For those few who are inquiring about 0dB on their AVR. Besides watching movies, Mrs K and I listen to a lot of music especially 5.1 surround sound and a few Dolby Atmos music titles that have become available such as The Beatles'
Abbey Road BD or R.E.M.'s
Automatic For The People BD. As Amir pointed out, there is no specified reference level for music, only movies.
I never need to turn my AVR MV to 0dB because it's too loud for our ears. However, I have tried it and I don't hear any distortion. The key is to calibrate such that 0dB MV is equivalent to 75dB SPL at the MLP which is the reference for HT movies.
With much appreciated guidance from
@Srrndhound (Roger Dressler on avsforum where I originally posted this). I calibrated my HT setup as follows:
Using this SPL meter I purchased on amazon (no longer available but you can find similar models):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003ZQDEV8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
1) Set the SPL meter to C weighting and SLOW response.
2) Hold the SPL meter pointing at the ceiling at ear level at the Main Listening Position.
3) Set the Master Volume on the AVR to 0dB.
4) Using the AVR's internal test tones, adjust the SPL of each speaker to 75dB.
5) After setting the SPL for all 9 speakers (in my case) and Sub to 75dB, i verified the SPL's with the Spears & Munsil HD Benchmark rev2 disc. Of course, it does not provide test tones for the Atmos speakers.
6) As a second check, I used the 2015 Dolby Demo disc and measured that it's test tones were recorded 10dB higher (per Roger) than the Spears & Munsil disc for all speakers.
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