Can (for example) 105 db's be piercing and can 105 db's be NOT piercing?

[Coytee]

On a thread that is not important to my question above, someone said essentially "if you have 50 watts going into your KG speaker it will be playing at 105 db's and will pierce your ears off"

I'm paraphrasing a bit to simply attempt to make it more black & white with my curiosity...

If you have a small speaker, KG's, Heresy's... playing at a certain loudness that is felt to be "piercing" and then you get a LaScala or Jubilee and play it at the same loudness... will it also be piercing?

Is it the loudness that is the pierce or, is it that some speakers are working so hard to play to that level, there are other things going on (distortion) whereas, a larger speaker isn't straining as hard and is exhibiting less distortion.

Is it the loudness or the distortion that is piercing?

I've had my Jubilees up to where they are hitting peaks (as per the Rat Shack meter C/slow) of 110 db's for short durations (at seating position). Although it is certainly loud, I would not accuse it of being "piercing" at all.

Thoughts?

[Edgar]

I may have told this story here before, but I remember being on the show floor at NAB many years ago. The noise was incredible -- it was difficult even to talk to a person two feet away. Every speaker manufacturer was trying to out-blast every other speaker manufacturer in the booth next door.


I was working for Electro-Voice at the time, and one of the salespeople in our booth fired-up one of our large horn-loaded systems. It cut through the noise like a lighthouse lamp cuts through fog. It wasn't that our speakers were louder than all of the others; they were CLEARER.


So I think it's a quality vs. quantity issue. Some small speakers can produce 105 dB, but they're working so hard that power compression and distortion become major liabilities. (With some small speakers, attempting to get 105 dB results in a puff of smoke!) Other, usually larger, speakers reach 105 dB effortlessly.


I don't have objective measurements to back this up, but that is my subjective impression.


Greg

[Islander]

I'd agree with Greg and add that the music being played has to be a factor. Some music is piercing at any volume, so turning it up just makes it worse.

[Schu]

You know... I seem to be one of the only guys here that wants his
cake and eat it to. I have come to learn that volume is a key factor in
listening quality in that having to much can hurt your listening
experience, but I come from the 60's/70's and I want my ears to bleed
with both volume and crystal clarity.

I think feeling the music concussion is part of the experience

[Islander]

If you want deafening volume and crystal clarity at the same time, you came to the right place. You can get the music percussion, too, but you'll need hearing protection if you don't want to go deaf fairly quickly. Sometimes I'm tempted to put in earplugs and really crank the system, but what kind of neighbour would I be if I did that?

I occasionally listen to rock music at performance level, meaning rock concert level, but after a few minutes, my ears are ringing, so now I listen to more jazz and folk. You can listen to those at performance level with no pain.

As to the original question, Pink Floyd is almost never piercing, at almost any volume.

[russ69]

Coytee,

Your question surprises me. I would think with your Jubs that you could play clear and loud at levels that would seriously damage your hearing. That's a problem with a really good system, you will play WAY too loud long before the system distorts.

Thanx, Russ

[Zen Traveler]

I usually listen to Multi-channel Music on my HT listed below at 85 to 90 dB at the LP with peaks over 100 dB and I wondered if I purchased an external amp if I would start listening at a louder level.

[Chris A]

...as per the Rat Shack meter C/slow) of 110 db's for short durations (at seating position)...

Richard: Shift to the "A"-weghting scale on the meter and then repeat the experiment...

Maybe not as pronounced a difference, eh?

Chris

[doityourself]

It depends on where the music falls in the audio spectrum. If it's concentrated in the 1-5 khz range it will sound piercing at even lower volume. That part of the spectum is where our ears are most sensitive. 105 db in the lower octaves won't be piercing.

[garyrc]

I think the variables that are associated with sound being piercing are:

• The amount of distortion -- one of those little hand held transistor radios of the 1960s could be very piercing and hashy while not putting out much SPL in dBs.
• The spectral characteristics of the speakers, the listener's hearing, and the music itself. Upper midrange and treble can be piercing. Bass can be awesome and even dangerous but the word piercing just doesn't fit. If the reproduction is out of balance, a high level of SPL can be piercing. Once at a laserium in Portland they played Beethoven and Pink Floyd with NO bass whatsoever (very little output below about 250 Hz) --- very piercing! I complained afterward saying, "You guys need some BASS -- without it it's just grating." They said, "Well, we hand out the earplugs for those who want it softer." I couldn't help thinking, "You may hand out earplugs. but, without at least a little bass, you're not handing out Beethoven and Pink Floyd."
• There may be a gender difference -- but I've never been able to figure out whether it's the better high frequency hearing women have (I think they begin to gain above about 4 or 5K), or social conditioning, or both, but about 9 out of 10 times I've heard someone say "turn it down!" it has been a woman speaking. And, indeed, the complaint usually is that it is piercing, or some equivalent word. In support of social conditioning, rather than genetics, there are the exceptions. Some women like loud music quite a lot. The ones I know include a disproportionate number of musicians, film buffs, audiophiles, or denizens of Berkeley or the Haight in the good old days. My wife and daughter like it loud if it is supposed to be. The variables come together in strange ways: my daughter finds that very loud brass attacks are piercing, particularly on the cheap Yamahas in the living room (not particularly low distortion devices), but when The Lion King was first coming out she played it at ultra high volume on the car's tape player (not a low distortion device) as we circled Lake Tahoe. There are rather few loud brass attacks in The Lion King, but that player was distorted! I wanted to turn it down, and I'm one who likes to flap people's pants legs with bass waves

[DrWho]

Crest factor...

