How loud is loud?

audioguy

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This past Saturday evening, we attended a concert at a local amphitheater. We were probably 400 to 600 feet from the stage and it was ear crushing loud, particularly the bass/drums. I guessed at the db level (my guess was 110 plus at peaks) and I was wrong. In an open amphitheater and at that distance, we could all feel the bass pounding our chest. At least according to the RTA app on my iPhone, the loudest peak was 99.5 db and it was, as you might guess, in the low bass. I can not image what it would have actually sounded like at 110db since, based upon what I have read, each 10db increment sounds twice as loud.

As an aside, when one of the vocalists (Michael W. Smith) started one song just playing the guitar, the lyrics to his song were perfectly clear. Once the bass started, neither I nor any of the the others in our party could understand a single word he sung. That was also true of the other soloists as well. So what's the point?
 

JackD201

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Fellow member fld, gave me a set of Etymotic plugs that bring down in-ear SPL by 12dB. Cool thing is that the sound remains essentially flat just softer. I always bring them with me if I expect to be confronted with a big stack. Going deaf is one of my greatest fears.
 

DWR

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99.5 dB at a distance of 400-600 ft from the stage is an incredible amount of energy, I'll bet you could feel the bass. But like you said if it isn't balanced with the rest of the music, what is the point.
 

Ethan Winer

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the loudest peak was 99.5 db

Yes, that's plenty loud. A few years ago, after reading some HT people at AVS bragging about their 110 dB and higher SPL levels I decided to test it for myself. I put my SPL meter where I listen, and played a good sounding concert DVD as loud as I could stand. The SPL meter read around 100 dB C weighted. I mention "good sounding" DVD because some music sounds irritating and harsh even at softer volumes. This DVD sounds great when cranked, so I figured it would serve as a best-case test.

--Ethan
 

DWR

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I have done about the same thing as Ethan, using the Eagles Farewell Tour bluray it has some very well recorded tracks Hotel California being one of them. I kept turning the volume up until I reached the point where any louder was uncomfortable. The spl meter read 101dB C weighted also. That was at the listening position 11' from the main speakers.
 

Mark (Basspig) Weiss

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You Ain't Seen Nuthin'!

Oh boy, I can't stop laughing at this thread! 99dB is LOUD? Are you guys serious? :confused:
When I first got my Bassmaxx ZR18 woofers installed in June 2006, I put on a Korean pop tune that has some really low bass and took my CEL 201-1 sound level meter for a walk to the end of the road. I'm in a rural area with not a lot of population and the houses are hundreds of feet apart.. I walked about 1/4 mile down the road and took a reading.. every time the lowest (24Hz) bass note played, the SPL was 97dB and I could feel the pressure on my ears in much the same way as when one of those big army helicopters flies low overhead. When you consider that the sound system is in the cellar and I have concrete walls 2.4' thick in some places, it puts things into perspective. That experience scare the heck out of me, because I didn't realize that the low bass carried that far, that loud. My meter only goes up to 140dB, so I can't make any meaningful near-field measurements. I guess the closest thing you could imagine would be those SPL competitions with auto sound systems, sitting in the front seat of Steve Meade's Chevy Tahoe.
For my, 100dB is 'background' listening levels. That's not to say that I'm completely crazy. I need those SPLs for reproducing my 24-bit fireworks recordings. For a realistic experience, the system has to achieve the full instantaneous SPL of an 8" mortar shell exploding just a few feet away, a jolt that stops the heart momentarily and leaves you with instant tinitus and temporary hearing loss after the first explosion. My crew and I were invited by Zambelli Fireworks to make a recording and video of their show, from the launch site, so we got to hear how loud it is, up close. Normally, we don't think of electronically reproducing those insane SPLs, but over here, we do. :D And Ethan can vouch for that, being the only other member on this forum that knows me personally.
So when I hear people complaining about a badly-mixed concert where the loudes SPL doesn't even break 100dB.. I can't stop laughing.. Even the Molley Hatchet concert that I covered 2 years ago was almost ten dB louder than that, granted in a small theater, and the members of the opener band were complaing THAT was too loud (this from a band who's slogan is "If it's too loud, you're too old.")
My comfortable listening level is around 133dB, when I'm just getting into the music (assuming pop/rock music that is mindless and thus is only enjoyable at rib crushing loudness).
For me, loud is beautiful if it's brief and part of the dynamics. I like using my dbx 4bx impact restoration to add pop to snare drums until they have that head-cracking intensity that I get when I fire my .38 S&W. Listening to some old Blood Sweat & Tears though this box has some pleasant surprises. Even listening to some of the hits from Dion & The Belmonts, transforms into something remarkable at louder than life SPLs. I first got the louder than life bug when I auditioned a pair of Cerwin-Vega 217Rs in a local hi-fi shop. The following year, one of my rich friends demonstrated his JBL Paragon and a stack of C-V speakers with over 800 watts in his livingroom. That set the course for me to obsess with achieving that and much more in later years.
I still listen to my Bridgeport Symphony recordings at the calibrated proper level, based on the SPL I measured in the concert hall when I made the recordings, and for Classical music, that's the only proper way to listen, but for rock, disco, and other pop music which lacks an cerebral value, you have to substitute the gutteral physical experience. Good bass is like good sex--it has to practically kill you in order to achieve that thrill. Bass is an extreme sport.
One downside of all this is that when I go to a concert (only because I record them), I'm always disappointed with the lack of body-enveloping sound. I auditioned the large pipe organ that Berj Zamkochian played in 1962 up in Hartford a couple summers ago, and was shocked at how anemic the pedal tones were, compared to the way I was accustomed to listening to organ recordings. The organist/music director was bragging about how the stained glass windows rattle on the 32' stops and he purposely demonstrated it, but I was hearing the refrain of that 1960s song, Is That All There Is?
I consider SPL to be the fourth dimension in audio. The quality of the sound must be there, but what good is it if it can't be at realistic levels?
I remember back in Jan 2007, the PSW folks had a subwoofer shootout in a night club in NYC.. Participants in the NYC subwoofer shootout (the one where the Bassmaxx woofers shook the high rise apartment across the street and triggered complaint calls to the EPA) used the Powersoft K10s and spectators report fantastic bass output. It takes enormous power to shake a high rise apartment building--particularly one that is across the street from the building where the sound is being generated. These folks are in a different league, with some stranger genres of 'music' and the emphasis being bass so strong it interferes with breathing. But I must admit, music is much more engrossing when it's a full-body experience. To achieve that, you need to go to at least 140dB and put in earplugs to prevent your eardrums from being torn up.
 

