A buddy of mine is in town for a few days and brought his Channel Islands DAC (w/ power supply) with him for some fun. Since he didn't bring his passive pre and I don't have one (my volume control is part of the DAC), we just decided to let 'er rip. The modified chain was computer > Sek'd Prodif Plus > coax > Channel Islands DAC1 (or whatever the model # is) > Kimber RCA > PS Audio HCA-2 > crappy 14g speaker cable > VR-1s
I didn't think my VR-1s could do this ... there is some sweet bass at these levels. At my normal listening levels, I often noticed a lack of bass - not so here. I realized that these actually CAN fill my room. However, this listening level got uncomfortable after about 10 minutes. I'd estimate that we were in the 100+ dB range, though without a meter, I can't prove anything. The sound also got fatiguing after that time - it sounded like the VR-1s were trying too hard to move that much air.
Still, a fun experiment, but unfortunately we can't really compare his DAC in my system because of it.