You're probably listening too loud


After many years of being a professional musician and spending hundreds of hours in the recording studios on both sides of the glass, I believe that most listeners undermine the pleasure of the listening experience by listening too loud and deadening their ears.

As a resident of NYC, there are a million things here that make the ears shut down, just the way pupils close up in bright light. People screaming, trucks, subways, city noise. Your ears keep closing up. Then you go home and try to listen on the hifi, but your ears are still f'kd up to get to the point. Try this experiment.

Hopefully, you can all have some degree of quiet when you can sit down and listen. Start with a record or CD of acoustic music with some inner detail and tonality. I like to use the Naim CD with Forcione and Hayden, or the piano/bass CD with Taylor/Hayden. Just simple, relaxing music. Real instruments doin' real things.

Start by sitting back and leaving the volume just a little lower than you find comfortable. Just like you want to turn it up a bit, but leave it down. Sit back and relax. I would bet that in 7-10 minutes, that "too low" volume is going to sound much louder. That's because you're ears have opened up. Now, without changing anything, that same volume is going to sound right. Step out of the room for a second, but don't talk with anybody. Just go get a glass of water and come back - now, that same volume is going to sound louder than you thought.

Sit back down and listen for a minute or two - now, just the slightest nudge of the volume control upwards will make the sound come alive - the bass will be fuller and the rest of the spectrum will be more detailed and vibrant.

Try it - every professional recording engineer knows that loud listening destroys the subtleties in your hearing. Plus, lower volumes mean no or less amplifier clipping, drivers driven within their limits and ears that are open to receive what the music has to offer.

Most of all - have fun.
chayro
I agree with Trelja on everything he said.
I typically listen b/w 85-88 dB, peaks at about 90-92 dB.
Below these levels, it's simply not exciting enough for me.
Listening fatigue, like Trelja said, has more to do with some frequency aberrations, than with the SPLs.
I find that 90 db SPL is generally most pleasurable but I do enjoy up to 100 db SPL continuous when Angus is playing three chord rock ;-)

...some people forget that music is dynamic and exciting but I agree with those who say it should not be deafening. (A lot depends on RMS average levels ....the latest Metallica at 90 db is dreadful but a great recording with plenty of dynamics or brief transients can be pleasant even at 100 db SPL)

Fatiguing = audio compression (either from the system or more often due to the recording)
Shadorne,

I suspect you are quite tuned into dynamics and your system is one of the more dynamic around as a result.

I recognize compression as artificial, but I'm not sure I consider it so much fatiguing as just an unnatural annoyance.

I find I can forgive compressed dynamics if the production otherwise is good, but I certainly would not want to have to live with it regularly as an artifact of playback as opposed to the recording.
Distortion = Fatigue, for sure, and with many rock and other popular recordings distortion is introduced both intentionally and unintentionally. Dynamic range compression would make the fatigue induced by that distortion all the more severe, I would think.

Regards,
-- Al
I'm not advocating compression, which is without doubt a type of distortion, but I'm just thinking that one benefit of compression is that it makes things less challenging for the ear to decode, which would result in less fatigue perhaps than otherwise.

I'm just struggling to think of compression as a primary cause of fatigue. I'm thinking, all other aspects of distortion aside, that compression does result in less fatigue in general since there is less impact on the ears as a result.

Geez, I never thought I be out here defending a considered blight on good sound like compression..........