Loudness Button pro or con?

[Squishman]

For music or anything else with my vintage Marantz system (described below in my sig) should a guy have the loudness button engaged? Obviously it would be my preference, but just wondering what the general consensus is regarding that button. Does it tend to muddy up the sound? I don't hear any difference at my usual listening level. Am I correct to assume it's for lower volume anyway?

 

[TLS Guy]

For music or anything else with my vintage Marantz system (described below in my sig) should a guy have the loudness button engaged? Obviously it would be my preference, but just wondering what the general consensus is regarding that button. Does it tend to muddy up the sound? I don't hear any difference at my usual listening level. Am I correct to assume it's for lower volume anyway?

Loudness buttons are an abomination and have no place. They boost bass and treble the more you lower the volume. I never used them.

 

[Trell]

As TLS writes the loudness button can work pretty bad for reasons the pro audio manufacturer RME explains in the quote. For me a good loudness implementation is useful because I generally listen at lower volumes, though sometimes I turn it off, depending on content.

Audyssey room EQ has Dynamic Loudness that generally works well but is based upon you first having done a calibration and is configurable to a certain degree with setting a Reference Level Offset form 0 dB. So bass/treble is only added when below RLO.

The RME DACs have a loudness feature that also works well and is quite configurable to taste and circumstances. The following is from the manual for the RME ADI-2 DAC FS:

>>>Another legacy of HiFi amplifiers: there has not been a single one missing a feature called Loud-
ness. It tries to address the changes in frequency-dependent hearing sensitivity over different
volume levels. If one listens to music loud, then drops the level by at least 20 dB, sound loses
punch and glitter. HiFi amps tried to fight this effect by adding more bass and treble the lower the
volume was set. Unfortunately that never worked as intended, and just became an additional
bass/treble booster. Reason: the manufacturer of the HiFi amp could not know what volume any
position of the volume knob equals at the customer’s home. Room size, room dampening and
efficiency of the used speakers are all unknown.

But the effect of loss in perceived sound exists (read about the Fletcher-Munson curves), and can
be easily reproduced with any serious gear by comparing normal volume and DIM state (usually
-20 dB). The ADI-2 DAC offers Loudness for the analog stereo outputs, and probably is the first
time that Loudness works as intended. The user can decide how much maximum gain in Bass
and Treble should occur at lower volume settings. The user also sets the Low Vol Reference,
where maximum gain is achieved. After extensive tests a 20 dB range has been defined as range
for maximum gain to no gain while increasing volume. That seemed to be the perfect definition of
the range that needs to be addressed by Loudness. <<<

 

[Squishman]

Obviously it would be my preference.........

What I meant was it would be my preference if I used it or not. Not saying my preference was to use it because I was always suspicious of it. Even back in the 70's! Glad TLS Guy confirmed what I suspected all along.

 

[highfigh]

Loudness buttons are an abomination and have no place. They boost bass and treble the more you lower the volume. I never used them.

Yes, because human hearing sensitivity decreases in the bass and treble as the level decreases. That's not useful for all systems, but it is for many.

FWIW- Yamaha had a variable loudness control that WAS useful, especially when using smaller speakers.

You need to allow people to use what works for them.

 

[davidscott]

My current HK 3490 doesn't have one so not even a choice for me. I never used one even when I had it, but I can see the possible benefit if you listen at low volume.

 

[ski2xblack]

Yes, it is intended for low level listening.

Pro or con? Well, the fact is that human hearing is not linear in it's sensitivity to certain frequencies at different spls, nor are all recordings played back at the same levels intended by whoever did the production work, nor do the multitude of speaker sensitivities and voicings and end user listening habits coincide with those intended levels. For those that feel that eq of any sort is bad, perhaps peruse chap 4 of Toole's book.

A simple loudness button as used on lots of retro gear was merely a fixed bass boost completely independent of the volume control. Some kit tied the amount of loudness eq to the volume control, e.g. Adcom did this back in the '80's. Some added offset trims to allow more control of how much loudness eq is applied, e.g. the currently available retro looking Outlaw integrated amp offers this, as does Audyssey DEQ. Yamaha completely isolates the loudness eq from the volume control in their two channel kit (I agree w/ @highfigh that their approach 'got it right', it's quite useful...particularly for speakers like the OP's LaScalas).