How loud is too loud

erik_squires,

I was curious so I just looked at the owner's manual for Yamaha 301/501/701 on their website to see what they say about it. From your previous post, I got the idea that, after setting volume somewhere relatively high, engaging "loudness" decreases volume while somehow increasing (or relatively not decreasing) middle range.

However, they say "Enjoy natural sound even at low volume by lowering the mid-range sound level and compensating for human ears' loss of sensitivity to high- and low- frequency ranges at low volume."

If I am getting it all right, your description would be opposite from theirs although, at least to me, yours seems more logical. Not that I have any deeper knowledge of these things. What do you think?

Also, their explanation leaves room for more explanation, but they left it for some other owner's manual, I guess.

https://usa.yamaha.com/files/download/other_assets/8/332208/A-S701_S501_S301_om_U.pdf

erik_squires,

I wonder if current batch of Yamaha integrateds (501, 701) has something similar to what you are describing Denon as. A friend of mine has one and it does exactly that, it gets quieter when you engage "loudness" which is actually not a usual old-fashioned button, but a knob with a certain range. It has not worked really well for me so far, to say the least, but I could not believe some fine engineers would put it there if it did not work at all. Next time, I will try making it louder and then using loudness the way you mentioned although, I admit, it seems a bit counterintuitive to me. We will see, I mean...hear.

Just a little addendum to roberjerman's explanation. "Loudness" switch was pretty much ubiquitous on 1970s-1980s amplifiers/receivers. However, these days Luxman and Accuphase still include "Loudness" on, at least, their integrated amplifiers. It works.