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The Low Volume Loudness Dilemma

I love the power and detail of music played at what I call "Actual instrument volume" which is pretty loud and dominating. 

I like music in the background when I'm reading or entertaining. The problem is that the fullness and richness is thin to gone at low volume. This seems to be the case no matter how much a system costs. I listened to a Burmester rig driving a set of Wilson Alexx V speakers in a perfectly tuned listening room with cabling that costs more than my Lexus and the "missing music" at low volume problem was there too. $350,000 in gear couldn't fix it. 

I did the unthinkable - I bought a DBX 2231 equalizer off of eBay for a couple hundred bucks and messed around with the sound curve. Viola! "Loudness"!  I know this is sacrilege and may cause excommunication by the purist class but I am able to get full rich sound at low levels. The Eq also compensates for the anomalies in my listening area (large great room with other rooms connected to it.)

I don't have the square footage or budget to build a proper dedicated listening room with all the sound management treatments so I'm "making due" with what I do have. 

Does anybody have some guidance or constructive thoughts on how to get full rich music at low SPLs? 

yesiam_a_pirate

Showing 1 response by bruce19

bruce19
296 posts
 

For you Roonies out there right now Roon’s PEQ feature can be used to build an EQ curve based on the Fletcher Munson curve (see Wikipedia) for a specific end point volume level. I used a free app on my phone (Sound Tools) to determine I wanted one for a 60 db volume level. I build an approximation of the curve using Roon’s PEQ features and WOW. It sounded great. I have put in a feature request to the folks at Roon for them to consider offering this in a bit more user friendly fashion where you just enter you desired listening room sound level and it automatically generates the appropriate curve, then you save it as an EQ for use as desired. Hope they do it.

PS- Another solution for anyone with a RME ADI2 dac, there is a built in loudness function.

 

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