"John Phillips" wrote in message
...
To pursue an academic thought (rather than a desire to annoy the
neighbours) I was thinking about whether "orchestral" sound pressure
levels can be reasonably achieved at home.


snippity snip


Are there any good references to orchestral SPLs in the auditorium? The
best references I have found are to SPLs in the context of the exposure of
the musicians themselves to high SPLs but I don't think these measurements
are easily translatable to SPLs in the hall.

Old issues of The Absolute Sound (back when it was digest sized)
occassionally carried mention of Harry Pearson taking his sound meter into
places like Carnegie Hall and noting that orchestras rarely played that loud
in purely empirical terms, seldom exceeding 90dBA in the hall, but to
achieve the same effect in the home required another 20 dB in level which is
LOUD.