# Loudness issue when listening to symphonies



## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

Symphonies are my favorite genre. But there's one thing that irks me about them: the extreme variation in loudness. I know that it has its purpose and artistic function, but sometimes it's really a problem. The symphony starts very softly so I turn my volume to a high degree, so that I can actually hear anything, and then after a while BOOM - I am waking up entire neighborhood and risking damage to my eardrums. OK, I am exaggerating, but you get the point?

How do you deal with it?

BTW, I generally prefer symphonies with less extreme variability in loudness. And I hate it when I need to turn volume up or down in the middle of the work, because I think that any intervention on the work while it's playing is destroying its structure and integrity. Sometimes I gotta do it anyway, though.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Yeah, Schubert is blushing a bit now, deservedly so. The maestro of music that’s often so low on the scale, you’d wonder if the primitive recording machines of the 30’s had picked it up, then soon as I turn the volume up to hear, I’m thrown back down on the carpet, eardrums bleeding and lips pale, gasping and reaching for the telephone.

EDIT: how to deal with it? We can’t! The music is fixed, it’s us who need to approach it with caution...


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

The only way I know to deal with the issue is to stay close to the volume control.


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## Guest (Apr 19, 2018)

I live in a large stone house with very thick walls.

I suggest that you do the same.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Tulse said:


> I live in a large stone house with very thick walls.
> 
> I suggest that you do the same.


I borrow a huge stone gaff for Schubert. And a benefit of its size is, I can listen to some music from a different floor!


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## Granate (Jun 25, 2016)

You could play the opening bars of Mahler's Symphony No.3 in your hi-fi and set the volume a bit high but not too much. It's a shortcut to find out how loud a symphony can be. When you find the level, don't touch it again.

Oh, and ask your neighbours if they bother.


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## David Phillips (Jun 26, 2017)

The answer is to listen to recordings from the 1930s/40s/50s and 60s which were engineered to be played on small reproducers and had their range of volume compressed.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

David Phillips said:


> The answer is to listen to recordings from the 1930s/40s/50s and 60s which were engineered to be played on small reproducers and had their range of volume compressed.


Very true, recordings from that period tend to have less wild swings in volume than modern digital recordings.


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## Guest (Apr 19, 2018)

Serious answer:

Use audacity or similar to compress the music files, and try more sensitive speakers which will enable to you to reduce the volume and still hear the quiet parts.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

The answer, which is probably too late, is not to ruin your hearing by going to pop concerts.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Apartment living, or even just having conjoining walls must be horrible. My home is 100 feet on either side from nearest neighbors. I can crank up the volume as high as I want without a problem. With less expensive systems, really loud volumes become irritating and ugly, though. If I lived in an apartment or such, I'd just use headphones - but getting those lifelike volumes is dangerous, no doubt. There are some amps out there (Yamaha used to have one) that have settings to compress the dynamic range.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

I live now in a cottage on a farm and my nearest neighbour is maybe 600m away, and during the recent snow deluge I was locked in, with wifi, Netflix, food, booze - and music. And them Schubert symphs got a loud going over!, and it was music as I'd wanted to listen to it all along. We're often fortunate when we have no neighbours, but especially when it comes to loud music...


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Listening through headphones is the easiest way to manage volume on any symphony. You will hear everything without having to turn the volume up.


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## Brahmsian Colors (Sep 16, 2016)

Like you, I have dealt for quite some time with the same issue. Yes, I did some foolish things while listening several years back, and I paid a price: Continuous tinnitus and some degree of hyperacusis (though bearable) in my right ear. I'm not a young or middle aged man anymore either. Sometimes, the sound is too loud, sometimes it is too soft. I have achieved an excellent balance between reflective and absorptive surfaces in my listening room, but that does not entirely scotch the problem. Gradual hearing loss with age has also been a factor, and I recently went to hearing aids, though they offer a very good format for musical listening. I'm now seriously looking into purchasing a new preamp which gives me remote control for sound adjustment. All things considered, I'm managing pretty well.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

From personal experience, the problem with some digital orchestra recordings is that the soft passages reseed from the ears of the listener and have to be turned up in volume while the loud passages can sound right up front and have to be turned down when listening through typical speakers. Some of the BIS recordings with no dynamic compression have been complained about for this reason. But those with high-end audiophile sound systems usually don’t want any dynamic compression because their systems can handle the wide dynamic range and they don’t have to worry about their neighbors being disturbed. In the LP era, some measure of dynamic compression was applied because the recordings sounded more natural through most speakers. But with recordings of smaller groups or ensembles, the dynamic range is usually not a problem and the listener can set the volume without having to constantly change it.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I don't think large symphonies can be accurately recorded. To get realism, I listen to chamber orchestras and crank it up. It's closer.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

larold said:


> Listening through headphones is the easiest way to manage volume on any symphony. You will hear everything without having to turn the volume up.


