Why is music so much better LOUD?

[DaveLaPorte53]

I like to feel the music, and there’s more to feel with Quad

 

[quicksrt]

Loud music sounds more like live music. I also can’t stand clipping or crackle from an overdriven speaker coil.

But something like a killer guitar lead or rhythm over a hot drummer just sounds amazing loud. I always liked how The Rolling Stones knew how to crank it up loud and perfect at their concerts and not overdo it. I like to play the track “Star Star” from the live album Love You Live at a rather healthy volume and it just cooks. Good demo material if it don’t get you evicted.

 

[ssully]

It seems to be universal. When you hear a great tune, you want to CRANK IT UP! I listen a lot in the car, and many times I've gone somewhere, parked, done my thing then got back in the car and the tunes come on and they're blasting and I think "Man, that was loud", but when I got out of the car it didn't seem that way to me. No wonder why I can't hear like I used to.

But really, all through my years most everyone I've known has loved to crank up their tunes. It's the same music, the same song, but why does it sound so much better LOUD? And why does it turn out that it's not good for you. Another one of life's little bite backs!

Comments?

View attachment 47071

Psychoacoustics.

 

[Sal1950]

It reveals more of the inner details of the composition.
But too loud is very dangerous to your hearing.
Please cherish your hearing, once damaged it never gets better again.
Take this from a 70 yo rocker who abused his ears for tooooo long a time.

 

[MidiMagic]

Also watch infrasonic sound (below 15 Hz). It can be very painful for some people.

 

[Philip Spinner]

Also watch infrasonic sound (below 15 Hz). It can be very painful for some people.

Yea like live fireworks. Recent shows I've seen have been a little uncomfortable to my ears.

 

[ashr1565]

Cheese and crackers, folks. Facts matter. : - )

Feelings are subjective, but at the same time still relevant. Let's inject a little Science into the discussion.
Google the "Fletcher Munson" curve. Your hearing (and air, the liquid medium sound travels in-it, through evolution-shaped the way our ears evolved) is rolled off at both extremes (a "frowny face" on a graphic EQ) and is most sensitive (until you kill it by listening at 165dB for decades on end) at the center frequency range of around 1Khz. That's the neighborhood in which the Human voice resides. (It's also why most folks who have EQ's will default to the "smiley face" settings.) The more you turn the volume up, the more of the extremes (resultant harmonics in the natural series for highs) and subharmonics (the fundamentals upon which all Western Music is based) become more easily perceptible. Midrange is the easiest to reproduce (as evidenced in whizzer cone/transistor radio speakers) but it's also where our ears hear the lack of "whizzer cone" accuracy the most easily. Midrange isn't "hard" to create, it's just hard to create accurately because our ears will hear "bad things" when they "squawk". (Horns are particularly bad about this.) But highs and lows both are harder to hear and harder to create outright. If you don't get the middle right, listener fatigue gets to be "a thing" relatively quickly. But without clean extended highs (and lows) it lacks immediacy and visceral impact. None of its unimportant, but the bottom octave is the most expensive to get right and that pretty much requires dedicated subwoofers (STEREO pairs, no thanks to 80s disinformation marketing). Above about 10Khz, fundamentals become increasingly hard to hear. But if you take care of your hearing you should still be able to discern 16Khz as a pitch (or at least a tickle) in your ears. Those old enough to remember 17Khz squealing of CRT TV flyback transformers know what I'm talking about. As a kid, I used to hear certain pre-PIR detector department security systems in department stores squeal in ways that if you turned your head, your head would go in and out of phase with your physical location in the store. If you moved it would come and go. These things are "old hat" to Musicians (I'm a retired Musician/Teacher), and a little less "intuitive" to non-Musicians. But compression and other issues aren't as "insidious" to Music as the larger phenomenon that all Music is being relegated to "auditory wallpaper" status. People are no longer sitting and focusing on a recorded performance (with real dynamics LOUD and soft) because they no longer have time to dedicate to that "intellectual" (but NOT passive, it's just physically passive) pursuit. We are the keepers of that tradition. Loud isn't good just because it's loud. The Human nervous system CRAVES diversity of stimulus. The same thing repetitively inflicted on the Human Nervous system will cause our nervous system to "null it out" over time. True for smells (nose-blindness), true for visual stimulus (too many examples to cite here), and definitely true for hearing. It's not Rocket Science unless you dig into it, and then it can be. But most of us have the intuition to figure out we know why it's the way it is, just from our "life experience". Have a great weekend, everybody...

