So What Can Be Done About It?
Why?
What Do the Pros Do?
Why the range from 79–85 dB SPL?
Where Do I turn up?
Basic Speaker Setup
DIY Very (Very) Basic Level Calibration
Calibration “Lite” for Stereo and 2.1
Conclusion
Learn acoustics to recording, reverb to mastering, audio editing to mastering in the Audio Concepts series by Joe Albano in the AskAudio Academy here.
Discussion
If we need to worry about this risk,
Since this is a mixing reference volume, remember to turn down when listening to commercially mastered music, films, or internet content, because this -20 dB headroom has been deliberately removed—a commercial CD could be as much as 15 dB (RMS) louder and damage your speakers or worse yet your ears.
Why don't we calibrate our speakers to an even lower SPL? If we are calibrating with a -20 dB FS sample, yet most music is trying to hit 0 dB, why not calibrate to 50/60 dB SPL, so that when your music or any reference material is played at unity (in your DAW), you're actually hearing it at 70-80 dB SPL? Is this just silly? What am I missing?
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