1sty said:ITs not the volume that makes a speaker better, its the speakers ability to play music at higher levels and not become a source of disortion. The boston Z's for example can be absolutly flogged more then damn near any other speaker and will still sound musical while doing. Most other drivers would be cracking and popping and becoming painful to listen too. This is especialy common of tweeters. HOwever, at lower volumes, you will hear detail in something like a focal k2P that you will simply NEVER hear from a $250 anything.
I still remember the first time I heard the Z's in a car. I was in the back of tweeter coming into work and an installer was tuning a system. Before I saw what it was, I though the music I was hearing was coming from either the Sonus Farber Grand Painos or some of our larger Martin Logan home speakers that a salesmen was listening to in the stock room. Each set of which is more then $4000. Turns out it was the installer with only a pair of boston Z playing in a customers car. Incredible sound.
I swung in to Ultimate Electronics today to nose around and couldn't see any sign of Boston Acoustics anywhere in car audio. Wonder how that correlates to them filling Ch. 11? Interesting.(deadhorse