Does loudness play a part in your appreciation?

@ejr1953

+1...  52 for me.

I used to attend a conference that had a big name band every year... Sheryl Crow, Steve Miller... etc. I would also occasionally go to concerts... for instance Pat Metheny. Not only too loud, but the equalization typically tipped to far into the high end. I always ended with napkins stuffed in my ears... and that wasn’t enough. Often the sound system had so much high frequency hash from excessive gain in it that that would send me out of the concert hall. I stopped going altogether. 
 

I much prefer to listen at home. Much better sound system...categorically and not too loud. Much more enjoyable. Also, not being among a bunch of rowdy noisy people.

Then to my chagrin after 10 years of attending the Oregon Symphony they installed a multimillion dollar DSP system to make it sound better and screwed up the beautiful acoustic sound... hardening the violins, raising volume of the bass, and positioning the sound of the drums at the back of the symphony hall among the listeners. It crossed my eyes to listen to what they had done. So it goes. 

@richardbrand 

I took the approach that volume should be carefully adjusted for classical music to match the live experience... and that perhaps that was also the correct volume for other music.

I had season tickets to the symphony for a decade, 7th row center. So several times I would go to the symphony and listen specific for the cues and pieces of music that were good for calibration. Something that started very quietly out of the silence and then noting the crescendos. 

I found this useful for classical music. Of course the loudness varies from recording to recording, so there is not set place on the volume control. But I found this volume was often louder than I wanted listen day to day on other music. Not that it sounded bad, just louder than I wanted. 

@jsalerno277 

+1

I had season tickets to the symphony for over ten years, 7th row center. I agree, sound levels of 70 - 90 were most common with crescendos well over a hundred. 

Very funny. High volume is 90+db.

I remember when in my early twenties hanging out at a high end audio store with the two salesmen while cranking their demo system. We chuckling and slapping each other on the back when we were able to see the spl meter hit 120db with their Klipschorns. That’s loud. Sounded terrible. The noise floor was probably 95db. 

More than once, at that age, young and stupid. The mark of a good system was it could crank over 100db. Usually not sounding good at all, because of the incredibly high noise floor and tremendous distortion. 

These days 65 to 75db is my normal volume. Although once in a great while it is fun to crank it to 85db on some old punchy rock and roll. Fortunately my system sound great at either level. Some youngsters came over to listen to my system and had it cranked over 95... sounded great... as I was quickly vacating the room.