Even intangibles like soundstage and slam are noticeable at low volumes. People should listen at the levels that are both safe and comfortable, and if what's safe is still too loud to be comfortable, people shouldn't listen louder just because it's supposed to sound better.Īlso, I've found that higher-quality headphones are more resolving even at low volumes. Bass perception is the most affected by volume, so my technique is to use vocals and the midrange to find out how loudly I listen, then EQ up the bass to compensate for the difference in the contour. Yes, the equal loudness contours indicate that our hearing is more linear at louder volumes, but I think the better approach is to EQ the bass around it. Of course, those measurements cannot properly take into account dynamic peaks, but the music I listen to hovers at around -2 dBFS most of the time and has very little true dynamic range, so I likely don't go much above 75 dB SPL even in peaks.Īll this to say, I disagree with your last assertion that people should listen louder.
I find movie theater audio to be obnoxiously loud (and live music even more so), and every measurement with calibrated microphones I've made indicates that I listen at around 68 dB SPL. IIRC, THX-certified movie theaters are tuned for 85 dB as a reference level (pink noise at -20 dBFS) with dynamic peaks up to 105 dB in non-LFE channels and 115 dB for LFE. If you’re listening to good headphones at 60db you’ll be massively let down and stuff starts to sound identical and like background noise at that point I will say though, most people don’t realize how loud 80 db actually is and how much better high quality headphones sound at higher volumes. They won’t effect the frequency response or draw more detail out of the analog signal which has already been produced by the dac you’re using. The necessity of a headphone amp is grossly overstated by this subreddit and most audio forums.
Needs to be low for most headphones to not disturb the tonal balance and let the amp run efficiently.
However headphone amps still need to be designed well to handle different impedance loads with sufficiently low distortion and especially low noise.Īlso output impedance is a huge factor a lot of people overlook. If something is being driven sufficiently loud with no clipping then there’s no advantage to extra power available over this.