What decibel level do you listen at?

As Almarg points out, if one listens mostly to classical or other types of acoustic music, the decibel level will be constantly changing, often over a very large range. Many audiophiles like to listen to their systems much louder than is actually necessary (I am not saying this is a bad thing, by the way - there are good reasons for as well as against). As I get older, I'm sure I will turn mine up more, but as a professional orchestral musician I am guaranteed to lose at least 20% of my hearing over the course of my career as it is, so I tend to try to avoid other really loud environments. Sometimes I will really crank up the volume on my system, but normally I try to listen at as low a volume as possible and still hear everything clearly. I have never used a decibel meter at home - I can tell you that I certainly don't listen at the decibel levels I constantly experience at work, which are definitely on the upper end of the range we are talking about. As Almarg said, this quite often reaches above that 105 mark - often more like 120 onstage depending on the piece. You don't always notice it, because we are used to it, and there is something about the physicality of helping to produce that volume that seems to mitigate the effect while you are doing it. The really bad ones are the pops shows where they amplify everything inside the hall completely unnecessarily, to the point where it is extremely loud even when wearing ear plugs. We usually beg them to turn the onstage monitors off or at least way down, but the so-called "sound men" never understand that they are actually making the ensemble problems much worse by cranking the volume up louder and louder. It just becomes noise after a certain point. If they would just turn everything way down, everyone could hear everyone else. Anyway, this is turning into a rant so I will shut up, just wanted to explain one very good reason why many musicians listen at lower levels than other audiophiles.

Musicnoise, just saw your post here - I would say you are absolutely right. When I mentioned decibel levels of 120 in a concert hall, I am thinking more along the lines of pops concerts where we are playing just as loudly as in Tchaik 6 AND there are the electronic instruments involved, and everything is absurdly amplified. Though I would guess that the orchestra unamplified easily reaches 110 in say a Mahler symphony, such as the ending of Mahler 2 with the organ blaring and chorus wailing away as well. As you say, the peaks seems even louder than they are because of the contrasts with the softest passages. Also the level onstage is probably even higher than in the first row. I am now curious, and will have to measure sometime. Unfortunately that will have to wait until next season, as we are done with both the symphonic series and the indoor pops for this season, but I will try to remember to do that and report back.