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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
detlof
1,899 posts
 
Thanks Shadorne in making those points. You are so right.
Much of the meaning of Shotakovich's string quartets and symphonies as just an example of what you are talking about would be lost, if we just turned down "the unpleasant". Or take Schnittke, some Sibelius, even classics like Beethoven or Schubert. There a plenty of examples in Jazz as well for this.
Shrill, blaring, strident sound is also widely used in opera, right back to the baroque days: Unpleasant sounds to mirror and underline an unpleasant situation so to speak. I wouldn't want to turn those moments down, even if they are longer than a couple of bars. This is not to be confused with listener's fatigue. If a system is tuned right, it can and should growl, thunder, screech, scream, blare and jar or with really deep bass scare the living s***s out of you, whenever it is musically appropriate.
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
All good points in the last several posts. I would add, though, that we should keep in mind that the purpose of a good audio system (and the recordings it is playing) is not to transport the musicians into our room, it is to transport us to the concert hall.

In certain situations, of coure, that is a distinction withouut a difference, such as perhaps a recording of jazz musicians or a night-club singer performing in an intimate space. But on recordings of ensembles and performances such those we might listen to in large concert halls, I don't think that the fact that we listen at less than "musicians in the room" volume levels represents a compromise.

Regards,
-- Al
detlof
1,899 posts
 
Al,
Allow me to add a little story to your excellent point:
A fiend of mine, musician herself and mother of a world famous violinist, when listing to her son through my rig, she said, "Yes, he is here with us right in the room, but not quite though, because you can feel the venue as well, so he is in a space within your room to be exact".
Regards,
Detlof
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gawdbless
1,235 posts
 
I just turn the volume down just before my ears start to bleed or the threshold of pain sets in.
I do not need a db meter giving me worthless meter readings any more than I need to know how many bpm my heart is doing whilst doing the horizontal hokie cokie, vertical if one is a bat (probably).lol.
I need to fill the room because I listen 27' away from my speakers. You have to suffer for your art.Just like my friend that broke her ankle wearing 7" or was it 10" high heel shoes?
Crank the music up! live life to the max!
Meanwhile to 'Rachel Stamp' @85.34694db.....zzzzzzzzzzz
Seeing the Colorado Rockies was as loud as a rock gig!
nilthepill
842 posts
 
Good points Detlof and Shadorne. The real instruments are dynamic and have overtones and (don't forget) undertones depending upon which instruments and notes you are talking about. Cello or Acoustic guitar will sound louder in lower mid, since undertones extends in the bass region. Similar to violins (as Shadorne mentioned) have overtones sounding louder than fundamentals. So then it goes back to proper and 'complete tones' reproduced cleanly by a system ( that can do that) will sound actually louder while listening. When you measure actual SPL, it is not that loud (numbers) at all. I measure when my daughter plays a guitar. the sound fills up a room, but when measured, it is a 'low' number relative to what you thought it might be. Drums (and some wind instruments) are different story. They do go high in SPL in real life, when struck hard. But when using light strokes, it sounds loud due to tones/undertones/overtones SPL differences.

This phenomena is one of the main reasons why some system sounds (close to) real and most don't.
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