Recording - July 2018 - 72

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TURN IT DOWN, SONNY!
Guest Editorial by Aaron J. Trumm

I'm 42 years old, and although that's not old, I admit
to being a little crotchety about certain things. Listening
level is one of them. Turn it down! You're too loud! Get
off my lawn!
It's a topic oft-covered, especially if you read or take a
course about mixing, but it bears repeating-especially since
we've been talking about electric guitars this month. The
question is, how loud is too loud, and why? After all, aren't
listeners generally listening to the final product loudly?
Well, actually they won't... certainly not as loudly as you
probably do. Sure, some folks love to crank it up, but walking
through life, you'll notice a whole lot of music being played
at low levels so that people can still talk to each other. Your
mixes need to sound good at low levels.
Partly to that end, it's common (and good) advice to mix at
a low enough level that you can still hold a conversation. Said
with numbers, that might be around 75-80 dB SPL in a small
room, and maybe about 85 dB in a larger control room (i.e.,
sitting farther back). There are actually several benefits to this:
Lowered fatigue. Your ears and also your whole body
tire quickly when listening at high volumes. Your length of
session and effectiveness thus decreases. Bad decisions get
made earlier.
Avoiding long-term hearing damage. You want your hearing
to stay with you as long as possible. Very loud listening is
damaging over time. We tend to lose high frequencies as we
age anyway; you don't need to speed this process up.
Avoiding short-term hearing damage. Listen loud enough,
and you could actually damage your hearing right now and
forever. Some of it might come back, but some of it won't, and
that can cut your musical career short.
Making the Equal Loudness Contours work for you. The
contours, also called the Fletcher-Munson Curves after their
discoverers, describe a phenomenon of human hearing
where perceived loudness changes per frequency
as volume changes. That means that the balance of a mix
sounds different at different volumes. In practice, what this
actually means is that if you achieve good balance at a
low to moderate volume, your mix will continue to sound
balanced as it's turned up, but the reverse is not true. If you
achieve balance at a high volume, your mix will tend to fall
apart at lower volumes.
Saving your speakers. Monitors can be damaged at very
high volumes; fixing them means money out the window and
a fair bit of down time.
72

RECORDING July 2018

(Obligatory Guitar Issue Content: Guitarists, I love you,
but turn your amps down when you're playing live. The tonal
sweetness of a cranked amp isn't worth the sacrifice in mix
quality in a room that's manned by a well-trained Front Of
House engineer. If you turn it down, FOH can control it better
in the mix and get all signals sounding great when working
together. Turning your guitar amps down is the number one
way you can help the sound person help you. If you really
miss the cranked tone, get a load box. End of digression.)
All that said, you do need to check your mixes at various
levels. Personally, I mix mostly at a low volume, one where I
can still chat. Early on, I crank it up for very short periods of
time to get the subwoofer pushing so I can really understand
what's happening with the bass. It is actually easier to hear
problems with low-end mud at a higher level. Then I turn it
right back down again.
Late in the mix, I turn it up again for a short bit to check for
harshness that would annoy or hurt a listener who wants to
crank it up (this often appears somewhere between 2 and 5
kHz). Then I turn it down again. Then at the end, I listen loud
once through the whole song, just to get happy and have fun.
Wait. Get happy and have fun? What happened to all that
other advice?
Okay, now that you're off my lawn, I will admit that
cranking a great tune is about the quickest way I know to get
to musical euphoria, so I get it if you want to give it a crank
every once in a while. I do it myself for every mix-at the end,
when I'm done making decisions, and often in the car. But as
a professional who relies on his ears, I always keep it below
the pain threshold.
When I'm working, I'm working, so I keep it where it needs
to be for me to make the best decisions, achieve the most sonic
control, and have the most energy at the end of the day. I also
take earplugs with me everywhere just in case, especially for
concerts, which are pretty much always too loud.
This may not seem fun, but it's practical and pays huge
dividends in the long run. When you've got good ears under
your gray hair while all your friends are effectively deaf, you'll
thank me.
Aaron J. Trumm (trumm@recordingmag.com) is a singer,
producer and audio engineer. He loves loud sound but loves
his ears more. Contact him on social media at @AaronJTrumm
or aarontrumm.com.
http://www.aarontrumm.com
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