Are you operating in the correct SPL window for high-fidelity listening?


We spend hours and hundreds of dollars properly setting up our turntables (or have the dealer do it).  Do you spend any time setting the correct db level for listening?

The Fletcher-Munson curves, also known as equal loudness contours, illustrate how human perception of sound loudness changes with frequency and volume. They show that at low volumes, the human ear is less sensitive to very low and very high frequencies, making midrange frequencies seem louder than they are. Conversely, at high volumes, the ear becomes more sensitive to low and high frequencies, making them seem louder.  See the ISO 226 standard.

I listen at the volume recording engineers use for mixing:  80 to 85 db. Anyone have any thoughts?

markalarsen

First, the problem is how you measure SPLs.  The measurement will vary greatly according to how you aim the sensing microphone and what type of speaker you are measuring.  For example, planar (either electrostatic or electromagnetic) speakers are characteristically different from multi-driver electromagnetic cone speakers in how they do or don’t focus sound. Also, the microphone sensor of your SPL meter may have a very different angle of admittance than mine, etc. Second, what gdaddy wrote would seem to apply to digital components with a volume control that operates in the digital domain.  Such volume controls do lose resolution, the more they attenuate. I think it’s because digital volume controls simultaneously reduce the bitrate. Most modern digital gear has been engineered with excess bits, so controlling volume in the digital domain does less or no damage than previous. I am not aware, nor have I ever read that the same applies to an analog volume control. Yes, they attenuate, and yes our hearing acuity for very high and very low frequencies will vary with SPLs according to the Fletcher-Munson curve, but why would you lose "resolution" (except for the extreme frequencies where it is more a matter of detecting their presence with your ears) when attenuating? Also, analog controls may be of many different types. Most common are series, ladder, and shunt types.  In a series type control, there are resistors in series that add up to produce the desired level of attenuation.  There you may lose some resolution because of noise and inductance inherent to passing the signal through a string of resistors soldered together in series.  In a ladder type attenuator, for each level of attenuation there is only one resistor in series and one in parallel with the signal.  With a really good ladder attenuator, there ought not to be a problem, Shunt attenuators operate most like ladder types but have some potential issues related to input and output impedance.

85-90 db is a good target.   The most lifelike and still safe for ears.  
 

I shoot for that generally for serious listening and use a db meter to help. 

Some recordings are "cut" hotter than others. There is also the ambient noise of the listening room to take account of, leaving to one side the noise threshold of the system itself. Using high sensitivity speakers (104db), I had to work like the devil to quiet the system from inter-component grounding anomalies and to ensure that the power feeding my system was quiet without using "conditioners." All that said, I can hear the program material at low volume, but to energize the fairly large room my main system is in, I do need to give the system some gain.

I've mentioned this before, but every recording seems to have a "natural" volume at which it sounds best. I manage to avoid having the system "play at me" or sound like a reproduction system; instead, I'm able to get a pretty organic sound that appears from a silent background. Granted, there is considerable variability in different records; but I don't let sonics dictate my preference of listening material. Most of what I'm listening to is small combo jazz on records manufactured in the early-mid '70s, which was a nadir of vinyl production in the U.S. 

It depends on the recording and my mood, but I typically listen in the 70-85dB range.  

When I was younger, and when my system didn’t sound like it does now, I played it much louder to get some sort of a sensation from it.   It had less resolution, more noise, less dynamic contrast , was less coherent, and had a less defined sound stage.  The current system no longer requires that volume level to float my boat, so I typically listen at lower levels.  Once in a while if we have a dedicated listening night, the volume goes up a bit, but I’d be surprised if we ever went over 90dB.

The gap between 70 and 85 db SPL is huge, which speaks to my point that we have no agreed upon standard for measurement in the first place.  So discussing in terms of SPL is meaningless.