I am not a big fan of headphones, I try to listen through actual speakers whenever I can. I have my computer connected to a decent home stereo, so sound is quite good and probably better than through headphones.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

You're right, to a point. Maybe a $200,000 sound system can replicate the real power of a live orchestra, but I doubt it. That's the magic of recording - somehow your brain fools you into accepting that what you hear is a live orchestra. However, there are some halls that I've been in where the sound is so diffuse, so dull, that a recording is a vast improvement. Royal Albert Hall in London is one of those: cavernous sound with little impact. But a great hall like those in Detroit, Boston, or Cleveland leave any sound system in the dust.

With smaller things (as you say, chamber orchestras) a good system can be remarkable lifelike. String quartets, piano music, guitar - all sound fine.


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## Brahmsian Colors (Sep 16, 2016)

Larkenfield said:


> ".... those with high-end audiophile sound systems usually don't want any dynamic compression because their systems can handle the wide dynamic range and they don't have to worry about their neighbors being disturbed.


"don't have to worry" or they don't care if their neighbors are being disturbed?


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Haydn67 said:


> "don't have to worry" or they don't care if their neighbors are being disturbed?


That would be a good question to ask listeners. Personally, I like to stay on good terms with neighbors in the loudness wars because they might be tempted to get even . . . And to me, there's nothing worse than hearing someone else's loud music when I would prefer silence. I consider myself a defensive listener except when listening to Lawrence Welk that my neighbor happens to like.


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## Judas Priest Fan (Apr 27, 2018)

The high dynamic range and recording quality are two things that I LOVE about classical music!

I am 52, and have not treated my ears well. When I was young I saw Judas Priest and AC/DC and others front row without hearing protection.

Plus, I used to ride my motorcycle at almost 160mph daily on the Autobahn. That was LOUD.

Still, I enjoy the very quiet passages in Symphonies, almost more than the loud ones. I just love hearing the sound fade to near inaudability, listening for that last bow stroke or plucking of a string before a piece ends.

It´s important that the room is quiet. I love it that the quietest passages are so quiet, and then, BAM!!! 

I usually listen at peaks of 85-95 dbA at the listening position. but the average is, of curse MUCH lower.

Compression is what I hate about modern music/recordings.

Edit: I now ALWAYS use hearing protection at concerts and at work.


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## Vahe Sahakian (Mar 9, 2018)

I personally prefer high dynamic range, or very little compression if possible. High dynamics is just the nature of symphonic music, if the recording is high fidelity then there is no way to avoid this.

The only label that currently offers totally uncompressed orchestral recordings is BIS records and the label is my favorite just for not tampering with the original signal.

Living in an apartment is a real problem with loud music.

I live in a house where neighbors are at least 100 feet away from my house and my music room is situated at one end of the house so that I can play loud and not bother the family.

For those who dislike recordings with high dynamics there is one simple solution, go with smaller speakers, smaller speaker do compress the audio signal considerably at loud passages making the music tolerable for those who hate big sounds.
Another way of avoiding high dynamics is to select older recordings, from sixties and seventies where anything recorded was compressed. Vinyl due to format limitations are naturally come with a healthy dose of compression to avoid mistracking so there is another solution for avoiding high dynamics.

My stereo system can play music with very little compression, speakers are huge and are bi-amplified which helps produce high dynamics with minimum distortion. It is much easier to tolerate loud music if distortion is minimal, we never complain about the loudness of orchestral music in a concert hall simply because we hear the music clearly and free of any form of distortion.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

It's a tricky problem. My house is contiguous with a neighbour on one side, and I have no wish to be a source of irritation. Headphones are effective, I find, for solo or small-chamber-ensemble works, and give a good sense of intimacy. But for a full-blown symphony, the sound really needs to fill the room, and then getting the balance between my enjoyment and local aural pollution is a challenge and I guess always will be. I'm not a fan of compression. MP3 format is a good way to trash a fine performance! And who wants to listen to, for example, Tchaikovsky's 4th without the full, uncompressed, unmitigated, crashbangwhisper dynamic range?


