actual sound levels in real life scenarios: I sometimes measure sound levels in my living room with nice audiophile equipment, and I also listen to classical music concert halls. I use the NIOSH. app on my iPhone 13 and I calibrated it against a DBA sound meter. It’s accurate to within a few dBs for average levels, although I don’t know if it captures peaks as well as a dedicated sound meter. Nevertheless, I think the levels are close enough for this discussion. In my quiet living room with no traffic outside, and with my furnace fan turned off, the lowest level I can get is 30 dB. the loudest I listen to is 95 dB but I’m scared of damaging my hearing, so I typically listen at 80 to 85 dBs. So that would give me a practical range of about 50 to 55 dB for typical listening. A Typical classical piece rarely has this range. I find that a piece that has a full orchestra at one extreme and a single pianissimo note from violin or a woodwind instrument at the other end to be 30 or 40 dB maximum range. The situation in a live performance is even worse. With all the noise that goes on in a concert hall, I find that the floor is closer 50 dB. A full orchestra may generate 95 or even 100 dB. Similarly, a practical dynamic range of 40-50 dB. For this practical range, 96 dBs is already overkill for high quality systems in high-quality quiet rooms. Incidentally, even vinyl can capture practical range that most people would want to listen to. So, given our listening environments and the new to preserve our hearing for our old age, I think 16-bit recordings are more than enough. Leave the higher resolutions to the Audio engineers, who need them for headroom, but for listeners, 16 bit is just fine.
actual sound levels in real life scenarios: I sometimes measure sound levels in my living room with nice audiophile equipment, and I also listen to classical music concert halls. I use the NIOSH. app on my iPhone 13 and I calibrated it against a DBA sound meter. It’s accurate to within a few dBs for average levels, although I don’t know if it captures peaks as well as a dedicated sound meter. Nevertheless, I think the levels are close enough for this discussion. In my quiet living room with no traffic outside, and with my furnace fan turned off, the lowest level I can get is 30 dB. the loudest I listen to is 95 dB but I’m scared of damaging my hearing, so I typically listen at 80 to 85 dBs. So that would give me a practical range of about 50 to 55 dB for typical listening. A Typical classical piece rarely has this range. I find that a piece that has a full orchestra at one extreme and a single pianissimo note from violin or a woodwind instrument at the other end to be 30 or 40 dB maximum range. The situation in a live performance is even worse. With all the noise that goes on in a concert hall, I find that the floor is closer 50 dB. A full orchestra may generate 95 or even 100 dB. Similarly, a practical dynamic range of 40-50 dB. For this practical range, 96 dBs is already overkill for high quality systems in high-quality quiet rooms. Incidentally, even vinyl can capture practical range that most people would want to listen to. So, given our listening environments and the new to preserve our hearing for our old age, I think 16-bit recordings are more than enough. Leave the higher resolutions to the Audio engineers, who need them for headroom, but for listeners, 16 bit is just fine.