[seti]

Try to get 105db on a Bose Wave Radio while playing the Osmonds.

[WMcD]

In my experience there are many different conditions which can be annoying.

A pure tone at 1000 Hz at 90 dB is very annoying to me. I have not tried higher freqs. But as others allude to, the FM curves show that at 3500 Hz, our ear brain is very sensitive to sound.

PWK commented that even low percentages of intermod is annoying.

I attended some rock concerts in Dallas in a pavillion. CSN and Moody Blues. I found the sound very annoying. I fashioned some earplugs out of wet napkins. That really helped. Maybe the earplugs filtered out some higher order distortion. Or maybe my ears were distorting at high levels.

The comments about our lady friends is interesting.

By way of background, at least some of the K-55 drivers have a peak at 8 kHz. I believe this is increased by the K-400 horn gain. In any case, this shows up on many freq response curves published by Klipsch. Max Potter made up the "P-Trap filter. This is descibed in the VTV article on the K-Horn. The authors of that article found the P-Trap very helpful.

However, many years before a friend of mine descibed how he installed the P-Trap in his K-Horns. Without any knowledge or prompting, his daughter commented: "What did you do?" I conclude that some people - call it youth or gender - are much more sensitive to to peaks at the high end which may be missed by others.

Wm McD

[DrWho]

By way of background, at
least some of the K-55 drivers have a peak at 8 kHz. I believe this is
increased by the K-400 horn gain. In any case, this shows up on many
freq response curves published by Klipsch. Max Potter made up the
"P-Trap filter. This is descibed in the VTV article on the K-Horn. The
authors of that article found the P-Trap very helpful.

Regarding the "peak" at 8kHz.....

All
the response plots I've seen of that behavior look to me more like a
cancellation at ~6kHz caused by some reflection inside the horn. This
would also probably be why Klipsch got rid of that "peak" in the later
versions with a new phase plug (basically one that didn't have the
reflection).

I dunno, just throwing the thought out there. If
later versions had the same HF extension, then it was probably because
they were trying to gain a little extra low frequency efficiency
instead since the tweeter could already cover the original dip.

To
get back on topic, I would like to add ringing to my crest factor
comment. So crest factor and ringing....Both could probably be summed
up into "energy density". 105dB on the KG4 has more energy density than
105dB on the Jubilee...(or pick your flavor of more efficient speaker).

[WMcD]

Dr Who,

Thanks for your comment. I recall when you made a similar comment (it is a dip at 6 kHz not a peak at 8 kHz) maybe a year ago. I thought your alternate explanation was (and is) just brilliant.

Crites had said that some units don't have the peak. Maybe his data will allow some additional analysis.

Someday I'm going to have the time to measure the response on the horn, and on a plane wave tube and compare the two. That way we'll get an idea of on-axis gain. I expect the the narrowing of the horn pattern is giving greater than 10 dB gain up above 5 kHz.

My suspicion is that the output of the driver up above 5 kHz is something grungy and therefore is best eliminated regardless of cause.

Wm McD

[garyrc]

With the K-Horn AK-4 and AK-5, wouldn't the 8K peak in the K-55 be rolled way off, due to the crossover to the K-77F now being placed at 4,500, and the slope being steeper than it used to be?

[WMcD]

Gary,

I expect that is the situation.

The A and AA etc crossovers had only a high pass filter on the midrange and thus there was no roll off. Anything fed to the mid above 400 Hz went through.

PWK wanted to have the effective crossover to be 6000 Hz and thus even a radical roll off in a passband might not have reduced the 8 kHz signal from the mid very much.

Now that the cross over is down to 3.5 or 4 kHz, a third order passband could do the job.

Wm McD

[Don Richard]

The human ear is most sensitive to frequencies around 1-5 kHz. Any frequency peak in that range caused by the electronics, speaker, or acoustic anomalies in the room may cause this sort of problem.

With the electronics, some causes would be distortion components in that frequency range (design problem or defective component), as well as interaction between source and preamp, preamp and power amp, or power amp and speakers.

The speaker could have a damaged driver, damaged crossover, or even a loose fit between the driver and the driver's mating surface. Some compression drivers do not have the smoothest response, or may interact unfavorably to the specific horn to which they are mounted.

If the room has surfaces that reflect acoustic energy better in a certain frequency range, then that frequency range will be emphasized. If that range is 1-5 kHz and the emphasis is sufficient, the result may be described as piercing by some listeners.

It has been my experience that a system with low distortion and smooth frequency response can be played louder without sounding irritating. It seems that Coytee's system fits that description very well.

[Guest " "]

whats the meter accuracy?

if it's 5%, then 95 db could register as 90.5 db thru 99.5 db.

[greg928gts]

I have noticed something very interesting while listening to my MCM system. Because that system is actively crossed over three-way stereo, I can play just lows, just the mid-bass, or just the highs. If I have a song playing at a fairly loud volume, say 100db where I'm standing, and I turn off the mid-bass and lows, the highs can be very irritating. As soon as I turn the mid-bass and lows back on, it's not irritating, it just sounds normal.

So I wonder if there's something about having a balance between all frequencies that our ears like, versus listening to only a relatively small band of frequencies?

Greg