Robh3606

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Aug 24, 2010
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My comfortable listening level is around 133dB, when I'm just getting into the music (assuming pop/rock music that is mindless and thus is only enjoyable at rib crushing loudness).

Is that a typo?? If it's not your ears must be toast. What do you use to get that kind of SPL??

Rob:)
 

JackD201

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Mark, you won't be laughing when your most uttered sentence becomes "What did you say?" followed by "Speak up!".
 

amirm

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My loudest was at a private concert by Cheap Trick. It was an event put up by the conference host in a small night club a few years back. I went in with a colleague. I was standing right next to him and no matter how loud I would shout into his ear, and him into mine, we could not understand each other. We left 10 minutes later and my head felt like exploding and my ears half deaf for the moment. My voice was gone too after all the shouting. How the rest of the people sat through 2 hours of that is beyond me. Never measured it though.
 

RogerD

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"Good bass is like good sex--it has to practically kill you in order to achieve that thrill. Bass is an extreme sport."

I love good bass,but i must be missing something. I had a friend in California that had a pipe organ built into his house. Just a amazing experience,but it had nothing to do with the sound level. Also another friend with a 24 inch Hartley slot loaded into his house's crawl space,even though the bass would wash completely over you,excessive SPL's were never needed. Now with the Hartley a drum whack was like a gun shot,there again excessive loudness was never needed to be effective.

I currently have a stereo sub woofer with 2 16 inch drivers driven by a 250 watt amp and at moderately high levels it will literally shake the house. But I really enjoy bass that washes over me and is non directional. To each his own but 140db bass just doesn't sound appealing,no offense.
 

Mark (Basspig) Weiss

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Not a typo. I did say one hundred thirty-three decibels. Considering that 129 dB is where the bottom-most 'signal present' lamps on the power amps just start to flicker, that's the point where the system is just about idling.

I've had a number of people literally run out of here as I crank up the volume to levels well below where I like to listen. Some have complained of difficulty breathing, others of chest pain, some have gotten nauseous during my infrasound demonstrations.

My hearing is not great, but I credit my hearing survival with infrequent use of the sound system at these levels. Sometimes it only takes a minute or three to get my 'fix' and then I feel physically-exhausted and switch to some modern jazz and much lower levels. Also, I disdain music that tires the ears with limited dynamic range and relentless constant loudness. Lots of dynamic aperture, with periods of 'white space' or brief silence between loud percussive transients is less of a strain on my ears and much more enjoyable to listen to. I also have to keep my listening short, because the bass carries literally for miles. Now that I am aware of just how obnoxious it is, it is with a sense of sneakiness that I listen loud and brief, before people get so annoyed as to call the cops.

I can't figure out why people are so terrified of a little bodily vibration. Really, to me it is ecstacy. Put in some ear plugs and enjoy the pounding.. it's like a massage of sorts, only no part of the body goes untreated. :p

What am I running? For mid-bass, six Electro-Voice 180Bs, driven by a QSC Powerlight 6.0PFC. For sub bass below 20Hz, four Bassmaxx ZR18s, driven by another QSC Powerlight 6.0 PFC. All cabinetry is custom built. Mids and highs are three JBL E120s and three JBL 2403 Ellipticals, driven by three Hafler 500s, bridged mono, with upgraded power supplies. They can swing 350 volts peak to peak across an 8 ohm resistive dummy load, which is about 2,000 watts per speaker channel, so about 6,000 watts of dynamic headroom for the mids and tweets on very efficient drivers. About 16,500 watts of bi-amplified goodness (or, if you use the Richard Burwen rating method, it's the equivalent of about single 66,000 watt amplifier). I've an entire web site devoted to this madness, which has been an obsession since the '60s, and grew to collassal proportions due to some corruptive influences in the 70s.