That's the smartest thing I've ever read and makes such perfect sense. I am 21 and 17KHz will register with me, but it's quieter than 16KHz or 15KHz - have I screwed my hearing up?

Thanks for the enlightenment, though. This will probably inform a lot of listening decisions going forward for me!

 

[ar surround]

That's the smartest thing I've ever read and makes such perfect sense. I am 21 and 17KHz will register with me, but it's quieter than 16KHz or 15KHz - have I screwed my hearing up?

Thanks for the enlightenment, though. This will probably inform a lot of listening decisions going forward for me!

I found this:

https://decibelhearing.com/high-frequency-hearing-loss/
It says that most people over the age of 18 cannot hear 17,400 Hz.

This old fart? I can still hear the 8000Hz tone but not the 12,000Hz.

[Edit: Test shows that I can still hear 11kHz, but it is quieter than 10kHz]

 

[GarryH]

Basically it's easier to be impressed by a recording that is louder than the last one you heard on your system; more power, more punch. Put simply, that's what started the "loudness wars". You will know this is true in Shuffle mode, by your reaction to hearing a record mastered in the 80s when it pops up between recent releases.

In the digital realm, the average loudness has crept up from -20LUFS* (which left lots of headroom for transients and volume variation) to -5LUFS! Think about that. Barely 5dB left for any variation. There were initial attempts to standardise loudness for music releases, in the same way that is still mandatory for cinema sound.

To compete for loudness, Mastering Engineers are now expected to use severe compression and limiting to achieve this, not possible before sophisticated digital analysis and multi-band manipulation. In good hands, this can be somewhat transparent, but I have many albums of percussion-heavy music that have been utterly destroyed in mastering, and are unlistenable. I find it novel that original vinyl releases can have vastly more dynamic range than so-called Remastered (i.e. more compressed) versions released years later. We know that severe compression and multi-band limiting can be very fatiguing for the listener; a perfect example is the wall-of-noise that is Commercial FM radio.

I'll admit I love compression. It can bring up background detail that might otherwise be lost. However the current practices of squashing the life out of music has essentially forever destroyed the joy of trying to represent the dynamic range and experience of live performance.

*Loudness Unit (relative to) Full Scale

 

[kap'n krunch]

This takes me back to my recording school... (been kinda nostalgic lately I guess)
I don't listen to music very loud, I just have a decent (>100 w / channel) amp...as opposed to when I had my Technics 30w receiver and I had to crank it to hear a decent signal...

Except for when I watch movies and like to feel the bass, music that is not SQUASHED WITH LIMITING is a treat and I can hear all the frequencies at a decent volume, <65 dB in my Marantz receiver...

EDIT: so happy since October cause we moved to a detached house and I CAN CRANK IT..meaning I don't have to use my bass management at -12dB, but it still doesn't go above 65dB in the volume pot...

 

[Arconada]

It has to do with the hearing threshold, the volume below which a person can't hear anything. The graph shows that at minimum volume for an average person to be able to hear something at 20 Hz the volume has to be about 90 dB higher than at a 1000 Hz. Or the other way around, if you listen to music at a polite level, you will not be able to hear the bass frequencies because they are below the hearing threshold. So raising the volume causes the inaudible frequencies to become audible, and start to add to the musical experience. In other words, it sounds better.

 

[Quad Linda]

Loudness or contour settings attempt to compensate for this.

The Loudness comes on when you put the top down in my convertible. Conversely, it turns off when the top closes. This is the only system where I employ Loudness.

 

[hobie1dog]

You need to FEEL the music. It needs to be loud to do that.

 

[par4ken]

Cerwin Vega used to advertise "Loud Is Beautiful If It's Clean". Bi-amping is one way to get loud but clean music. So many people equate distorted clipped audio with loudness. Even live music when amplified to ridiculous levels no longer sounds clean! And don't get me started yet again about the sound of modern brickwalled digital audio sources!

