What is Your Signal to Room Noise?

[fas42]

I normally go for volume levels which match live levels; at one stage I casually compared a upright piano we have in the living area to the system being used at the time - the volume in the room roughly matched 4 clicks down from maximum, for a typical classical piano recording - and I quite often used maximum gain for that setup. Which means noise in the room matches realistic acoustic listening environments; background noise just "gets out of the way".

 

Of course the rig has to be thoroughly comfortable to listen to at these levels, .

[fas42]

1 hour ago, Sonicularity said:

Live levels from which perspective?  The piano player?  The listener?  In what environment?  

 

Pretty straightforward. You ask someone to play the piano, and listen in the room; and compare that to a similar piece on a recording - you're aiming for roughly similar subjective impact.

 

I'm not the slightest bit precious about volumes - a sorted rig can be played at everything from a barely audible whisper, to the maximum it's capable of; and the subjective impact doesn't change. It's exactly equivalent to hearing a live musician at 2 ft away from you, 4 ft, 8 ft, 16, 32, etc - what he "sounds like" doesn't dramatically change as you do this ...

[fas42]

A proviso to the above is listening to modern, heavily compressed pop material - the cumulative loudness overloads the ear quite rapidly, and I need to reduce the level quite a lot; to prevent ringing happening.

[fas42]

I'm not in the position like Peter where the rig can easily go to any level I choose - frequently I would like more gain, but the electronics chain is not set up to deliver this; or the amplifier is momentarily clipping, or overheating ... I can live with compromises ... .