How Loud in db is LOUD?

[E-Stat]

As an interesting, shameless name-dropping aside, I once did a little work with Tom Danley, creator of the Servodrive Contrabass and many other great speakers.

I'm more impressed with his line of tapped horns that have constant directivity and a level of coherency you don't normally associate with horn speakers since all drivers radiate from the same "mouth".

 

[RevMen]

I've been in vehicles that was doing 151 dB on a termlab microphone, and that isn't considered " really loud" in the car audio world. I also had a stereo in my car that can pull a 140+ dB easy.

The reason why I'm not deaf right now is because human ears are not very sensitive to low frequency but very sensitive around the vocal range and higher. A blast of 150 dB at 40 Hz is loud but the perceived loudness won't be nearly as horrible as having 150 dBs worth of 3000 Hz coming at you going 1126 feet a second, the latter will also instantly and permanently damage your ears.


At home though, perceived loudness takes over as ambient noise is typically very low, around 30~40 dB or less. 110 dB in a room is plenty loud but again that's for midrange and tweeters, bass in the 120dB region is franky not that hard to obtain and that is also plenty loud.


... but it's never wrong to own something that's more capable than it really needs to be for your setup

See above posts about specifying decibels. If you start throwing around "dB" without specifying you're speaking little more than gibberish.

If the numbers you're saying are A-weighted, which most of the levels discussed in this thread so far are, then what you're saying is BS. 110 dBA SPL is well into the range of causing discomfort and approaching actual pain.

 

[Lapslah]

I'm more impressed with his line of tapped horns that have constant directivity and a level of coherency you don't normally associate with horn speakers since all drivers radiate from the same "mouth".

Yes, on the aforementioned project we were installing one of his Servodrive TD-1 main speakers in a church. It's still there, and sounds beautiful - natural and clean.

I was in charge of the project at the church. I had hired a sound contractor who wanted to sell us a different speaker rig, but I had connections at Servodrive. I set up an A/B listening test with both rigs on a lift at the approximate position of the final installation using several sources. People liked the contractor's rig until they heard the TD-1. The most telling comment was "The first one sounded like a really well amplified piano. The second one sounded like a piano."

Besides liking the sound of it, I (as the live sound operator) liked the TD-1 for its directivity as well. This had been a major problem with the old system in that room, with constant ringing and feedback issues. With the TD-1 you could take one step out of its throw pattern and it would be noticeably gone. Now we set it and forget it and our headroom is much greater.

Sorry for the thread jack - back to your regularly scheduled dB-specified discussion.