 

[marpow]

I had my ear check and cleaning two weeks ago. I do that annually and next week I get my annual hearing test, will be my 3rd one and pretty sure my baseline is established, with the high frequency hearing loss.
I have tinitus in my right ear, high pitch sound, my doctor says it is the brain trying to compensate one ears defeciantcie compared to the other which causes the ringing sound.
I have years of loud music behind me, but I think even more harmful was the daily construction hearing abuse.
After reading this thread I think I will at least ask the question next week of hearing aid.
I actually don't have a problem hearing, I hear pretty good, but the ringing in my right ear I don't like.
I have a little ear plug carrier on my key chain that i can use at will in case I forget.

 

[esimms86]

I had my ear check and cleaning two weeks ago. I do that annually and next week I get my annual hearing test, will be my 3rd one and pretty sure my baseline is established, with the high frequency hearing loss.
I have tinitus in my right ear, high pitch sound, my doctor says it is the brain trying to compensate one ears defeciantcie compared to the other which causes the ringing sound.
I have years of loud music behind me, but I think even more harmful was the daily construction hearing abuse.
After reading this thread I think I will at least ask the question next week of hearing aid.
I actually don't have a problem hearing, I hear pretty good, but the ringing in my right ear I don't like.
I have a little ear plug carrier on my key chain that i can use at will in case I forget.

I like how you spell “difficiency” like “defecate;” gave me a chuckle(not that there’s anything really funny about a hearing difficiency).

Your usual audiologist is only concerned that you can hear in the speech related frequencies which, of course, is a much lower bar compared to the frequency range for music. You don’t appear to have any trouble with listening to speech.

Tinnitus is neurologic and, unfortunately, there’s not a lot that can be done for that.

My wife would probably be happy if I had my ears cleaned out everyday.

 

[windhoek]

One thing to watch out for is hyperacusis. If you accidentally clang a cup and a plate together or something like that that causes a particular frequency to jump out at a certain volume and it hurts your ears, then that could hyperacusis. I can't say for sure whether I have it but anytime I'm doing the dishes and plates clang together it seems to send a shooting pain into my ears, especially, I think, my left ear. There are other things that can trigger it, like hearing a high-pitched blast from an oboe or worse, a piccolo.

 

[Clint Eastwood]

I like how you spell “difficiency” like “defecate;” gave me a chuckle(not that there’s anything really funny about a hearing difficiency).

Your usual audiologist is only concerned that you can hear in the speech related frequencies which, of course, is a much lower bar compared to the frequency range for music. You don’t appear to have any trouble with listening to speech.

Tinnitus is neurologic and, unfortunately, there’s not a lot that can be done for that.

My wife would probably be happy if I had my ears cleaned out everyday.

I had gone to a local business to see about getting my sister new hearing aids....the guy that owns this shop isn't an audiologist...he is much better...I was fascinated listening to him discuss some cutting aid approaches to hearing devices over the conventional hearing aids of past...I mentioned tinnitus and all the internet "remedies" that claim to cure it...and he informed me that there was a way to make it a non factor...he has tinnitus and it no longer bothers him...with these newer over the ear hearing "aids"...you can mask the tinnitus signal....I spent 90 minutes with him....months ago....he is an older guy that is retired and got involved with hearing devices because of his own problems....

 

[mlrocker]

there's a balance to be achieved between enjoyment and stimulation. Louder delivers more stimulation to the brain, but one has to also be aware of ear fatigue, wear and tear.

 

[marpow]

One thing to watch out for is hyperacusis. If you accidentally clang a cup and a plate together or something like that that causes a particular frequency to jump out at a certain volume and it hurts your ears, then that could hyperacusis. I can't say for sure whether I have it but anytime I'm doing the dishes and plates clang together it seems to send a shooting pain into my ears, especially, I think, my left ear. There are other things that can trigger it, like hearing a high-pitched blast from an oboe or worse, a piccolo.

Absolutely Derek, and good to hear from you.
In construction, sometimes like hitting metal hammer to metal iron for breaking concrete there is a ping sound that just max vibrates my ears.