How To Match Your Room Size To An Ideal Listening Volume Level - www.AcousticFields.com

- - Today we’re going to look at average listening room levels and how to get the right level for your room so you hear less room sound. I go into a lot of rooms with dealers and people that have listening systems and the first thing that I notice is that they always play the music too loud for the amount of room treatment that they have in their room.

Well in today's video you'll learn:

1. Why playing your music at much higher levels than 83 DB SPL aggravates and magnifies the low end issues that are in your room,

2. Why you can also increase the reflections and the reverberation times if you do so and

3. Why anything over 83 SPL in your room, you have to really focus on the low end absorption and get that under control.

So enjoy the video and as always please let me know if you have any follow up questions.

Thanks
Dennis

[jameschant]

Essential commentary for aspiring audiophiles. Thanks !

[the_nondrive_side]

I recall reading something like 85db being the reference volume used in most monitoring systems. Seems loud enough for my liking. Never really thought about this issue but makes sense. Finally liften my subwoofer off the ground a few feet level with my mains.

[deanroddey]

For folks who are doing this for a home music studio, you should have a known monitoring level that you can reproduce accurately, because the 'internal EQ' of our ears is affected by levels. As the level goes up, we hear it as more and more scooped. If you are all over the place in terms of monitoring levels, you'll constantly be feeling like the balance is changing.

[mickywes]

GREAT POINT! This is obvious, but never heard anyone address it before.
I like relatively quiet listening, so that means it’s easier to treat, right?

I was wondering why I don’t have all the problems I should have in my small strangely shaped room.

[ernestochaveznuno]

Very understandable, thanks for sharing knowledge in an easy way 👍😀

[carlitomelon]

Don't forget to calibrate your SPL meter first. A quiet room is about thirty DB.
Watch levels over 80 DB as they can cause long-term hearing damage.
You want to enjoy your music when you get old!

[aircombatmaneuvers]

As a reference in a small room 50 db is the level at which your ears rest, you can listen all day long comfortable at that level, 64 is loud music above 64 neighbours will start to listen your 40 to 100hz frequencies, and youll start having reverberation, and if you dont equalize and cut those frequencies at which sound wave length will not enter your room rize (hz\340ms=freq length) a lot of standing waves will emerge. Above 80db is very loud music, you can listen 5 songs then your ears will start deafening and you'll feel that you need to increase volume at that point you are lost, more is less. Best is to listen at 60db.

[minorityreport]

Absolutely. My room is horrible to a point that if I listen (not often mostly vinyls) iPhone source (lossless) through Tubes HiFi I have to crank up HiFI and lower the signal from iPhone to get better low frequencies.

[bradpierce]

SPLnFFT is the meter I use. Others are JL Audio, UE SPL. You can do a search for SPL, FFT in the app store.

[carlosoliveira-rcxt]

At what distance was the 83dB measured? Am I to assume this was approximately 10 to 12 feet?

[Atheistic]

My iPhone and the NIOSH app tells me I listen at 70dB. 83 is loud!

[gokulsalvadi]

Thank you very much for all these information.
After treating the room as good as possible, having a room correction system in place (having correction EQ on master bus) will do any good? How scientific they are?

Thank you.

[buttonman]

That is something I never considered before even though I treat my room

[sparecordingstudios]

Hhm..
Thank you so much.
That was my bigest problem to match listening volume and room, so i thank you very much

[markp]

Also...great great channel. Love it. Thank you.

[rolandrohde]

83db is considered average? I'd say that's bloody loud, and listening at somewhere in the 85db range for longer periods is known to cause permanent hearing damage...

[Quetzalcoatl]

One problem thou, mobile Apps are 99% wrong about the SPL level. So don't use an SPL meter on a phone ...

[danpeaslee]

Is this applicable to a live reinforcement system? Cheers!

[nikolatesla]

83 dB using what weighting? I presume you're using A-weighting, which is not representative of the total sonic energy in the room. A broad spectrum signal measuring 83 dBA will typically measure 20 dB higher unweighted.

[lindsaywebb]

Are you talking about the effect of loudness contours here? I was lead to believe that from a physics perspective, you can’t escape room problems or impact room acoustics through manipulation of spl’s but of course the perception changes....us being humans and all