How do know if your playing your speakers too loud.

[Canada]

How do know if your playing your speakers to loud. Will you start to notice the distorting. I had my Pioneer up to -18 and thought that might be to loud but did not notice anything but crystal clear loud sound.

[Beta Man]

It becomes un-enjoyable.

[DavePS3]

Once you hear distortion... the woofers 'fart' and the tweeters sound bad.

[azereus]

Originally Posted by DavePS3

Once you hear distortion... the woofers 'fart' and the tweeters sound bad.

I almost want to hear that just once so I know what you're referring to.

[Big Daddy]

If the neighbors bang on the walls or the cops show at your door, you know you are playing the speakers too loud.

Joking aside, you should be more concerned about your hearing than your speakers. Tweeters and speakers drivers can be replaced. God doesn't have a return policy.

In most cases, your speakers will have more tolerance than your ears. Over an extended period, you will damage your hearing faster than your speakers. Please turn the volume down.

[Lord_Stewie]

Once you hear static/crackling noise coming out of your speakers. Then you would know its not good news.

[Rob J in WNY]

Overdriven speakers will cause a "coloration" of the sound, meaning changes in tonal quality not from the original source. At stressful volumes, radiating surfaces of the speakers flex and distort in shape, coloring the sound in various ways, but all-in-all, making it deviate from the original audio.

I have heard overdriven dynamic tweeters produce a "staticy" sound, and the aforementioned "farting" with woofers is the beginning of "bottoming out," where the voice coil, speaker cone or spider has reached its limit of linear travel. Sometimes, bottoming out produces a very loud "impact" sound from the woofer cone on quick bursts of bass. This is due to the woofer's voice coil literally striking the back of the magnetic assembly.

Keep in mind that is also not a good idea to drive your amplifier to "clipping" levels. Clipping is where your amplifier has reached its limit of amplification, and without getting into great detail, it produces very high distortion (often referred to as THD, or Total Harmonic Distortion). There are various and differing opinions on whether amplifiers driven to clipping levels are truly damaging to speakers. I am of the camp that it DOES, and I have, a few times, seen speaker drivers damaged or completely blown as a result of overdriving them with amplifiers rated well below the speaker's power handling capacity. I have also seen the same speakers driven very loudly by amplifiers rated much higher than the speaker's power handling capability, with no harm done.

Basically, if you hear any distortion at loud volume levels, turn the volume down. If you don't, then be happy that you can drive your system to such levels without problems of any kind. Without those problems, you will be assured that your system will faithfully reproduce every dynamic transient of program material when playing at lower volume levels.

As Big Daddy has pointed out, it's good to turn the volume down more often than not. I listen to movies at reference-volumes on occasion, but most of the time, well below reference. For me, depending on the source volume on-disc, reference-level audio becomes a bit hard on my ears with my Pioneer SC-05 receiver's volume up to -16 to -12dB. Above that, sound can become painful on my 7.1 channel system. Most of my listening occurs between -26 to -32dB (and THX Loudness Plus can make even -26dB produce some pretty strong loudness at times).

I plan on enjoying multichannel HD sound from Blu-ray for a long, long time.

[Canada]

Originally Posted by Big Daddy

If the neighbors bang on the walls or the cops show at your door, you know you are playing the speakers too loud.

Joking aside, you should be more concerned about your hearing than your speakers. Tweeters and speakers drivers can be replaced. God doesn't have a return policy.

In most cases, your speakers will have more tolerance than your ears. Over an extended period, you will damage your hearing faster than your speakers. Please turn the volume down.

God doesn't have a return policy.

I kid yoy not one time when I was working out some woman had her ear buds up so loud I could hear them over top of my music from about ten meters away! Now that is too damn loud.

[mugupo]

Go step outside of your house and see how loud does it sound, if across street it sound still can heard your speaker then yes is loud, avoid do that at night especially after 10pm cop can gave you a ticket for that

[Rob J in WNY]

Originally Posted by mugupo

Go step outside of your house and see how loud does it sound, if across street it sound still can heard your speaker then yes is loud, avoid do that at night especially after 10pm cop can gave you a ticket for that

Know by personal experience?

[Hammie]

Usually, a red colored liquid starts to flow out of your ear canals.

[Hammie]

Originally Posted by mugupo

Go step outside of your house and see how loud does it sound, if across street it sound still can heard your speaker then yes is loud, avoid do that at night especially after 10pm cop can gave you a ticket for that

That cop would have to be a real a-hole to give you a ticket. Usually they would give you a warning first. Unless Johnny Law visits your house a lot.

[mugupo]

Originally Posted by Rob J in WNY

Know by personal experience?

Well my cross street neighbor has like 4 cop car come by because of too loud music play at night, i can hear his music and i am across street from it. Cop in my are gave ticket for anything, if i remember ticket for no sea belt per adult is like $150 and child is $450. And they gave you ticket for something they didn't see too, i got a ticket because i told the truth while they didn't see it.

[Spyder-Dan]

The cops showed up one time to the house I used to rent in San Antonio. I was watching "The Unforgiven" and had the volume pretty high in order to get the "movie theater" sound experience. Needless to say, my neighbor called the cops. She stated that there were gunshots being fired somewhere in the neighborhood. The cops gave me a ticket ($56) because it was very late at night (approx. 2:45am). The next day I went and appologized to my neighbor but then they wanted to come over to watch movies.

[Steve]

Originally Posted by Spyder-Dan

The cops showed up one time to the house I used to rent in San Antonio. I was watching "The Unforgiven" and had the volume pretty high in order to get the "movie theater" sound experience. Needless to say, my neighbor called the cops. She stated that there were gunshots being fired somewhere in the neighborhood. The cops gave me a ticket ($56) because it was very late at night (approx. 2:45am). The next day I went and appologized to my neighbor but then they wanted to come over to watch movies.

You should have worked out an 'admission fee' to cover the cost of that ticket.

[crazyBLUE]

Originally Posted by Beta Man

It becomes un-enjoyable.

Originally Posted by Big Daddy

If the neighbors bang on the walls or the cops show at your door, you know you are playing the speakers too loud.

Joking aside, you should be more concerned about your hearing than your speakers. Tweeters and speakers drivers can be replaced. God doesn't have a return policy.

In most cases, your speakers will have more tolerance than your ears. Over an extended period, you will damage your hearing faster than your speakers. Please turn the volume down.

Originally Posted by louhamilton

Usually, a red colored liquid starts to flow out of your ear canals.

This say's it all !!