Why Did Loudness Buttons Go Away?

[watchnerd]

Audyssey is a step in the right direction but it is still a Volume pot controlled solution. In these days and ages, it is possible to implement a correct, configurable Loudness control. . More than doable, have a mike always plugged in, evaluating the SPL in question and adjusting the EQ according to Fletcher-Munson equal loudness curves and perform the necessary corrections.... Bang & Olufsen (the brand so derided by audiophiles but whose speakers will mop the floor with many audiophiels darlings) seem to have such a solution...

Doesn't the Apple Homepod, with is built in mics, have this feature?

 

[JJB70]

I think that Restorer John hit the nail on the head, elements of the subjective press and boutique suppliers managed to create a culture within which amplifier controls should be limited to an on/off button and a volume control. To preserve "purity", in an example of complete bonkersness the same crowd who condemn tone controls, loudness buttons etc because of the ruinous degradation of signal path purity love coloured sound. No, I can't figure out how any intelligent person could propose that hardwiring EQ into an amp at the same time as omitting tone controls to preserve purity could make sense either. It is a contradiction that sits in the "you couldn't make it up" category.

 

[anmpr1]

WTH is an orthodynamic headphone?

In the mid to late '70s Yamaha marketed a brace of open back dynamic headphones, models HP-1 and HP-2. Designed by, I believe, Italdesign (Giorgetto Giugiaro's house--the man responsible for many automobile classics from Ferrari to the VW Golf). Yamaha headphones were lightweight, very comfortable, and provided good sound, given the usual thing out there that sold at their price point (such as the ubiquitous over the ear Koss models). They didn't have deep bass, but rather an 'airy' sound. Not as detailed as the much more expensive Stax, or even Audio-Technica electret phones. But they were excellent value. I owned an HP-2. Like any headphone, the cords eventually failed; I don't recall that there was a way to easily replace them, and by then Yamaha had moved on to something else, so my cans wound up in the can.

 

[mitchco]

It is too bad as a well done loudness control compensates for our ears decreasing sensitivity to bass as volume goes down. From a sound production side, our ears are, relatively speaking, the most flat around 80 to 85 dB SPL. Recording, mixing and mastering engineers usually have an SPL meter in hand while making the final tonal balance at 80 to 85 dB SPL so that the ratio of bass to mids to high frequencies sound balanced. In the case of highly compressed pop or rock, 75 to 77 dB SPL seem to be the norm.

JRiver has a rudimentary loudness control that works pretty good. While listening at low volumes for background music, it still sounds balanced like listening at reference level.

 

[somebodyelse]

Doesn't the Apple Homepod, with is built in mics, have this feature?

As I understand it, yes, among other things. Someone who was trying to measure the Homepod immediately after it was released said it was a nightmare. No, I don't have a link to the article.

 

[digitalfrost]

The BrutefirDRC plugin for the squeezebox ecosystem has a loudness mode that uses replay gain to set the loudness level.

View attachment 32555.

Wow. That is so clever. If I have an SPL meter for my speakers, I can set this up perfectly.

 

[DonH56]

IIRC, "orthodynamic" == planar magnetic drivers.

My Emotiva XMC-1 has a loudness function that supposedly tracks the F-M curves. Like others I have had, it tends to crank the bass too much at the modest levels at which I normally listen. And I agree (of course) with the rest that loudness controls, along with tone controls, were a fatality of the purist "straight wire with gain" approach back in the 70's/80's that just got worse. Nothing must alter the sound, unless of course it is your power cable or what-not.

To emulate with PEQ, use a very low Q (~octave-wide, broad) bass boost around 100 Hz or so and a broad (low-Q) treble boost up around 3-5 kHz or so, with the bass a little higher than the treble, and adjust to preference. You may want to take the bass down an octave to center at 50 Hz or so. You can play around with it a bit to find a curve you like (at a given SPL).

 

[Juhazi]

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/yamaha_orthodynamic_headphone_hp.html
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/yamaha-hp-1.28430/

So, normal ferrite-magnet dynamic with open back. I didn't have those but similar open backs
(I was wrong, look at Watchnerd's post below)

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/sennheiser-hd414
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/wow-sennheiser-hd-540-reference-are-so-good.670255/

 

[Dogen]

I think that Restorer John hit the nail on the head, elements of the subjective press and boutique suppliers managed to create a culture within which amplifier controls should be limited to an on/off button and a volume control. To preserve "purity", in an example of complete bonkersness the same crowd who condemn tone controls, loudness buttons etc because of the ruinous degradation of signal path purity love coloured sound. No, I can't figure out how any intelligent person could propose that hardwiring EQ into an amp at the same time as omitting tone controls to preserve purity could make sense either. It is a contradiction that sits in the "you couldn't make it up" category.

The cash register doesn’t ring for manufacturers when you press a loudness button. They’d rather sell you something to tailor the sound (even if ineffective).

 

[Blumlein 88]

I think restorer-john is correct they went away due to reviewer's quest for a pure signal path. OTOH, when I say they usually weren't right other than one volume, most gear with Loudness, sounded poor at most lower volumes. The Tact gear did use Fletcher-Munson curves to implement it the proper way and it worked really well. You could make changes in the curves used at each 10 db of level as some people have odd response in their hearing or maybe their speakers do. I do remember seeing an Audio Research preamp which was a first for me seeing a preamp with no bass/treble and no balance controls. It became the norm not too many years thereafter.