My early hi-fi gear was all DiY tube stuff.. 8417s, push pull, etc.. in the early 60s, I didn't have the money for a really good output transformer, so I used a bunch of 6AS7s I had from surplus and played with OTL design ideas until I had something that could drive a loudspeaker directly (in that era, that would be my McMurdo Silver electro-dynamic 18" full range speaker). As the need for power grew, I moved to 6L6-Gs in push pull, and then 8417s. Then in the late 70s, I bought the Phase-Linear D-500 and started using pro-sound drivers. I went through my horn-loaded phase again, seeking the ultimate SPLs, but realized that wasn't going to give me ruler-flat frequency response and eventually settled on LLT box designs. I still am not finished, as I bought the Bassmaxx ZR18s, which are vaguely similar to TC Sounds LMS5400 woofers on steroids, and just installed them in cabinets built originally for Altec 3184s. The Bassmaxx need a much larger cabinet, about 38 cu ft, to reach their potential and that's a project on my drawing board when/if the crisis with my house is ever over with.

Back when I had my Olympic console hi-fi, which was made in 1950, had a 12" Emerson speaker, an AM-FM-Phono-Aux master amplifier with ten tubes, a record changer and a television, I found it's sound pleasing, with what sounded like fairly natural bass that was reasonably extended and not terribly colored. But over the years, like a drug addict, the needs for more powerful and earth-shaking bass increased, and so I set to work on "Tsar Bomba" my current sound system.

Another matter is that my room eats bass like a black hole. The system grew and grew, because of the standing waves that cancel most of the energy at my preferred listening position, which is now smack in the center of the room, due to how the layout with the theater setup worked out. Everywhere but the listener gets pummeled with bass. I used the brute force method to overcome much of that. Another project is to set up the back wall with plywood resonant bass traps tuned to 36Hz, one of the room modes. If I can nail that room problem, I would need 1/40th as much power in the lower bass region to get that feeling.

I realize that I am in rarified, if not nonexistent company. My closest proteges are probably the IASCA members who invest heavily in loud sound systems to enter competitions. My goal differs slightly in that I sought to achive high fidelity in addition to the SPL. After all, how realistic is a Saturn V rocket launch if you can't play it at lifelike volume levels?
 

Ethan Winer

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Just to clarify, because I've had this discussion with Mark before: Mark is talking about peak SPL, not average levels as the Radio Shack SPL meter displays. Though I will say that Mark's system plays very cleanly at levels louder than I can tolerate. And I can tolerate very loud. One time we played around with LF sine waves, I think 10 Hz or so. When Mark cranked the volume it was like a powerful fan 2 feet in front of me blowing right at me. It was quite amazing!

--Ethan
 

cjfrbw

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I use my flab-o-meter for bass. When the system can produce a nice standing vibration throughout my fatty parts (which are abundant) than I know I am close.
 

microstrip

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No problem: use air guns!

Air guns: used by the industry for oil and gas exploration. In times of dwindling resources the use of these air guns increased dramatically. They detect the sea bottom with the use of 250 db loud sound blasts which are sent down every 5 seconds - for hours! Hydrophones are picking up the echo, providing the industry with the information whether oil or gas would be available under the surface. 250 db (this is 3.2 million times louder than 120 db) marks the loudest noise ever produced by humans apart from dynamite.
 

microstrip

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Mark is talking about peak SPL, not average levels as the Radio Shack SPL meter displays.
--Ethan
Just one detail - I think the Radio Shack SPL displays both average and peak - it has a switch labeled slow/fast.
 

DonH50

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Loudest I have ever "heard":
1. An ELP concert measured 126 dB peaks at the front of the stage; I was three rows back. My ears rang for days.
2. 154 dB in a test chamber, with ear plugs, doing test sweeps. You could feel the pressure and it was not fun.
3. Working on an F-15 radar when another one took off from the next bay. No meter, but we were told ~140 dB on take off is what they had measured and stuck in the safety manual.
4. Years of hunting with a gun near my ear; not sure how loud but I know many people with significant hearing loss in their gun-side ear.
5. Routinely hit 100 - 120 dB peaks in my stereo store days, demo'ing and installing systems (why do so many equate "good" with "loud"?)
Explains the ringing in my ears...
 

DonH50

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You'll notice the quote is not mine... :)

I am definitely paying for all those years of mistreating my hearing. Younger folk should be warned! Of course, the back of the orchestra is not the quietest place either; the bassoons in front of me are wearing earplugs for Copland ("Tender Land") -- it was written on the music from the previous group renting it, so must be a common problem for those in front of the trumpets. Being right in front of me whilst playing loud and high, I can see why they would be hurting. Though as I said in another post, I wish Copland would've given me a place to breathe near the end!
 

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