What is the sound level of Your Listening Room?

29db in main listening room.  

It’s a good question

Im sitting in an outdoor screened in room at the moment. The cicadas in my outside room were at 85db earlier this week so no music out there until that passes. Currently it’s dusk and at 42 with overhead fan on.

Mine is in the low 20’s. I’ll have to give it a try at night. The most important component to my system is my listening room. While in close proximity to a city, three sides are underground with no local traffic. I make sure the air conditioner / heater does not come on… it is controlled by my iPhone… so if it comes on I can turn it off without getting up.
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The listening area is large and irregular making it an incredibly good room. My audio guy says it is one of the two best he has ever heard… and in over thirty years he has heard a lot… many very expensive custom made for high end audio… better to be lucky than good… I sure was.

In answer to your question… for quiet… underground. For acoustic, large and irregular (mine is about 32 x 42.. two offset rectangles).

If it gets too quiet it does get spooky. You can hear the little timers and equipment switching as it comes online. Amazing how loud relays cases warming up and expanding. Junior (the rabbit) calms down.. He's happy to see me.

Trains going by get's me.. Rumble, a heavy semi without air ride too, I hate those.. 1/2 mile of NOISE in every direction.. Delta Pete will transfer noise via ground rumble for a mile.. Trains running on pylons in the delta aren't quiet on the neighbors.. 50 + years it's like a lullaby to me now..

Regards..

i have a room built on concrete, inside another room, inside a barn, 75 feet from my home, in the middle of 5 acres, in the mountains, away from any urban activity.

so zero outside ambient noise comes in. no mechanical systems in the structure to source noise.

my HVAC has it’s air box isolated by rubber and it’s in the attic not above my listening room. there are -3- 90 degree turns in the air vents to the air output. twin outputs and twin returns for high volume, low flow zero noise. the heat exchanger is outside on the opposite side of the barn with three inside walls between it and my room.

when the HVAC cycles on i can hear a soft relay when the music is not playing. that is rare.

it’s quiet. spooky quiet. my signal path gear has very low self noise.

and the inverse is also good; i can go completely crazy at high SPL's and no one can hear it outside the barn.

@millercarbon That is good to hear. I may be pouring the walls to my addition to save me from buying lumber!

I moved my room into a concrete bunker in the basement. Within a few seconds the beating of my heart is bugging me, and a few minutes later the blood coursing through my ears is unbearable. I tried meditation to stop my heartbeat, but it was just no use. So now it is a sensory deprivation chamber so effective it takes only about 20 minutes for the hallucinations to kick in.

At night when no car pass by 20 Db...With a car passing by at 20 feet of my house add around 10 Db...More for a truck and way more for a motorcycle...

At day when no car pass by and my ionizers are off; 25 Db

With my 2 ionizeers working: 30 Db....

My audio room is on the second floor, not near the kitchen appliance for sure....

It feel "relatively" silent.... If not for some traffic in day time few cars each 5 minute relatively to the hour of the day....I am used to and it is not bothering me but any noise decrease the  audio quality....


The only way to compensate is some isolation of the room.... But mostly increasing the S.Q. with ACTIVE room controls...

My last discovery is how to use Helmholtz diffusor engines....The gained level of details i gain with these is staggering and compensate for the 10 DB in excess with the traffic....

@hilde45  Wow, 18! I haven't measured mine when there was snow on the ground or while it was snowing. I'm sure it makes a difference. I hear so much more detail and my sound stage is wider when my room is at 28 at 1:00 a.m.. I am guessing there are some power grid benefits at that time as well.

Such a great question! My basement listening level when the house is quiet is about 38 db. I'm in Denver but not in the city, but pretty dense. We have a small place in the mountains and I did an SPL (above ground) there just to see what it was -- 18 db! There may have been snow on the ground, I'm not sure, but what a striking difference.