Direct vs Loudness
I've made a discovery. It kind of happened through messing with the settings on the stereo when listening to the new U2 album. The discovery is listening to CDs without the stereo's "loudness" feature turned on.
It comes in many names— loudness, loud boost, bass boost, or some weird indecipherable acronym—and was until recently my default setting for listening to music. I think as music listeners we are often blown away by the extra oomph that we hear as soon as we switch it on, that we are reluctant to switch it off. With small speakers or at low volumes it might be worthwhile, but with a decent stereo, I have discovered that simply turning the music up a little bit provides a more overall satisfying listening experience. Consulting the manual for my amplifer, what it does in my unit is a 9db boost around two frequencies, one low and one high.* This makes the drums and bass and some vocals punch through at a higher volume for the same volume setting. It sounds immediately more exciting, but it also means the mid range is not as audible as if it had been amplified evenly across the frequencies. This meant when listening to the new u2 album, larry and adam cranked, the vocals were ok, but edge was lost. As a guitar geek this I couldn't abide this for long. After mucking around with eq for a while, I found it sounded best for me on the "direct" setting. No bass boost, no eq, no advanced surround effects— just the signal from the CD player, being amplified, and going to the speakers (also helped by improving speaker placement).
Since discovering that with that album, I have gone back to a few others, and thoroughly enjoyed the listening experience including:
I am the Portuguese Blues - Starflyer 59. I'd always kind of enjoyed this, but this time I was just blown away by the guitar tones.
The Crucified - by The Crucified. I've never been able to get into this album much before, but really enjoyed it this time and heard a lot more in it that I had never noticed on previous listens.
Songs to Burn Your Bridges By - by Project 86. I'm not sure whether it was the amp settings, going back to the original indie release, or both, but I enjoyed this much more than I have previously enjoyed the tooth and nail re-release.
*consulting wikipedia - the reason that one would want to boost the highs and lows at a low volume setting is that our ears are less sensitive to these frequencies, and they may fall below a threshold we can hear easily before the mids. This is not necessary at moderate volumes. At loud volumes you are just giving yourself hearing loss anyway - so why bother?
It comes in many names— loudness, loud boost, bass boost, or some weird indecipherable acronym—and was until recently my default setting for listening to music. I think as music listeners we are often blown away by the extra oomph that we hear as soon as we switch it on, that we are reluctant to switch it off. With small speakers or at low volumes it might be worthwhile, but with a decent stereo, I have discovered that simply turning the music up a little bit provides a more overall satisfying listening experience. Consulting the manual for my amplifer, what it does in my unit is a 9db boost around two frequencies, one low and one high.* This makes the drums and bass and some vocals punch through at a higher volume for the same volume setting. It sounds immediately more exciting, but it also means the mid range is not as audible as if it had been amplified evenly across the frequencies. This meant when listening to the new u2 album, larry and adam cranked, the vocals were ok, but edge was lost. As a guitar geek this I couldn't abide this for long. After mucking around with eq for a while, I found it sounded best for me on the "direct" setting. No bass boost, no eq, no advanced surround effects— just the signal from the CD player, being amplified, and going to the speakers (also helped by improving speaker placement).
Since discovering that with that album, I have gone back to a few others, and thoroughly enjoyed the listening experience including:
I am the Portuguese Blues - Starflyer 59. I'd always kind of enjoyed this, but this time I was just blown away by the guitar tones.
The Crucified - by The Crucified. I've never been able to get into this album much before, but really enjoyed it this time and heard a lot more in it that I had never noticed on previous listens.
Songs to Burn Your Bridges By - by Project 86. I'm not sure whether it was the amp settings, going back to the original indie release, or both, but I enjoyed this much more than I have previously enjoyed the tooth and nail re-release.
*consulting wikipedia - the reason that one would want to boost the highs and lows at a low volume setting is that our ears are less sensitive to these frequencies, and they may fall below a threshold we can hear easily before the mids. This is not necessary at moderate volumes. At loud volumes you are just giving yourself hearing loss anyway - so why bother?
posted by Jim at 8:02 AM
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