Full detailed sound at 30 - 40 - 50 dB


I love the nuance you can hear when listening to music at loud volumes, but unless no one is home, it’s not considerate or feasible to listen at such high volumes. Plus I just had a baby so everyone is always home and volume levels are limited to 40ish dBs. 

Any recommendations for getting the most detail at these volumes? Additional gear or recommended integrated amps?

My NAD 7175PE has a loudness button which boosts the treble and bass a little, and that certainly helps things in the Kitchen. 

My living room amp is a Rega Brio-R which doesn’t have any tone controls. 

Any thoughts? Thanks!
leemaze
Get a Schiit Loki EQ gizmo…I have one and it’s really useful for exactly what you describe, and pretty much mainly what I use mine for when needed during quieter late night listening. It’s also relatively inexpensive for a well made thing. Note I have very efficient horn loaded speakers and the phenomena of low volume frequency perception is still a thing, although perhaps to a lessor degree than with other designs.

I second wolf_garcia’s suggestion; the Schiit Loki Mini would work really well as a "loudness" switch. Set the desired attenuation/gain for each tone control level for quiet listening and then you can use the bypass switch to go "straight wire" when you’re listening at typical volume levels. Only drawback is that with the Brio there isn’t a tape monitor feature so you’d be limited to using the Loki for only one component; or one component at a time. :-)

Regards,

Tom

PS: Open back headphones are also a good solution. It's what I used when we had a baby in the house.

30,40, and 50db are pretty quiet. I bet many listening rooms have at 30db of background noise before music has started playing.  I listen at pretty low levels and it wasn’t until I got a tube based high efficiency setup before I could truly enjoy music at lower listening levels.  It made a world of difference.