New White Paper posting

[taj]

I think the old-school 'loudness' buttons/pots were primarily a marketing dept. feature. The Fletcher/Munson (sp?) equal loudness contours were a buzzword of the era, so amplifier vendors implemented something/anything that exploited the concept. The buzzword-du-jour has changed but the marketing strategy of exploiting them is still the same.

It's great the way the film industry has embraced audio (and video of course) standards, even though there are competing standards to keep us plenty confused. I was involved in the graphics/printing/colour industry as it embraced end-to-end colour management (calibration) in the mid 90's. What a Gong Show that was. But it eventually evolved into capable colour management systems that worked. Microsoft stepped in at one point and crammed sRGB down everyone's throat, and the world was stuck with the colour equivalent of VHS winning over Beta. But 15 years later it all works and nobody thinks too much about it. Now, they are pretty much at the same place home theatre is; quibbling about a few perfectly capable standards.

That's what I hope happens to audio one day. The concept is nearly identical to colour management; input, output, transfer function, and some normalized baseline. Obviously I'm dreaming.

..Todd

[gedlee]

Originally Posted by taj

The buzzword-du-jour has changed but the marketing strategy of exploiting them is still the same.

That's what I hope happens to audio one day. The concept is nearly identical to colour management; input, output, transfer function, and some normalized baseline. Obviously I'm dreaming.

..Todd

Big smile on that one and complete agreement.

When I did my book on HT I was shocked at how well video was quantified and standardized and how audio was, and still is, quibling over ridiculous things that don't matter one bit. "perception" of video is completely understood and accepted by all - audio is still a joke.

[AllenB]

Originally Posted by gedlee

I have always found this "prefered playback level" to exist and I often adjust the volume for different songs. There seems to be a level at which the sound "clicks" and yes, this is usually a bit on the loud side for most people.
I have found that serious listeners all recognize this and in general all do listen at above average levels.

I've been contemplating this and now I find this seemingly dissenting thread. I thought I could find the optimum playback level, take a curve at that level on the equal loudness chart (whatever Fletcher/Munson is called these days), plot the difference with the level I'd rather listen at and voice the speakers to that difference.

Basically though, I'm talking about a "loudness curve" again, only with some precision.

I'm not forgetting that there is a second issue, i.e. that we expect certain sounds to be at a certain loudness. For example, a person shouting played back quietly will not sound like a whisper. So I wonder whether this phenomena will trump any attempt at the voicing I mentioned above.

[gedlee]

I believe that we may be talking about different things. I cannot see a relationship between what I am talking about and theFletcher-Munson curves. This "optimum playback level" is not a single level for all material, but changes for each source. It may have something to do with the mix-down level when the source was mastered for final production. The procedure that you describe would be fixed for each individual sound system, hence this cannot be the same thing that I am refering to.

[AllenB]

Not necessarily I think, even though I am only guessing what you are thinking.

If I do have a point, the correct listening level for each piece will still be different but all would rise or fall in accordance with the changes. To clarify, I only quote the equal loudness curves as being an "accurate" loudness control guide as I assume the loudness control was initially developed to compensate for the ear's different response when listening at a lower volume than intended.

So I'm basically wondering of the benefits of a variable (and accurate) loudness control, or a fixed version of.