I suppose I worded my post slightly wrong, what I'd be looking at I suppose would be heavy drapes and some good sound deaddening material to at least minimise noise leakage and minimise reflections and resonance. I'd look at some professional advice ideally to set something up rather than just a bodge DIY job. I like to listen to music loud, and I love going to gigs, the live feel is I suppose what I'd like my system to have, but I realise that it's probably never going to happen. I really should start taking earplugs to gigs though, tinnitus isn't a good thing, Graham Coxon was very loud last night.
System synergy and "source first"
- Thread starter Mr_Sukebe
- Start date
About listening to music loud:
I used to do that but one night I decided I wanted to listen to music when I went to bed, so I set the volume down quite low and got into bed - a little while later I was turning it down again and again until I reached the point where if I turned it any lower, I would mute the amp (it was an A/V amp at the time). This made me wonder how sensitive my hearing is overall.
Nowadays I generally listen to music at what most people would deem to be "unacceptably quiet" at first but after a while listening, they get used to it. Last night, the noise from my PC (which isnt that loud at all) made my ears ring when I left the room after writing the last post in this thread!
Exposure to high SPLs = very, very bad - If I went to another gig tomorrow, I would HAVE to have ear plugs or I would reconsider going!
I used to do that but one night I decided I wanted to listen to music when I went to bed, so I set the volume down quite low and got into bed - a little while later I was turning it down again and again until I reached the point where if I turned it any lower, I would mute the amp (it was an A/V amp at the time). This made me wonder how sensitive my hearing is overall.
Nowadays I generally listen to music at what most people would deem to be "unacceptably quiet" at first but after a while listening, they get used to it. Last night, the noise from my PC (which isnt that loud at all) made my ears ring when I left the room after writing the last post in this thread!
Exposure to high SPLs = very, very bad - If I went to another gig tomorrow, I would HAVE to have ear plugs or I would reconsider going!
I've always been a speakers > source person rather than "source first".
Whatever system you have though, it's always going to be held back by the weakest link in the chain - whether that's your source, speakers, amp, cabling or whatever.
Whatever system you have though, it's always going to be held back by the weakest link in the chain - whether that's your source, speakers, amp, cabling or whatever.
Thanks DRZ for the link, think I'll do some Google work and try and learn a bit more about Bass traps. They seem to be begging for a DIY project, if some can provide with a design ! 
Do any dealers stock such things, would be great to borrow for a weekend.
Still don't think I subscribe to the "can't have a good Hi Fi because my rooms not good" concept. Speaker placement, and choosing some suitable ones (ok I'm trying to bend that rule at present) sees most rooms perform well enough to appreciate a whole range of audio kit at most price points. The improvement to the Source is not room dependant, But a better source can be in room improvement.
Guess I listen at times quite loud, at really low volume I think you miss a lot of what's in the music. The biggest danger must be headphones, and in ear ones.... the iPod era is going to cause a lot of problems, I rarely use them, then I have some Sure noise blocking so I can keep the volume very low...... Telephones are bad, as they are often loud, close to ear and normally have to drown out back ground noise. My phone ear is not as good as the other. You can tell if you switch half way through a call
Do any dealers stock such things, would be great to borrow for a weekend.
Still don't think I subscribe to the "can't have a good Hi Fi because my rooms not good" concept. Speaker placement, and choosing some suitable ones (ok I'm trying to bend that rule at present) sees most rooms perform well enough to appreciate a whole range of audio kit at most price points. The improvement to the Source is not room dependant, But a better source can be in room improvement.
Guess I listen at times quite loud, at really low volume I think you miss a lot of what's in the music. The biggest danger must be headphones, and in ear ones.... the iPod era is going to cause a lot of problems, I rarely use them, then I have some Sure noise blocking so I can keep the volume very low...... Telephones are bad, as they are often loud, close to ear and normally have to drown out back ground noise. My phone ear is not as good as the other. You can tell if you switch half way through a call
9designs2 said:Thanks DRZ for the link, think I'll do some Google work and try and learn a bit more about Bass traps. They seem to be begging for a DIY project, if some can provide with a design !
Do any dealers stock such things, would be great to borrow for a weekend.
Still don't think I subscribe to the "can't have a good Hi Fi because my rooms not good" concept. Speaker placement, and choosing some suitable ones (ok I'm trying to bend that rule at present) sees most rooms perform well enough to appreciate a whole range of audio kit at most price points. The improvement to the Source is not room dependant, But a better source can be in room improvement.
Guess I listen at times quite loud, at really low volume I think you miss a lot of what's in the music. The biggest danger must be headphones, and in ear ones.... the iPod era is going to cause a lot of problems, I rarely use them, then I have some Sure noise blocking so I can keep the volume very low...... Telephones are bad, as they are often loud, close to ear and normally have to drown out back ground noise. My phone ear is not as good as the other. You can tell if you switch half way through a call
94dB+ at your eardrum is 94dB+ at your eardrum, no matter how it is applied - the reason its considered more damaging to use headphones is that its so easy to get to very, very high SPLs using them - generally speaking, its a 1/r^2 relationship so as the radius from the source doubles you get a quarter the acoustic pressure at the listening position. As you can see, the smaller distance required for the headphones makes quite a difference to how easy it is to generate silly SPLs!
In the daytime, if you consider everything but the music to be noise, the SnR is pretty poor compared to the dead of night (which is when I do quite a lot of my serious listening). Sit in the most reverberant room you have for a while and listen, then repeat at night. Note: you might have to wait for your ears to stop ringing at night!
Re: Telephone usage, yes I totally agree - telephone usage has significantly attenuated my hearing in my right ear - I have a graph of how bad it is somewhere but I wince every time I look at it so I try not to. Thankfully, frequency response isnt toooooo badly affected over the critical frequency ranges!
EDIT:
9designs2 - For an absorber to work, you need to have the wave in the material when it has the most kinetic energy - this means you must have it "captured" for a 1/4 wavelength. Obviously, you wont have much room left if you try and do that at 20Hz with some foam! That is why Bass Traps are so good - they trade size for absorbtion and it is my guess that such designs are going to be kept under wraps (as there is unimaginable quantities of money in this!!).
Anyway, my professor, Trevor Cox wrote this on the matter:
http://www.acoustics.salford.ac.uk/research/arc/cox/book/contents.htm
If you are going to take the DIY approach, it might be worth a read
EDIT 2:
http://www.acoustics.salford.ac.uk/research/arc/cox/interdisciplinary/inter_science_reviews.pdf
Thats worth a read, too
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