Fear of volume control

A unit called a phon is used to describe human hearing numerically. When phon curves are displayed on a decibel - frequency graph, the curve is ’U" shaped. The higher the decibel level the more the phon curve flattens out.

At very low volume levels we are more inclined to hear only midrange frequencies and not very low or very high frequencies. As the volume increases our hearing changes and we start perceiving low and high frequencies also.

Hearing | Physics (lumenlearning.com)

@sns

You touch on a very interesting topic. Any complex (multiple frequency) sound, whether it be conversation, music or birds chirping outside; a change the decibel level results in a change of content of the sound we hear. In short a song at 81db is not the same song at 90db. Our brains do a good job at hiding that from us, for very good reason.

You altering the volume for different songs means you are, perhaps only subconsciously, aware of a change in content as you change volume and actually “tuning” the content of the material to what sounds best to you.

I’m grossly oversimplifying, but we do more than alter the volume level when we change volume. From the perspective of human hearing, we also change the content of what we hear.

To your point, yes volume control is a real biggie.