[LAD] twice as loud

Gene Heskett gene.heskett at gmail.com
Sat Jul 24 14:23:07 UTC 2010


On Saturday, July 24, 2010 10:08:34 am Ralf Mardorf did opine:

> On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 10:52 +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> > On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 10:37 +0200, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
> > > On 07/22/2010 11:44 PM, fons at kokkinizita.net wrote:
> > > > Extrapolating a bit, that is one of the reasons why an
> > > > unamplified singer in an opera theatre can have a dramatic
> > > > effect that is much stronger than someone yelling into a
> > > > microphone and being amplified to 130 dB SPL. By which I
> > > > don't want to imply that amplified music is wrong in any
> > > > sense.
> > > 
> > > *anything* at 130 dB SPL is wrong in any sense. :p
> > 
> > No, I wish to listen to the opera at the other mountaintop. Regarding
> > to the German wiki about SPL, the pain threshold is at 134 dB at the
> > ear. Assumed the opera house is at another mountaintop or in the
> > valley, even 130 dB could be a little bit to less power. ;D
> 
> I know it's idiotic, OTOH when do we ever wish to have knowledge about
> objective 'twice as loud'? Did anybody ever thought 'shit, I need to mix
> the snare objectively half as loud, but I don't know what's the correct
> level'?

I wondered about that myself.  I got stuck mixing for KISS one labor day in 
the late 70's.  All I got for tutorial was which mic/instrument was which 
knob on the snakes panel that Gene brought to the me in the control room at 
KIVA-TV in Farmington NM, telling me which jack to get my air audio from.  
That snake panel was about as homemade as could be.  And Gene said if it 
sounded good to me, it probably was.  So I set the axe & drums to hit zero 
to plus 2, the voices and guitar at about -2 to 0.  I recorded about 10 
minutes worth and invited Gene into listen to the air check during the NBC 
portion of the telethon and he was pleased.  They were on the road, between 
shows and had a few hours to kill, so they stopped and volunteered to play 
music during the local break times for about 4 hours.  All were in the 
famous KISS war paint, which was a little streaked because the local temps 
were in the low 100's and their bus had no air conditioning.  And badly in 
need of a shower from the BO standpoint, but they did make some fine music 
for Jerry's Kids that day.

Yeah, I mixed for KISS once.  NBD.  But it does make a nice line on my 
resume. ;-)

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
You can fool some of the people all of the time,
and all of the people some of the time,
but you can never fool your Mom.



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