas as your sound quality reference.
2. buy a pro amplifier, they can be had for pennies on the dollar and will drive whatever speakers you end up with, there's a number of great suggestions here.
3. you are an ideal candidate for a subwoofer (or two, or three! more is always better)

oh, and don't overcrank the Kappas, they are fantastic speakers.
I power my Infinity speakers with 350 wpc pro amps.(note the plural) In my case, I use thirty year old Carver Pro amps, but Crown makes fantastic inexpensive amps that likely blow my old carvers out of the water.



That's way more common then you know now, with modern line arrays, No halfstack can compare.
Slayer uses fake front cabinets with pyro installed into them.

Thanks I'll start looking for an amp. How many amps should I aim for? Black Veil Brides is the band btw...

 

[Hobie1dog]

That's because many folks just dont quite understand this sorta thing fully...
They're too busy looking at the sensitivity specs and thinking that's telling them everything they need to know.
Well it does'nt tell them everything they need to know,it just tells them where the starting line is.

For this type of useage one should be looking at the max SPL output (@ a specified distance) to gauge any given speakers "maximum loudness".
And then one can look into the amount of power required to reach the max SPL from that given speaker.
Problem is most consumer oriented speaker co.s dont supply that kinda information.

Purely used as an example here: (sorta like jazzmans post above)
Lets say one has a JBL M2 monitor and wants something significantly "louder",then obviously they're gonna need something pretty stout.
That's because the M2 max SPL is 117 db continuous @ 1m.

So lets say you're looking at some ATC monitors,well it's gonna take something like the SCM300ASLT to handily best the M2.
Those are 121 db max SPL continuous @ 1m.

Now we can look at the amplification used for each of those.

The M2 recommends using a Crown I-tech 5000HD which puts out like > 1kw of power (so lots of "overhead" for transients/peaks and such).
The ATC uses their own P4 amps that are rated @ roughly 850w each (fyi: these require 2 of those tri-amped P4 amps).

The sensitivity spec typically tells you what a given speakers output is with 1w @ 1m.
But to get from that 1w @ 1m db to the max SPL db often requires a BIG jump up in power.

So you can see why everyone here is saying a BUNCH more power is needed to acheive those sorta serious max SPL's.
So the SX-1250's 160wpc is just a drop in the bucket for this sorta useage.

That M2 sensitivity rating is 92db @ 1w @ 1m.
So using that general "rule of thumb" of 2x the watts = +3db louder formula.
2w = 95db
4w = 98db
8w = 101db
16w = 104db
32w = 107db
64w = 110db
128w = 113db
256w = 116db
So you can see it's an exponential sorta situation here,right.

So generally speaking 300wpc or so would be the absolute minimum needed to get anywhere close to the max SPL for those M2 speakers.
And that does'nt address the overhead required for peaks/transients which is why JBL recommends that Crown amp with > 1kwpc.
That's because the peak SPL is actually up around 123db @ 1m.

So lets keep the math above going...
512w = 119db.
1024w = 122db
Ahhh yes now it's getting a bit clearer,is'nt it ?

Also folks here tend to understand that pushing gear really hard like this requires a robust power supply,lots of reserve power & ample cooling.
And things like that are often somewhat compromised in components like a typical vintage receiver.

Also none of this addresses various differences in the speakers given make-up.
Some speakers just NEED more wpc to "come to life" than others do,and often you wont find any spec that tells you that.
Often that is only understood via the benefit of hind-sight -or- the experience of others who've BTDT.

So yeah it would be wise to use the pre-out on that SX-1250 to feed a higher wpc amp if you're seriously chasing max SPL.

FWIW ~ HTH

Bret P.

Outstanding post, thanks. More power is always better.

 

[CoogarXR]

I enjoy loud metal music too.

I love the CV sound. I have always wanted a set of AT-15s. I have owned AT-12, DX-7, AT-8, and my friend had the D-9s. The D-9s and AT-15s are great for loud metal.

Right now I have Pioneer CS-905s and CS-903s in my shop, and Mach Ones in the house. While I can recommend all 3 of those, I must say, I recently got a set of Peavey 3020HT speakers at an auction. They were selling cheap, and I thought "ahh what the heck" and bought them on a whim. WOW. They blew all my other speakers away. My wife and I just blasted them for hours. It was like a front-row seat at a concert. If I had the space I would have kept them; they were just too huge. So I sold them. But I sure miss that powerful sound!

 

[bhunter]

Your point is taken sir on the risk part but I wasn't really rationalizing, was adding some data I thought would be useful, esp the charts reflecting continuous SPL, which is much different from music. Can't comment on your exposure, i.e. SPL levels and exposure times, but sorry that it happened to ya.

Those OSHA standards are far too lenient IMHO. Moreover, they do not mean that any given person can tolerate 4 hours at 95dB without hearing damage. They are merely guidelines. There is also a considerable amount of lobbying efforts involved.

http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/...s-to-osha-noise-exposure-dose-calculation.pdf
www.sandv.com/downloads/1201sute.pdf

 

[The Fuxtor]

CV AT-15
I will second these guys! They are truly a remarkable Rock speaker!

 

[4343]

... Don't mind distortion, but I tend to blow drivers.

