[0:00]What if I told you that a $150 thrift store receiver and $80 streamer is doing something that a $3,000 integrated amplifier refuses to do. And the people that made that decision knew exactly what they were taking away from you. There was a movement and a decision. And it was dressed up as progress. So today you're going to figure out one, what was taken, two, why it's making your music sound worse, and why fixing it might cost you less than a tank of gas.
[0:30]There's a bit of a myth built into audio file culture that says this. If your system sounds wrong, you need better equipment. Even if your system doesn't sound wrong, if you don't know what your system sounds like compared to other systems, you need better equipment. Maybe the cables, maybe the digital to analog converter, maybe the amplifier, maybe the speakers. But what no one actually tells you is it might not be your equipment at all. It might be your biology. How your ears actually hear the music. Could be how loud you're listening to your favorite music like Will Smith's Big Willy style. And the Hifi industry has spent the last 50 years, for the most part, slowly removing the tool that fixed it all.
[1:10]The assumption that drove audio engineering for years was fairly simple. If you turn something down, it's quieter. But it sounds the same. A smaller version of the same thing. This is how your lights work. You have a dimmer, same light, just less of it. But that's completely wrong when it comes to music and hearing things in general. But two big brains at Bell Labs figured something out in a quiet room. And what they found changed everything.
[1:43]Harvey Fletcher and Wilden Munson, they weren't trying to improve hifi. They were trying to fix telephone transmission. So, they did a test, they put people in a room with tones at different frequencies and at different volumes. And they asked them to plot out what they heard. And the results showed something remarkable. At lower listening levels, the human ear dramatically rolls off its sensitivity. To base, to upper treble. The ear is not a microphone. It's a biological system that hooks up to your brain. And it's not subtle, the implications were staggering, and remember, this was for talking on telephones. But the audio industry took a few years before they actually did anything about it.
[2:32]So let's talk about what the Fletcher Munson curve actually does to the signal. Because saying it boosts the base is kind of lazy. Between 60 to 100 hertz, get this, is about 50 to 20 DB lower than what you hear at 1k, which is right in the middle of the mid-range. And between 8 to 10k, which is treble, you're going to be hearing a drop between 4 to 6 DB. Again, if you're not listening at reference level, which is 85 DB, so you remember. The mid-range, basically between 500 hertz to about 4k, is the most stable part of your hearing. So a correct loudness circuit isn't just boosting 60, 80, 100 hertz. It's a shelf EQ and then a lower lift in the treble region and nothing in the mid-range. So it's a bit of a sideways smile. The acceptable engineering solution was built around what's called a loudness tap on the volume potentiometer. But here's the elegant part, instead of it being actually a separate circuit that adds gain, the classical integration pulled the signal from a specific point partway down on the volume pot. Typically, that was placed around 30 to 40% of the volume range or the potentiometers rotation. And the fixed points around it were typically a capacitor, a resistor, and those were in a specific ratio to provide that shelving. And that loosely tracks what the ear needs to, well, hear things how you would hear them at 85 DB, but now it's at 65 DB. The problem is that to do that right, it takes, well, engineering, specific component matching, specific component value matching. You got to consider things like output impedance. You put it at the wrong point on the volume potentiometer, you use the wrong components, it's just not going to sound right. And that was kind of the excuse that a lot of the higher end audio file brands used for eliminating it altogether because it took careful consideration, design and implementation. Implementation, there we go. Too aggressive, sounds like crap. Too light, sounds like crap. So the whole cheap based boot, so the whole cheap, so this is a cheap based boost belief. Wasn't necessarily all wrong, but it definitely wasn't all right.
[4:59]The gold standard implementation came from a few manufacturers, specifically Yamaha. The CA800, 1000 and really even things to this day like the SA503, I think, have a variable loudness control. We'll talk about that a little bit more later. Sansui also took a similar approach with their U A series of receivers. Sansui also took a similar approach with their AU series of receivers. Pioneer did the same thing with their SA series. Luxman also does it. So you have manufacturers that care, they recognize the science, they're implementing it correctly. But a lot of people just, let's just do a cheap base boost.
[5:40]So all those curves, those tests, those things that people plotted out, what does it all mean for you? If you're listening to what most people would consider a comfortable level, let's say 65 to 70 DB, which is roughly a little bit louder than conversational volume. Your ear is rolling off the bass and the treble significantly versus what you would hear at 85 decibels, which is significantly louder. It's not just quieter, it's totally different. So the base that was mixed with care, the treble that was mixed with care, does not sound the same as 65 DB versus 85 DB, and it's not their fault. It's biology's fault. So in the 1950s, people in Hifi actually did something about it.
[6:27]In the 60s and 70s, the Hifi industry was a bit more, I don't know, scientifically honest, I guess. The engineers at Marantz, at Sansui, at Kenwood, read that research and did something about it. They understood at lower listening levels, we just weren't hearing the same thing that we were at louder listening levels. The ear needed help. So, they helped us. And they built it directly in their amplifiers, which is usually a button or a switch, called the loudness button, one of my favorite things in the whole world. You hit it, and all of a sudden, your music sounded more alive. It was a frequency response curve that boosted the base and boosted the treble, and it compensated exactly what Fletcher and Munson figured out when they were doing research for telephones. It was not a base boost. This was an actual correction. So why is that button not on serious amplifiers some in 2026?
