I'll buy that in the sense that we don't overcompensate volume
necessarily but the level of excitement, so lacking other stimuli at
the time of playback we tend to listen a bit louder. Add to that the
ambient noise increase in a setting as described by Dick and perhaps
cocktails and the desire to show-off your taste in music a bit and you
have a recipe for some overzealous volume control tweekers. Trying to
make-up for any frequency losses could also contribute to this. It's a
good theory at any angle.
- Bill
www.uptownaudio.com
Roanoke VA
(540) 343-1250

"Cossie" wrote in message
news:5u4xb.234209$9E1.1272860@attbi_s52...
"Dick Pierce" wrote in message
...

I took the opportunity to conduct an experiement: I asked people
who had attended the concert and were seated close to where my
measurements were taken to adjust the volume control so that it
was as loud as they remembered it during the performance. Remember
that they were not only playing back the same music, they were
playing back THE EXACT SAME PERFORMANCE.

The result were VERY interesting. With but a single exception,
EVERY one of the participants in the experiment adjusted the
volume control so that the sound pressure levels on playback
were SIGNIFICANTLY louder than they encountered during the
performance. And the differences were not subtle, often they
adjusted the volume so it was 10 dB or more louder than they
experienced in the performance.

The ONLY person to get close was the conductor.

The experiment suggests that many people tend to play louder
than realistic sound levels.

This correlates with the tendency of people to overestimate
what the sound pressure of music actually is in a live
performance,
especially for classical music.

I have to wonder if this tendency isn't a way of compensating for
the lack
of visual cues to go along with the music - we turn it up louder to
make it
more "real", because we're subliminally missing the complete
experience and
volume is the only tool at our disposal.

I think this is likely especially in the softer sections, when in
the
concert we would be *looking* at the 2nd violins playing a pp
passage, but
without the visual we need it louder to convince ourselves that we
are
really hearing it well.

On the other hand, the way much of today's music is recorded, we
often turn
it up to try to replicate that intensity we hear live that is
missing from
the aural assault of what compression has done to the dynamic range.

Bill Balmer