I’ve found that the constant adjustment of volume is absolutely essential to my listening sessions, because every song and it’s delivery as a recorded track is different - some begin very softly to explode into incredibly loud and dynamic highs, others maintain a steady output all the way through; some songs are intended to be played loud and brash, while others are so nuanced, they are sung like a whisper, as in Inger Marie Gundersen’s ‘Sebastians waltz’. The range of adjustment I make between those two may be as much as ten decibels. Tracks have differently recorded volume levels - I cannot listen to ‘bohemian rhapsody’ at the same level I listen to Tori Amos’ ‘icicle’; and I generally listen to almost all classical music at a higher level than most other genres. For the full impact of its performance, I listen to tchaikovsky’s violin in D by Perlman and Ormandy at about the same level as I do with ‘bohemian rhapsody’. Occasionally, I even adjust the volume between tracks on the same album, sometimes up or down by just a decibel. The starting track of ‘Friday night in San Francisco’ has to be heard at a higher volume level, but it starts much more gently, so that balance has to found at the very beginning of the track. I guess what I am trying to say is that the realistic experience of each and every track I play is so very determined by volume control.
In friendship - kevin.