How loud do you listen to your music?


Today I decided to take my RS SPL meter and see just how loud my system when I was listening to levels that I perceive to be pretty loud. To my surprise, the nominal SPL was only 70db with peaks going as high as 82db. I had expected the SPL reading to be much higher especially since I thought I had my system cranked up pretty loud. When I put the volume back to where I mainly listen, the SPL was only in the 50-60db range. For whatever reason, this number seemed too low but I do not really have a good sense for what decibels really mean in terms of how loud things are in the real world. Is 60db loud? Is 70db excessive?

So my question is, how loud do you normally listen to your music?
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Paul, we exchanged virtues of the SET vs PP in another thread, have you had any experience with parallel SE vs SET? How does that piano decay when the triodes are in parallel?
The nice link GH provided unfortunately uses Hearing Level (based on an average threshold of hearing) rather than Sound Pressure Level (based of .0002 dynes/square cm). RS meters read SPL, although scales other than C attempt to mimic hearing sensitivity. Forced-choice techniques show that 0 dB HL is high by maybe 10 dB, i.e. sensitivity is underestimated.

Jazz at the Pawnshop at the level I prefer averaged 75 dB(C) with peaks to 80 with slow trajectory. I'm sure certain passages of Mahler's 2nd, for example, exceed that, because the dynmaic range is so large.

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Shadorne, if your system drops details in the music at 60db SPL, you need to upgrade to a decent system

LOL. Yes indeed you are right Pauly. I forgot to mention this is why I have to play so loud (don't have a decent system). Indeed, there is nothing more to be heard with an extra 30 db of dynamic range (going from 60 db to 90 db). Thx for pointing out my error. ;-)