SPL meter results relative to Magnepan's (supposed?) craving for power/current

45dB ambient SPL sounds completely normal for someone living in the city without special windows. I live on golf course and I just measured 45dB SPL ambient with no TV or radio on in the house, no HVAC.  I think the ambient level in many apartments in large cities would be much higher than that-60-65 dB SPL is not crazy.

Studios need to get the noise floor down so they can deliver noise floors of 10 to 20 dB SPL. They use floating floors, sealed doors and properly treated HVAC. Pretty difficult to achieve especially at low frequency (a truck driving by leaks into everything). In a home its almost impossible because no one wants to spend that much money on doors, windows and HVAC. A nice quiet door in a studio can be $30,000.

The point of all this is dynamic range. If you have a noise floor of 50 or 60, you need enough system power to get over that by a significant margin- at least 10dB but more is better. Its when you cannot get over the ambient noise that your system doesn’t work well and you still hear the ambient noise when the system is playing.

Its pretty hard to imagine you don’t want more dynamic range. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to reduce this, as just about no one has a system that mimics real life. Here’s a case where high efficiency really helps deliver a high dynamic range system.

Brad
Lone Mountain

phcollie, congratulations on your listen room noise levels. They are astonishingly low.  As points of reference -- 40dB is a moderate background level (louder than a library, but softer than an office), professional recording studios are in the 20 to 25dB range and 15dB is the sound of your own breathing.

My listening room is an interior room of a brick home, there is just no noise going on except the Hvac System. It certainly isn't anything special except the fact that there are multiple walls between the outside and the interior space that is my room. Perhaps my SPL software is reading low?
I downloaded another program and am getting the same 24-25 with the Air system engaged.  

phcollie : "My listening room measures at 12-14 Db ambient (Hvac Off)."

I don't believe your taking measurements correctly as that's unrealistically low for any room. 

Thanks for your help. I'm using 3 different apps to measure that claim +/- 2 Db accuracy including Decibel X. I do not know why so inaccurate now when my old house read 35 Db ambient with same apps? Please excuse my errors. Highest I get is 28 Db with HVAC running in this new home so it must be my microphone.  Srry.