How loud do you listen to your music?

Pdn,

Your hearing will get worse anyway as you age - so enjoy it while you can. Listening at these levels several times a week for short periods (not more than an hour) is unlikely to be a major problem.

Remember the quacks all told us to stop eating butter and switch to margarine....now, thrirty years later, they have discovered that Trans Fats are particularly lethal!

Thanks Shadorne. Makes much sense. You're right about the margarine. I stopped that a few years ago and went back to good old all natural butter !! I'm actually going to look at upgrading my standmount B&W's to a full size B&W monitor speaker (DM603 or DM604 for example) which could work to lower the dB's and still hear the detail and volume I like along with that bass kick. I noticed my powered subwoofer adds a lot to the dB levels. If I can get more natural bass out of the two mains and back off on the sub somewhat, that could get those dB's down. I'll let you know how it goes.

Hi Pdn

The lack of low level detail at lower SP level is not due to your speakers, rather it is due to your amplifier not having a low enough sound floor.

You should go and audition some amplifiers and listen to them at low levels. Take a SP meter and listen to music at an average of about 50db. When listening to a couple of amps at low you'll be surprised how many 'big name' amps simply drop low level detail.

I can easily listen at 50-60db on my setup and the music is still 100% complete and intact. I too do not want ruin my ears.

Regards
Paul

Pdn,

Check Equal Loudness Curves to see how volume level affects the presentation of the sound.

Notice that at around 30 db SPL, the average person won't hear anything at all below 80 Hz. At 60 db SPL one begins to hear 30 Hz and at about 75 db SPL the lowest frequencies in the audible range (20 Hz) become barely audible.

This is why bass audibility improves so dramatically at higher levels - put another way this is the reason for the "loudness" button (to help audibilty of bass at low sound levels).

The other important thing to notice on the plot is the area between two different "Phon" curves. It may help to take two extremes, just for illustrative purposes;

1) Imagine you listen at close to 40 Phon peak equal loudness.....then what you hear is contained between the 40 phon curve and the threshold LESS whatever background masking noise you have in the room. Even if you IGNORE the noise floor (usually around 30 db spl) and shaded the ENTIRE area between the curves you get an idea of the signal range that your hearing is working with. ( Anything on the source music that falls below the threshold will fall below audibility - so you are working with a MAXIMUM dynamic range of roughly 40 db SPL)

2) Imagine you turn up the sound to around 100 Phon peak equal loudness contour (yes I said extreme). Do the same exercise and color the area between 100 Phon curve and the threshold of hearing. (Immediately it should be apparent that you are now working with a MAXIMUM dynamic range of roughly 100 db SPL. This is similar to the dynamic range of a 16 bit CD - meaning you will not miss even the lowest level signal on the least significant bit on the CD, provided it is not "masked" by other sounds)

This is the long answer of why you may like to crank it.

The short answer is best explained by Dewey Fin in School of Rock, "Dude, I service society by rocking. I’m out there on the front lines liberating people with my music. Rocking ain’t no walk in the park, lady."

Shadorne, the majority of amplifiers lose low level detail of frequencies in the mid-range, i.e. 250Hz to 500Hz, and that is why people crank it. It has very little to do with the frequency extremes.

I agree with some your comments pertaining to phons, but you would need very sensitive ears to hear 20Hz. Very few speakers will produce sound under 30Hz, let alone 20Hz. Personally I feel low frequencies in my stomach before I actually hear them and we probably hear the harmonics of low frequencies without hearing the fundamentals of said frequencies themselves.

Same with frequencies of over 15KHz. I doubt many males will hear anything over 18KHz.

If the midrange is incomplete, the frequency extremes do not matter. Incomplete midrange = inferior amplification.

And forget about the theoretical dynamic range of CD. The majority of CDs are compressed to under 20db range. I listen mostly to uncompressed MFSL and direct-to-disc recordings, which has a way bigger dynamic range than most the crap available on CD. I cannot say what the peaks go to (probably 80-90db I guess) but the average is around 60db and I get the complete sound picture.

A truly good audio amplifier can create a complete musical picture at low SP amplification levels without losing the lowest levels of details. I have heard tens of systems where they needed to be turned-up-to-sound -right. Without exception, at low volumes they lack the small nuances and micro details that natural music has. These system simply have to be cranked because they suck at low volumes.

Regards
Paul