I find my system completely satisfying at 70 - 80 or below. Additionally safety standards are guidance and I would prefer to be no where near the limits, they easily could be too high as well as low. I would not want to put my hearing in jeopardy. Also, standards virtually never go up they go down as more studies come in and more folks with compromised hearing are sampled. I love the way some folks see conspiracies everywhere. Common sense… a worthwhile thing to have.
300B SET Amp driving Wilson Sabrinas
Interesting experience to share.
In my home system I have a pair of Wilson Sabrina speakers normally driven by a Modwright KWA 150SE (Special Edition). On a lark, I replaced the Modwright with an Elekit 8600S 300B amp (Lundahl output transformers and Mundorf Supreme output capacitors) I had in another system.
The surprise, not only did the Elekit drive the Sabrinas very well (improved clarity and tonality), but at the same volume with the same input level as the Modwright! Using a passive preamp, when I set the volume knob on the preamp to the same point for both the Modwright and the Elekit it results in essentially the same volume from the speakers.
Admittedly I listen at moderate levels (SPL rarely exceeds 70dBA), but the sensitivity of the Sabrinas is only 88 dB. Who would have thought!!
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@ghdprentice Experience tells you what is acceptable and what is not. Ears ringing is never acceptable. That is natures way of warning you, you have gone to far. Most of us music lover, concert goer types have made the mistake of going to a concert without hearing protection that turned out to be too loud and our ears rang for a day or two. Peter Gabriel did that to me back in 1982. I have carried hearing protection with me ever since. That concert had to be in the 110 dB range. I am very use to 95 dB and will not tolerate much louder before the hearing protection goes in. You do not want to get close to ear ringing levels. Etymotic makes musician hearing protection plugs that are excellent once you get your ears use to them. They attenuate sound without changing the frequency balance. IMHO at 70 - 80 dB you can't even do string quartets justice and you are missing a lot of the joy in music. Get an SPL meter so you have a reference, they are not very expensive at all and $50 gets you a very serviceable one. If your system is balanced at 80 dB it will not be comfortable at 90 dB and this is the main reason people shy away from volume. The analog folks have no good way to deal with it, but with digital signal processing you can make a system balanced at any volume by adjusting bass and treble levels to mirror Fletcher Munson curves. 95 dB becomes perfectly comfortable for anyone not trying to hold a conversation.
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@mijostyn -- What’s the weighting used relative to your SPL-measurements? A question aimed at everyone, really, just to get a bearing. Many if not most may use A-weighting "default," but with B or C-weighting and substantially less LF-attenuation here the dB numbers will of course be somewhat higher. |
I was at a small venue with a small gig last night. I was consistently measuring 88 to 90db and it was quite enjoyable. Throw a drummer in there and all 60db Diana Krall fans would have gone deaf in a hurry. The 3 guys who are fairly advanced in age should all be totally deaf too by now. It in indeed a "conspiracy" (facepalm).
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