How loud is too loud? (video tutorial)

Consider this scenario: You’ve got to bed pretty late on a Friday night and you’re looking forward to a sleep in. However you are woken up at 7am by a lawnmower two houses away, annoyed?

Same scenario, however this time you’re woken up by your all time favourite rock song being played by the neighbours.  Chances are that even though the music would be louder than the lawnmower, you’d be way more annoyed by the mower than the music. How we feel about sound and how it affects us is not just based on volume, its also the tonal content (the mower is harsher sounding than the music) and the context.

For example, if you don’t like country music it doesn’t matter if it’s loud or soft, you’re not going to enjoy the country music festival you’ve been dragged along to see.

Tonal content is really important. If the mix is warm and full, it will be more appealing than if it is brittle or harsh. So often when we are told to turn the mix down, the first thing to go is the bass and kick drum, and while this will always reduce the volume, it may well pull out all the warmth from the mix and leave it quieter but harsh, so still pretty unpleasant to listen to.

Try this experiment: Get your favourite rock tune pumping through the PA at a near show level. Then, using the EQ, just cut all the bass and lo mids from about 400HZ and below. The volume will have reduced, but I guarantee the resulting sound will be less pleasant to listen to even though quieter because tonally it’s unbalanced.

Too often we try and define everything simply by the numbers, and that’s just not considering the whole picture. How we feel about the style, the overall tone are every bit as important.