@budjoe Good that someone else pays attention to listening room noise floors, I rarely observe anyone paying attention to this. There are means to lowering listening room noise floors, attending to this means lower volume levels required to hear lower level details, I suspect this why many report more satisfying listening sessions at night when external ambient noise levels lower, this rather than the cleaner AC reasoning.
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?
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@roadcykler "meaningless" ??? You seem to be unaware of the negative consequences of incorrect attenuation. The main function of a pre-amp is to attenuate the signal being sent to the amp DOWN to reasonable listening levels. Applying the brakes. How this is accomplished can definitely have a negative impact on the sound quality. Adding gain to a low level signal increases distortion. This IS a fact. This is why higher end pre-amps use special, expensive volume attenuators instead of simple volume pots. Even some less expensive units like Schitt are very aware of the importance of how attenuation occurs and offer volume upgrades. |
- 44 posts total