Thanks everyone for the replies and info so far! Finally got the baby out of the house and did some testing with the iphone app on my 3G-S. I'm not sure how valid the scores are, but reliability obviously should be pretty good since I used the same app back to back. I'm surprised how much variability there is across cd's I guess.

So here are some things I listened to, all at 0db and PLII THX Music selected on the Onkyo (except the TrueHD on Dark Knight obviously)

Source Average SPL Peak SPL
Dark Knight 75 93
Marilyn Manson 89 91
Beautiful people
Audio Slave 90 96
Doesn't Remind Me
Eagles GH 85 89
Hotel California
AC/DC live 85 91
Thunderstruck

Before my original post the only CD I had tried was the Eagles CD and obviously it isn't as loud as the others. So looking at these numbers and hearing the other CD's it was prety f'ing loud I think afterall eek.

How do these nubers compare to anyone that may have used the iphone app? Or even a Radio Shack I'm curious. The peak didn't go up much on the deep bass shots in Dark Knight, and since one of you mentioned it may be less accurate at deep low bass, I suspect that peak may have been higher with a RS SPL meter (which I will still buy at some point since I can see how useful it would be running the test tones).

Thanks again...I think my ears are tired LOL cool