Which Component Has the Greatest Affect on Low-Level Listening


I'm looking to get out of HT 5.1 and go strictly to 2 ch.  I generally have music playing all day, often just sitting done to listen to certain tracks.  

I've read that "some" speakers don't sound "good" until high listening level, and also an integrated such the Luxman 505 don't sound good at low levels (is that the reason they include loudness?).

Which component, the amp or speaker, has the greatest impact on low level listening quality?
bgm1911

Showing 2 responses by audio2design

No component, except one that includes loudness or tone controls.

Speaker response changes a bit with volume, but any competent speaker will not change even remotely enough to compensate for how much the response of your ear changes with volume.  If your amplifier has high distortion at low volume, you could loose some detail at low volume. Could happen with a pre, but unlikely.

It's your ears/brain that are changing and they are changing by a large amount. Only way to compensate is to change the response of your system.   This is one of the problems in audio. Different listening levels all present a much different balance of frequencies.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kmuw.org%2Fpost%2Floudness-and-fletcher-mu...


There is nothing artificial about compensating for loudness contours.  Not compensating could be argued to be the most unnatural wrt the original.