Does loudness play a part in your appreciation?

I think @hilde45’s post is the most enlightening in this thread. All this discussion of levels has been divorced from the reality of live music, which, IMO, is what we all should strive to emulate. And the idea of listening to anything but the softest passages at 75dB, whether A or C weighted, just can’t emulate live. 

I have a concept, which I didn’t develop on my own but read somewhere, that for every piece of recorded music there’s an optimal listening volume. Therefore, I find myself adjusting the level for just about every record or file. And generally, when I measure to satisfy my curiosity, I find the peaks usually range from 92 to 96dB-C, irrespective of genre. Interestingly, these levels are much softer than live music.  This also raises the question of the weighting we’re all using to measure the sound—A or C—and whether we’re reading peaks or average levels. Without knowing the answers, the numbers we’re quoting aren’t comparable. 

Richard, distortion is likely an issue for lots of people, especially those who use traditional dynamic speakers. That’s one reason I’ve mostly been attracted to planars, either Magnepans or, for the least 15 years, Quad 63s. I would think horns would also exhibit low distortion, but my experience with them is very limited. In any event, it seems possible that some of the folks who are listening at what seem to be low levels do so because it sounds better to them due to increased distortion at higher levels. Just a hypothesis.