How loud do you listen to your system

listen between 50db to 80db, usually as background around 55 or 60db.

Do these apps need calibrating?
I just installed ā€œsound meterā€ from the Play Store and itā€™s giving a peak reading of 58dB in the kitchen - no appliances on and just background noise from the wind and a tv in a nearby room.

The correct answer is yes, of course. However they do allow a comparative between rooms or equipment in your own home, if not directly here on the internet.

Whilst holding my iphone at arms length running db app, it registered a peak of 70 db just rustling my beard !

Unless the exact position relative to the wall behind the speaker may be affecting bass response or room modes, for example.

Or if the millimetre move of one or both speakers affect the balance between the two speakers, making it snap into focus.

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Interesting consideration, but Iā€™m not sure how valid unless you keep your room very tightly controlled in temperature, say +/- only a fraction of a degree, given that the wavelength of sound changes by about 0.17% per degree C, which is 1.7mm per metre per degree. Many, if not most, central heating systems have much wider hysteresis, varying by maybe 2 or 3 degrees.

I used to listen between 100-110dB. :scream: I was a rock musician so thatā€™s the only level that seemed alive. We used to practice in my small dining room with drums and two Marshall stacks and a bass rig. It was probably 120dB for an hour and a half. Those cymbal crashes were brutal.

Iā€™m amazed that Iā€™m not completely deaf now. In fact my hearing is quite good. But I have learned to listen at lower levels now. At about 80-85dB with it creeping up as the night wears on, to about 95dB at the end.

Hey you only live once.

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Yes, and people can only go deaf once! :slightly_frowning_face:

Or hopefully never, of course.

I used to play the drums.

And when I was 17 I lay my floorstanders on their sides facing one another and lay down between them listening to Electric Ladyland very loud.

And I would go to Motƶrhead, Iggy Pop, the Boomtown Rats, etc. at Bā€™ham Odean and sit in the bass bins for fun.

Perhaps thatā€™s why I donā€™t like loud music nowadays.

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Thatā€™s statistics for you. The other 99% are stone deaf and donā€™t post on hifi forumsā€¦

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  1. My system goes to 11.
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I have sympathetic tinnitus (iā€™m sure 15 years of the screeching Mita subway line in Tokyo is the culprit but Iā€™ll never know for sure) so it rings with sound at certain frequencies. For this reason going loud for long is a painful experience.

Most people experience ringing after a concert. I get it from twenty minutes at 70db.

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