Hi Paul,
I thought I'd pay attention to this myself, because maybe I'm a loner in never observing such things. But even after these days since your post, I forgot to do it.
I
think I work differently;
I can't be sure, but I feel that I like to listen to reality levels. Otherwise things just don't fit. So although I play fairly loud, generally (think 90dBSPL), I don't play loud for it being loud. Not with rock and even not with "dance". Actually it is so that usually I am highly disturbed by too loud because one can't talk anymore.
I can tell you that it happened two times that I was forced to listen to very loud, in my own listening room. One time was the beautiful guy Bert brought along who wanted to listen to classical at 110dBSPL levels (I'm not kidding you) and the other time was our friend Nick who wanted listen to IIRC Griffin at those levels.
At such a time I think that people must have a kind of brain damage to want that in the first place, or otherwise they get braindamage from it.
If anything, it goes the other way around over here;
Take a guy like Jeffrey Garland. Not really my style because to neat and beautiful, but listenable anyway because of the higher quality of the recordings (in my view). Along with that comes the better cymbal. Now :
What starts to be problematic (and a couple of years ago I anncouned it to be there one day) is that when we play at reality levels, which for such (say folk-rock) music could be the normal acoustical levels like a piano which plays at 90dBSPL, then the cymbal is 110dBSPL when hit hard(er). This is NOT nice, as is it not nice to be in the room when our Paul is practicing his drumming. So no matter the 110dB is reality levels for a cymbal, it is too loud. This means that the piano has to play softer first, so the cymbal becomes acceptable.
And this is not a very good thing (for progress) ...
What I find with RAM-OS now is that playing classical and particularly chamber music, jazz etc. I do the opposite.
You better find out the why instead of making up something like better subtlety, which is a drag reason if you ask me. If those guys play life in front of you, you're not going to ask whether they can play softer, so the subtlety can be heard better. Of course, when Griffin kneels in front of you with 110dB then I would ask that too. But ...
So, funny, but last night I quit a Jazz album because I thought it was too dynamical for my "loudness". Well, maybe not for me, but for the family. So you know, those guys with brushes, wheeling and dealing along, you adjusting the volume to that, while a real stick is sneaked in and the snare is hit hard. Putting the volume down does NOT work.
I started to obtain all the Charly Antolini's because it works so really well now (as I said elsewhere, I don't nee my own drumming recording any more to listen to real drums), but with that too, in the second album I threw it out because things go too loud (read : unexpectedly and too dynamically - just like in real life).
This looks like complaining, but it surely is not. I more often throw out albums for many reaons. I now just found another reason (for other albums). Anyway, I think that for me too the volume went down a tad but despite my desription above, I think it can be related to me never ever explicity listening; really never. So for me it is 100% of times background music, never mind that plays at ~90dBSPL to begin with. Already the realism of a snare drum is diturbing somewhat (for now it keeps on attracting my attention), let alone that the recording is really the better one, combined with the drummer playing dynamically (mind you, a random rocker does NOT).
I hope this makes sense. But I have something like :
Welcome to the new world.Peter
