Reviewer Auditioning and Reviewing at 50 - 55db max
sergeit -- Thu, 09/10/2009 - 21:53
I'm curious what others think. A colleague of mine recently observed a professional reviewer from a popular rag audition a product entirely at 50 - 55db and no higher, including live recordings.
I have my own thoughts but do others have any comments about such a practice?
I don't think that I could adequately evaluate a product without listening at realistic (live) levels.
If the noise floor in a quiet room is 40db, then this would give you 15db of dynamic range. In addition, very few users will use equipment this way. Both of these are huge drawbacks for reviewing.
Although they do play a part, higher SPLs all by their lonesome won't give you "more dynamic range." The dynamic range on a recording is determined by the program, the instrumentation, the engineering, the mastering, and the medium it was recorded on and to, as well as by the playback level. IMO, playback levels should be set to give you the most lifelike dynamic scale for a given piece of music--which is to say that instruments that typically play more softly or instruments playing pianissimo or pianississimo passages should be as clear, articulate, and natural in timbre, volume, and dynamic as instruments that play more loudly or instruments playing fortissimo or fortississimo passages. This average playback level will vary widely with program and recording, though it will never be as low as 50-55dB average SPLs (unless, of course, someone is playing music purely for "background listening" while he or she is doing something else).
BTW, I think many listeners tend to "turn up the juice" automatically to make the softer instruments and softer passages more audible and the louder ones more exciting and impactful (or simply to give themselves the impression that they're getting more clarity and dynamic range, particularly in the bass, out of murky, compressed, no-dynamic-range rock recordings). The truth--at least on much classical and acoustic music--is that far from increasing dynamic range they're actually reducing it by turning notes or passages that were meant to be sounded as pianissimos into mezzofortes. They're skewing dynamic scale to the f-to-ffff side of the spectrum--and thereby killing the piece and the performance. Playing back Joan Baez singing "Gospel Ship" at 100dB+ average SPLs would be insane, IMO; OTOH, playing back The Stones' "Gimme Me Shelter" at 100dB+ average SPLs (or louder) would be appropriate.
Not many listeners listen to their systems at such low levels, so the reviewer that does so isn't evaluating the equipment under the conditions it's likely to be used. Louder listening levels may stress the equipment to reveal flaws that you won't hear at 50-55 dB.
Vade Forrester is absolutely correct; many aspects of equipment performance are revealed only at higher listening levels.
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