Mixing Volume

I believe it is -83 and you use an spl meter.

Ill be doing this after I treat my room this weekend.

Jeff - you've probably explained this before, but would you mind doing so again? what is A weighted and C weighted?

Beagle, in short, they are simply eq filters that are designed to take into account the way the ear picks up frequencies in a non linear fashion. With a piece of music playing at a low-medium volume, our ears are not that great at picking up bass frequencies. The SPL meter has no problems as it is not a human ear. Bass frequencies have the most energy. The SPL meter thus reads a very high SPL output due to these bass frequencies, but WE don't hear them very well. So while the meter might read 75dBSPL, in reality, for our ears it sounds more like 70dBSPL because we don't hear those bass frequencies as much. If we apply a filter to that signal in the SPL meter before the output is read, then it takes into account the fact that we don't hear that bass as well at low volumes and gives you a more realistic reading of the SPL that we actually hear with our ears.

dB(A) rolls off a LOT of the lows. dB(C) doesn't roll off near as much. The high frequency roll off on these is reasonably similar, but still different. dB(A) is generally more effective for lower level sounds where our ears are less sensitive to low frequencies. At around 85dB our ears really start picking up in their ability to hear lower frequencies quite significantly and it gets pretty flat (in comparison). At the higher levels a C weighting might be more appropriate.

These weightings are all VERY approximate. Our ears are just too complicated to really make a perfect standard that works for everyone.

Jeff, I don't agree that C is necessarily better for music as such. All the weightings are based off the fletcher munson curves which were based around pure tones. Bob Katz uses C for his monitor calibrations and I'm guessing that's because he calibrates to 83dB, where our response gets reasonably flat. If you were calibrating to 70dB, an A weighting could be much more appropriate as a C weighting would result in a much higher dB level than you actually hear.

I did these tests a while ago now and on reflection I should have probably done them at C, or have done both. The meter is no longer available to me. The C would have told me much higher.

Ahh, the world is so approximate! I'm study engineering so I see approximates of EVERYTHING every day! Some wild approximations. The world can't be modelled, only approximated. If I was famous, I would make that my quote...

Ahh, the world is so approximate! I'm study engineering so I see approximates of EVERYTHING every day! Some wild approximations. The world can't be modelled, only approximated. If I was famous, I would make that my quote...

Great quote Matt.  One of the first steps of any engineering calc, - list your assumptions!  and man can those assumptions be dodgy eh?!

I usually mix at 80db - 83db SPL on the C setting.

Mike

Precise values aren't important. What's important is that you settle on a level and use it consistently.

bitflipper


Precise values aren't important. What's important is that you settle on a level and use it consistently.

true. Even more so, the results are all that metter.