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## Judas Priest Fan (Apr 27, 2018)

I live in an apartment and I can still listen to classical music pretty much as loud as I want to.

Probably because the peaks are so short, and the boom boom boom of modern music isn´t present.

Like I said, I listen to classical at peaks up tp 95 dbA and the neigbors have no problem with it.

Rock or Metal, on the other hand, would be way too loud at 95 dbA peaks; because the music is pretty much ALWAYS loud, and 

there is a prominent pounding beat.

I only get the ok from the neigbors for that on New Years Eve, and then I can crank it


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## vmartell (Feb 9, 2017)

Err...

Well... - Don't turn it up ! If a passage is quiet, then it's supposed to be quiet - imagine you are in the hall. The passage calls for pianissimo... you are in the back of the orchestra section... it will be very quiet... 

So, let it be quiet. Set the volume so the loudest passage is comfortable, or a little above it, if you wanna rock. And let it be. Let pianissimo be and let forte be forte.

v


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I recall listening to Dutoit's Planets in my car one time, and I was so startled by the abrupt shifts in loudness that I almost pulled into a ditch.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

vmartell said:


> Err...
> 
> Well... - Don't turn it up ! If a passage is quiet, then it's supposed to be quiet - imagine you are in the hall. The passage calls for pianissimo... you are in the back of the orchestra section... it will be very quiet...
> 
> ...


Seems the most sensible answer to me.

Also the suggestion of using headphones where it's possible to set a balanced volume and still hear the 'quiet' bits.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Tulse said:


> I live in a large stone house with very thick walls.
> 
> I suggest that you do the same.


Does it have a moat and a portcullis?


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Blancrocher said:


> I recall listening to Dutoit's Planets in my car one time, and I was so startled by the abrupt shifts in loudness that I almost pulled into a ditch.


I've had that happen too. Sudden dynamic changes after a soft passage can also be a problem, even a danger or threat to the ears, when listening through headphones, such as the beginning of the electrifying 4th movement in Mahler's 1st Symphony with the sudden cymbal crash and the loud roll of the tympani. It still makes me jump out my skin with its abruptness. I am not anti-compression which allows the listener to hear recordings at a moderate sound level through speakers or headphones without having to repeatedly adjust the volume way up or down in orchestra performances. I don't expect my speakers to reproduce the full dynamic range of an entire concert hall, and that's usually why some measure of dynamic compression is used in certain recordings.


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## MusicSybarite (Aug 17, 2017)

To the person that created this thread:

Then Bruckner is not your favorite composer


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

There really needs to be an easy way to "level" the sound, well not totally level, but compress it as desired. This is especially true for earbuds where one may have to turn the volume all they way up to hear the soft passages, then get their ear blown out on the next loud passage.


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## Vahe Sahakian (Mar 9, 2018)

I had an old CD player, dbx DX3, this player had a numbers of signal processing features, one was called COMPRESS, here is what the manual had to say about it, the player passed away a long time ago:

“Turning this knob rightward progressively reduces the program’s dynamic range -- that is, the difference in level between loud and soft. This compression makes the quiet passages louder and the loudest passages somewhat reduced, without harming the sound otherwise. The feature is essential for CD background listening as well as for making tapes of CD using non-dbx noise reduction or for making tapes for your car stereo that you can hear all dB while driving.”

Sound like something like this would be desirable for many CD listeners.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Vahe Sahakian said:


> I had an old CD player, dbx DX3, this player had a numbers of signal processing features, one was called COMPRESS, here is what the manual had to say about it, the player passed away a long time ago:
> 
> "Turning this knob rightward progressively reduces the program's dynamic range -- that is, the difference in level between loud and soft. This compression makes the quiet passages louder and the loudest passages somewhat reduced, without harming the sound otherwise. The feature is essential for CD background listening as well as for making tapes of CD using non-dbx noise reduction or for making tapes for your car stereo that you can hear all dB while driving."
> 
> Sound like something like this would be desirable for many CD listeners.


Hmmm, wonder if I were to Google for it, might be a compress adapter out there.


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