In Reply to: No shorttage of exposure to live music posted by G Squared on November 12, 2015 at 17:46:46:
I take care to adjust my volume control correctly. I follow the following procedure: First I listen at a moderate setting and adjust until the reocridng is not grossly loud or quiet. Then I listen to the sound stage and try to get a distance reading from reverberation, etc... Then I imagine sitting in a similar sounding hall at this distance and what the volume level of a live performance of these instruments would be. (It is possible to tell how hard the musicians are "hitting" the instruments because the tonal balance will change as the instruments are played at different volumes.) Then I adjust the volume until it sounds "right" at the assumed distance. This requires adjustment in steps as small as 1 dB. (My present volume control has 1 dB gradations and this seems to be fine enough.) Recently, I reviewed a recording that failed the adjustment procedure. No matter how I adjusted the volume it was wrong, either in the soft or loud parts. I commented on the problem and got a better version of the recording that had not had any dynamic compression. This sounded right.
Volume levels that I listen at depend on the music. A Mahler Symphony might have peak SPLs of 115 dB at a few points. Solo harpsichord music will be no more than 75 dBs. Vocal soloists may easily hit 100 dB if they are opera divas, etc...
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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- RE: No shorttage of exposure to live music - Tony Lauck 11/12/1519:30:11 11/12/15 (0)