That sort of defines how to blow a driver.

 

[darkblue94]

CV AT-15
I will second these guys! They are truly a remarkable Rock speaker!

Too bad they pretty much suck for everything else.

 

[Oscar23]

Who's the band here?[/QUOTE

I much like the op love my loud metal (I saw motorhead 6 times in 10 days lol) I have my great gear but want to rock out from time to time you want loud go buy one of those big Peavy amps from the 80s you'll find them all over the place for cheap. In Canada we use Traynor speakers ( 75 bucks a set) you'll find something similar in the States and trust me you will feel the sound

 

[teal'c]

I don't think I'll ever fully understand why audio folk look down on a guy that wants his shit loud, linear, and clean.

They don't. I'm an audio folk and there's plenty of times I like it loud. I always like it clean.
As for the folks - audio and not - that do, it's simple. That's not how they like it, so you must be wrong.
Humanity is great at mistaking opinions for facts.

Too bad they pretty much suck for everything else.

I have yet to hear a disappointing rendition of anything played through my Cerwins, even music I don't like sounds good. I consider that a bad thing. I end up listening to things I don't like just because it sounds so good.

 

[MannyE]

I think Cerwin Vega is the way to go. They play as loud as you want, a brand new pair isn't expensive and can be easily bought anywhere, even Amazon with free shipping if you have Prime. They are ragged by audiophiles for "not sounding good" which I think is unfair. CWs ROCK. If I want to listen to BVB at "11" I don't need to hear "the air around the strings" or the "emotion of the silence between the notes" and CWs will get your head banging with anything over 100 watts per channel.

 

[bcbud3]

I have Pioneer HPM-100, VMPS towers, Paradigm 11SE and 9SE mk2 (4ohm), Realistic Mach Ones, and even some 70's Phillips DIY kit (15" woofers). They are all crankable!

 

[darkblue94]

They don't. I'm an audio folk and there's plenty of times I like it loud. I always like it clean.
As for the folks - audio and not - that do, it's simple. That's not how they like it, so you must be wrong.
Humanity is great at mistaking opinions for facts.




I have yet to hear a disappointing rendition of anything played through my Cerwins, even music I don't like sounds good. I consider that a bad thing. I end up listening to things I don't like just because it sounds so good.

CV's for head banging, party-till-you-puke rockin' out? Sure. Fine listening? Nah. (maybe one or two exceptions, D9?)

 

[Dazaa]

Use the Pioneer as a pre amp, grab an 80's or 90's Yamaha power amp, something from the PC series which are built like tanks and the non meter models can be found pretty cheap and they are high fidelity amps designed for pro use/abuse. Speaker wise I wonder if a pair of Bose 901's paired with a sub would suit?

 

[FRG7SWL]

Greetings from Sactown, T.J. Why not just get a pair of used 70s'-80s'-era 12" CV cabs, replace stock woofs with Electro Voice EVM 12L Zakk Wylde Black Label speakers, & enjoy your classique 1250 to the max! Got a pair of 12" CV cabs about a decade ago from a local A.K.-sponsored vintage meet. Replaced stock woofs with 12" EV Forces, & changed stock tweet crossover cap from 3.3 uf to Dayton 4.7 uf. You'll never again need to go past 1/3rd volume level to attain tonal thunder from the gods! For which your ears will be richly rewarded by your 1250 amp's reserve power. Wylde loves his Black Label babies because he can push them hard with his Marshall JCM 800s & they never bark, due to their 300 watt rating! EV Forces have only half that power rating, yet they never sound strained as volume increases, either. They're clear, concise, & extremely revelatory of audio chain. If similar, adding EVM 12BL's to 1250 amplification should equal S.T.F.U. sonic presentation! ... About a decade ago, utilized CV AT-10s with Sony STR-6055 amplification inside Raley Field's Awards parking warehouse. You could hear that combo quite clearly on since-closed Riske Lane a quarter-mile away across parking lot. AT-10s are now up in the Yuba River canyon near Nevada City, whilst 6055 rocks Sansui SP-1500s for Semper-Fi bud (Sansuis could fit your bill too, t.j., but need modding to do so). ... Read on this same speaker blog that Realistic Mach I's -n- II's can morph into more than mere metal monsters with replacement Eminence pro woofers & x-over-n-wire mods. ... Oh yeah, just like Hewlew1 & Jazzmans, am partial to Carver amplification. PM-600 in particular, with volume controls bypassed. ... 73s para Sactown

 

[t j]

Scored some near mint Klipsch Chorus II's and now have a better understanding for my Pioneer SX-1250. Thanks for all the info and advice! The sound comes so effortlessly and the Receiver runs cooler as well. Paid $500 for these fine speakers...

 

[gdmoore28]

Now you're talking! Good on you. It's going to be interesting seeing how these speakers grow on you now that you are entering the world of horns!

GeeDeeEmm

 

[biscuithead]

Cerwin Vega D-9

If you don't mind the "pro" look, Peavey SP-2, or if you can find a pair SP-4. SP-3 is not in the same league, avoid them.

I have some SP-1s with new drivers and I sure think they are Crankable... I added a driver in there to cover the mid-range better and the 3-ways get very loud n proud !