Recreating an orchestra experience

[Grizzog]

 

Had some time to myself today, so I decided to listen to Beethoven's 9th at true to life levels.

 

Near front row, there will be instantaneous peaks of 105db for a full orchestra.

 

I've got Chorus IIs with a 120 watt per channel amp.

 

Now, my room isn't that big - 14 x 21 and I sit just 9 or so feet back from the speakers.

 

In this environment the Chorus had no issues whatsoever hitting the 105 peaks (104.4 to be exact, but .6db makes little difference). If we take the Chorus' 101db sensitivity, it should be around 20 watts peak at my listening position to hit 105. Realistically, with room gain and reflections it's probably more around 8-10 watts.

 

I've seen a lot on this forum about 500+ watt amps driving these speakers. I'm just wondering what size rooms people here have and what levels they are trying to achieve.

 

PWK wanted to create an orchestra at live levels in the home and said what the world needed was a good 5 watt amp. 5 watts seems sufficient for the Khorn. The Chorus, being 4db down, need a bit over double the power. At 9 feet back, the Khorns need about 8 watts to get to 105. Even at ~26 feet back, the Chorus would need ~170 watts to hit 105, the Khorns somewhere around 64. And these are instantaneous power numbers, not RMS.

 

(My numbers are also based on a single speaker. In theory, a stereo pair would add 3db to the numbers, so the power could be halved.)

 

[Schu]

 I think its a loaded question... when folks try and replicate live experience are they trying to replicate the sound from a specific venue, or are they trying to replicate the sound as if the live experience was being played in their own living room??? Both sounds would be very different, even for the live performance.

 

One thing I found interesting about the "live" feel is that I just added some wall treatment yesterday that really changed my room characteristics. It deadened the room significantly and created a much more controlled and clean listening experience, but it also had the secondary effect of flattening the image quite a bit... the sound image is significantly reduced and the dimensional qualities I had before is nearly gone. Perhaps reflections help in some respects with replication of the "live" feel to the experience. 

[DizRotus]

It might be horn loaded, but it wasn't a question.

[Mallette]

1 hour ago, Schu said:

I think its a loaded question... when folks try and replicate live experience are they trying to replicate the sound from a specific venue, or are they trying to replicate the sound as if the live experience was being played in their own living room??? Both sounds would be very different, even for the live performance.

I still hold that it's possible to recreate the live performance with pure 4 channel recording (basically mirrored stereo mikes) such that it simply overwhelms the room unless it's an anechoic chamber or a gym.  Near field stereo listening achieves this partially, so it's not unreasonable to assume that it will work.  I expect to resume my experiments in that area soon. 

 

Dave