Driven by both curiosity and the quest to see how much I was damaging my ears, I whipped out my SPL meter to see what kind of levels I was listening to my music at. I noticed that the -40 db level on my receiver was my, "Studying or quiet music level," -35 db level was my "roomate is here and I want to have loud but not so loud music", -30 db level was my "roomate might be here but I want to listen to music loud", the -25 db level was my "absolute perfect level to listen to music, anything louder seems too loud to my ears, anything lower lacks the punch I like."
So, on my SPL meter the -25 db level was checking in at about 87-92db, mostly around 90. The -30 db was almost exactly 5 db less, so on and so forth.
For movies I have discovered that -15 db is the sweet spot, but movies are quieter than music.
However, I am about 1-2 feet (essentially computer speakers) from my M22's, so that effects greatly how they would sound if I was sitting further away, but I noticed I can adjust the receiver level to about -22 or so, get the same loudness and imaging, but then everyone else can hear my music a ton louder. It's nice because I think my music is really loud, but when I stand up and get out of the "sweet spot" of my M22's pointing at my ears, the level goes down quite a bit, so I'd be curious how loud you guys listen.
Anyways, I am quite satisfied that at 90 db I can listen to music safely for 8 hours without "losing" any hearing. That is why I think it is boardering on pointless to get a ridiculously good car stereo because of road noise and the ridiculously loud (~120 db) levels that you have to play it at to get the same experience in a quiet environment. After about 10 minutes at that level hearing loss starts to occur. And honestly, if I'm going to be in hi-fi audio all of my life, I'd like to keep my hearing.
Here's an image of my setup to give you an idea what my setup is:
How about you guys? How loud do you like it?
