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You're probably listening too loud

After many years of being a professional musician and spending hundreds of hours in the recording studios on both sides of the glass, I believe that most listeners undermine the pleasure of the listening experience by listening too loud and deadening their ears.

As a resident of NYC, there are a million things here that make the ears shut down, just the way pupils close up in bright light. People screaming, trucks, subways, city noise. Your ears keep closing up. Then you go home and try to listen on the hifi, but your ears are still f'kd up to get to the point. Try this experiment.

Hopefully, you can all have some degree of quiet when you can sit down and listen. Start with a record or CD of acoustic music with some inner detail and tonality. I like to use the Naim CD with Forcione and Hayden, or the piano/bass CD with Taylor/Hayden. Just simple, relaxing music. Real instruments doin' real things.

Start by sitting back and leaving the volume just a little lower than you find comfortable. Just like you want to turn it up a bit, but leave it down. Sit back and relax. I would bet that in 7-10 minutes, that "too low" volume is going to sound much louder. That's because you're ears have opened up. Now, without changing anything, that same volume is going to sound right. Step out of the room for a second, but don't talk with anybody. Just go get a glass of water and come back - now, that same volume is going to sound louder than you thought.

Sit back down and listen for a minute or two - now, just the slightest nudge of the volume control upwards will make the sound come alive - the bass will be fuller and the rest of the spectrum will be more detailed and vibrant.

Try it - every professional recording engineer knows that loud listening destroys the subtleties in your hearing. Plus, lower volumes mean no or less amplifier clipping, drivers driven within their limits and ears that are open to receive what the music has to offer.

Most of all - have fun.
chayro
jimjoyce25
215 posts
 
Learsfool---You are a gentleman, thank you for your kind words.

I think this subject has something to do with the illusion created by our minds in the listening process and wanting our systems to sound "real."

When people say that their system makes the players sound like they're in the room, we sort of know what they mean (and at some level we want the same thing).

But having a string quartet playing in my living room at concert volume would probably send me running into the basement!

And so, when we confront the illusion of a system playing a recording with the reality of an actual player in the room (as in Unsound's experiment), my guess is that something in the mind has to give.
mrtennis
3,295 posts
 
the problem isn't sound pressure level, per se. i had the experience of being in a room with two violinists playing bach's d double violin concerto. it was not especially loud, but the sound of the violin was unpleasant. i could listen to a flute at 85 db , or a french horn at 90 db and i would not mind.

thus the issue is quality of sound and timbre not necessarily loudness.
detlof
1,899 posts
 
Jimjoyce25, again I have to agree with every point you make. You are right of course. There is a difference between a string quartet playing at home or one playing full tilt boogie in the concert hall. I am well accustomed with both and players will adapt their volume to the acoustics of a given venue. So probably, when our facsimiles give us the impression of sounding "real", it is not so much loudness or SPL, but the reproduction of dynamic swings between pppp and fff (I purposely leave out the fourth f) which mimic the real thing well enough to give us the illusion of "reality". This and the palpability of the players and their instruments within the soundstage our rig is able to create.

It is, as MrTennis rightly says, also a question of "timbre and quality of sound", but above all, I tend to think that it is the proper reproduction of the dynamic swings in a given composition from barely audible to loud, within a range that does not offend our ears in our listening venue, which gives us the illusion of "reality".
shadorne's avatar
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shadorne
7,477 posts
 
Violins have a lot of overtones between 2 and 7K (these can be significantly louder than the fundamental - it is quite normal that in certain situations you can find this instrument strident or unpleasant (especially loud as the overtones are not transients but continuous).

*sigh* - Audiophiles need to recognize that musical instruments are designed to convey all kinds of sounds - including stressful or unpleasant sounds and feeling - even explosions and war. Music is not purely a contest in making the most "pleasant" sound. Any system that makes everything sound pleasant is robbing you of a whole dimension to music.
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,311 posts
 
"Audiophiles need to recognize that musical instruments are designed to convey all kinds of sounds - including stressful or unpleasant sounds and feeling - even explosions and war. Music is not purely a contest in making the most "pleasant" sound. Any system that makes everything sound pleasant is robbing you of a whole dimension to music."

That is a very true and excellent point!

Still, practically, its hard to discourage someone from going for "pleasant".

After all "pleasant" infers pleasure and who doesn't want that, even if it does infer a watering down or artificial filtering of reality in this case to achieve it?

The best situation is for your system to be able to reproduce things as realistically as possible, even producing very high SPLs when demanded, but then being able to just turn down the volume as well when needed if things still start to become unpleasant after a while.
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