How loud is loud?


Seems like a rhetorical question, but I'm curious what other folks think is "ok, now that's loud"

For me, if something's hitting 100dB as measured from where I'm seated while listening, and not just for a brief moments, but with some regularity, that's loud.

I used to listen at higher average volume than I do these days. Typically, I'm finding that at the right volume, the recording is more nuanced then when it's running full throttle.

If I'm not mistaken, the late Peter Walker observed that every recording has it's one correct or optimum playback level. I think generally he was correct, though once we are willing to forge optimum there's a range of acceptable.
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Showing 1 response by arh

Hey Mulveling,
If you our talking about high end equipment I don,t know of any that still have a Loudness control button. Some cheap equipment have that and it increases low and high end to compensate the drop off in our hearing of bass and treble as volumn goes down which is the Fletcher-Munson curve. remember if your listening to a live concert and volumn gets very low the same fall off of low and high frequencies occur. Regarding what is loud, if after listening to music your ears are ringing it was too loud. You will damage your hearing
Alan