I find it interesting back when there were good reasons to alter signals, everything ended up in a hair shirted purity with as little in the path as possible at least in expensive gear. Today we see just the reverse when digital is nigh on audibly perfect, the expensive gear is selling you extra conditioning parts to "fix digital soiund". You can't connect a USB cable without special filters, power supplies for the cable and on and on forever. The idea of the most pure connection is no more. People don't even want to play back at native sample rates for the recordings wishing to do special upsampling and/or non-standard filtering. Digital purity is seen as so crude as to be unthinkable.

 

[watchnerd]

In the mid to late '70s Yamaha marketed a brace of open back dynamic headphones, models HP-1 and HP-2. Designed by, I believe, Italdesign (Giorgetto Giugiaro's house--the man responsible for many automobile classics from Ferrari to the VW Golf). Yamaha headphones were lightweight, very comfortable, and provided good sound, given the usual thing out there that sold at their price point (such as the ubiquitous over the ear Koss models). They didn't have deep bass, but rather an 'airy' sound. Not as detailed as the much more expensive Stax, or even Audio-Technica electret phones. But they were excellent value. I owned an HP-2. Like any headphone, the cords eventually failed; I don't recall that there was a way to easily replace them, and by then Yamaha had moved on to something else, so my cans wound up in the can.

Oh....orthodynamic is what they used to call planar-magnetic in the olden days....

 

[watchnerd]

I think restorer-john is correct they went away due to reviewer's quest for a pure signal path. OTOH, when I say they usually weren't right other than one volume, most gear with Loudness, sounded poor at most lower volumes. The Tact gear did use Fletcher-Munson curves to implement it the proper way and it worked really well. You could make changes in the curves used at each 10 db of level as some people have odd response in their hearing or maybe their speakers do. I do remember seeing an Audio Research preamp which was a first for me seeing a preamp with no bass/treble and no balance controls. It became the norm not too many years thereafter.

I find it interesting back when there were good reasons to alter signals, everything ended up in a hair shirted purity with as little in the path as possible at least in expensive gear. Today we see just the reverse when digital is nigh on audibly perfect, the expensive gear is selling you extra conditioning parts to "fix digital soiund". You can't connect a USB cable without special filters, power supplies for the cable and on and on forever. The idea of the most pure connection is no more. People don't even want to play back at native sample rates for the recordings wishing to do special upsampling and/or non-standard filtering. Digital purity is seen as so crude as to be unthinkable.

The unfolding origami layers of MQA is the zenith of the zeitgeist that with more digital complexity, comes better sound.

 

[RayDunzl]

Why did loudness buttons go away?

Maybe because today's (and the last 20 years or so) popular music comes pre-loudened from the store.

 

[ernestcarl]

It is too bad as a well done loudness control compensates for our ears decreasing sensitivity to bass as volume goes down. From a sound production side, our ears are, relatively speaking, the most flat around 80 to 85 dB SPL. Recording, mixing and mastering engineers usually have an SPL meter in hand while making the final tonal balance at 80 to 85 dB SPL so that the ratio of bass to mids to high frequencies sound balanced. In the case of highly compressed pop or rock, 75 to 77 dB SPL seem to be the norm.

JRiver has a rudimentary loudness control that works pretty good. While listening at low volumes for background music, it still sounds balanced like listening at reference level.

I have jRiver's loudness control enabled in certain "zones" while disabled in others. I particularly like it with some headphones, and it's easy enough to disable with just two clicks of a mouse button. I do setup a reference volume level, max level, and startup level for each zone so I don't blow my eardrums.

 

[riker1384]

A lot of modern Bluetooth speakers and similar things have the opposite problem. They have a loudness contour built in, but what they need is a button to turn it off. Some bass boost sounds good when you're listening to music at low volume, but it is annoying when you're listening to a podcast and all the voices are boomy, or when you're trying to play music without people in other rooms being able to hear it.

 

[anmpr1]

Oh....orthodynamic is what they used to call planar-magnetic in the olden days....

Yes. Those are the ones. Again, mine fell apart, but I got a lot of use out of them. Really comfortable. I recall some early phones from Pioneer, I think. They weighed a ton, gave you a headache, but had a nice heavy coiled cord and some volume controls on the ear mold. The Yamaha were the exact opposite of that sort.

 

[Dj7675]

My favorite approach is a variable loudness knob (instead of a button). McIntosh Preamps and Integrated amps had them. The last few years I used a few units with it and it works really well. With the knob you can set the about of loudness compensation you want. And when it is at 0, it is taken out of the path.

 

[NoxMorbis]

Couldn't you just create an EQ preset for a specific listening level, then switch it back for whatever? I've been thinking about doing that because mostly I listen to my music very low, and the bass does get lost.

I, too, remember those 70s and 80s loudness buttons/dials and they really did work well, at least on my limited receivers ( I think I had an Yamaha R700, but I remember it having 70wpc not 50 like the R700).

 

[Doodski]

Couldn't you just create an EQ preset for a specific listening level, then switch it back for whatever? I've been thinking about doing that because mostly I listen to my music very low, and the bass does get lost.

That would work very well.

 

[NoxMorbis]

That would work very well.

Cool! Gonna do that soon!