How to listen at low volumes

how to listen at low volume levels all right Rob and Calgary Canada wants to know how to do that he says Paul although I love to turn the music up as much as anyone else that isn't always appropriate late at night or even if I'm just trying to relax with some quiet music however if I turn down my system I notice that the biggest differences is the sound stage seems to collapse the dynamics are no longer as captivating and the bass frequencies are seem attenuated what does one do to make listening at lower levels more enjoyable with more efficient speakers health No so more efficient speakers are just going to take fewer watts to get you the same loudness level and so in your case David you know different speakers aren't going to make any difference at all and and again the reason is because you're you're taking an average level and you're turning the volume down to where on average it's gonna make X amount of sound so for your easy listening to not bother your neighbors so the efficiency of the speakers matters not the simple answer to that is something called The Fletcher Munson curve now this is technical you can look it up on Wikipedia but essentially two guys Fletcher in months and figure it out a long time ago through a whole series of tests that as the actual volume level of music is reduced the apparent volume level of the extremes of the highs and the lows get truncated so as you turn down the volume we know that the frequency response remains flat right so I don't care where you turn the volume knob on this system it's everything remains flat so the base is going to be just exactly the same proportion as the range or the tweeters no difference I can measure that I can tell you that for a fact but the perceived difference this is what Fletcher Monson came up with starts rolling off like this and we perceive the base to be less and we perceive the treble to be less and so years ago and still today there are products that have what are called loudness controls and what they do is raise up the bass and the treble so that as you turn the level down the bass and treble go up now it's no longer flat technically but to your ears it is okay this is just one of these weird psycho psychotic proud psycho acoustic things that that happen our ears hear this happening and we do this to compensate and then it sounds flat so that's that's the first thing that you could wind up doing secondly we should remember that regardless of Fletcher Munson and their curve as the level goes down the dynamic range let's say we have this much dynamic range right and as you turn the level down well you have the same dynamic range but at some point the low notes are going to become so low that we don't hear them anymore and so you're removing the dynamic range effectively so that you have less dynamic range and it sounds less dynamic I mean it sounds you know like that soundstage we know that soundstage image is dependent on level so if you listen on this system and and you turn up a voice if that voice sounds too big we know it's because it's too loud and so we instruct people turn the level of that particular track down until the voice is exactly the right size for a human being and that's the perfect level for that track well the opposite is true if you start doing even less the voice gets smaller and smaller and smaller along with the soundstage and that's what you're hearing so from a soundstage perspective I don't think there's anything you can do from a bass and treble roll-off you can you can have a loudness adjustment or make your own EQ so that's that's the best advice I got it's all I got today so we will we'll see you tomorrow okay [Music] [Laughter] [Music] you

Channel: PS Audio

Views: 104,538

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Keywords: Paul 46, Paul 35

Id: Az2UG3zvJNw

Length: 5min 21sec (321 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 07 2020