[7:30]Well, in the late 1970s, the audio file press started developing a bit of a theory, or more importantly, a theology. Core belief was that an ideal amplifier is a straight wire with gain, nothing added, nothing removed. No tone control because EQ or any compensation, well, that's discoloration, that's distortion, and that's what cheap gear does. And certain press outlets, ones that were very well respected at the time, started vilifying the loudness control. They equated it with cheap gear for the peasants, not for the serious audio file. And high-end manufacturers responded quickly. A lot of products started coming out with no tone controls and no, importantly, loudness control. It was like a badge of honor, look what we removed and then you have to pay more for it. It became a symbol of the unsophisticated. But here's the part that should make you genuinely angry. The people that benefited most from removing that button, that switch, weren't the listeners. Now, the straight wire with gain philosophy wasn't necessarily wrong because there were terrible tone control circuit implementation, which genuinely degraded the music, genuinely added a ton of distortion. So the result for some equipment with poor implementation could be terrible. The problem was that the science, the research that developed this type of tone control, the loudness button, was thrown out like a baby with the bathwater. But there's also something that the manufacturers liked, less stuff that they had to implement, less parts, less engineering. And they could sit behind the badge of musical purity, which is kind of funny because the lack of engineering, the lack of care when it came to designing an amplifier was now equated to true audio file Nirvana. So, there's only one question, how does that apply today? How does it matter? And what does this mean for how we actually listen to music? The concept of reference level listening is a real thing, and it does matter in the proper context. Mastering engineers work at reference levels. Roughly 79 to 85 DB. Because that is the level at which the Fletcher Munson curves flatten out enough that basically everyone is hearing the same thing, or everyone is hearing what the mastering engineers intended. And by proxy, what the artist intended. So, the argument is, if you really want to hear what the artist and the engineers intended, you have to listen between 79 and 85 DB. The problem is most people actually don't.
[10:19]To see how loud you actually listen, you can download a free app called Decibel X. I get asked this all of the time in the comments and this is what it is, Decibel X. It's a free SPL meter that uses the microphone in your phone, which is kind of ironic because, you know, Fletcher and Munson worked for Bell Labs. Now you can use your phone for good. Now, if you actually listen at 75 to 85 DB all of the time, well then you don't need to worry about it. But what if you're watching television, what if you have something on in the background when you're doing dishes or where you're eating dinner? And you know you still need to have what the artist intended. Well then you need tone controls, you need a loudness control. Now some companies out there have actually implemented something, but they are charging a premium for it, room correction. Audy Z, dynamic EQ, Dirac, Yamaha actually has something called Yapo, and it's awesome. They've had it for a while actually. And what these do differently is it's dynamic, it's not just one switch, because even though the loudness control was awesome, it did have a problem. It applied the entire curve regardless of what listening level you were at. So, as you got closer to that 79 or 85 DB listening level, there was no adjustment in the curve, it was either on or off. Yamaha came up with a very elegant solution, it was a dynamic loudness control, or basically one that was variable. Yamaha went a step further, what you do is you turn the volume all the way up to the loudest that you will ever listen, and you leave the loudness control at nothing, zero. And then you actually control volume with the loudness controller. And if you don't believe me, look up some Yamaha owner's manuals. You'll see it. So, the loudness control got thrown out, but it was replaced with something that was actually better. The problem is, most people don't use this type of technology. And the true irony is this has been included in home theater receivers for a long time. This is actually included in very affordable streamers like the Weim Ultra or really any Weim product, because you can do room correction and there's actually just a toggle for loudness control. More importantly though, you can do it yourself depending upon how loud you actually listen. So, do the little test, figure out if you listen at 65, 70 DB, and then you can adjust that EQ just how you want it with your speakers, in your room with your hearing, with your music. The other elephant in the room is not everything was mastered by the same engineers. So what engineer A wanted you to hear at 85 DB is going to be different from engineer B. Regardless, it is a moving target. And if your amplifier doesn't have any loudness controls, you have no chance of hearing what they actually intended. If you're listening at 65 DB. I don't want this to be super complicated because for the most part, for decades, a simple loudness button or toggle improved things dramatically. But if you want to improve things even more, there's other tools out there. The funny thing, the funniest thing is though, the audio file market, for the most part, still hasn't addressed this issue because DSP is not really something that a lot of hardcore audio files like or use. But if you want the cheapest way to get the loudness control back, buy an $80 streamer and toggle the loudness control on. It's kind of fun though, because with free tools, you can actually figure out what's perfect for your room and your system. Or you can just run out and buy a $80 1982 realistic STA 2270. It's got a loudness button right here. So what is your experience? Do you like loudness? Do you like tone controls? Please put it in the comments. So here's the answer, if your hifi system seems thin at night, when your wife is sleeping or your spouse is sleeping or your children are sleeping, it's not your system's fault. It's physics, it's your brain. Really, it's a misnomer that's been adopted by the audio file market to sell you more expensive gear. But even if you buy that more expensive gear and you're not listening at the right levels, well, it's going to sound thin at night. Fletcher Munson Curves are 90 years old at this point. But the core finding has never changed. And the interesting thing is most of this goes back to survivability of the human being. We needed to hear things at night like a stick breaking. 2481 that's in upper mid-range and that's what we hear very well at lower volumes so we don't get killed by a wilderbeast, maybe, woolly mammoth, I don't know, sabertooth tiger. Just remember your ears are not a microphone. It is a system that works along with your brain. So listen at levels that you actually enjoy. Buy a cheap streamer, buy an older receiver. There's actually new products out there with loudness controls. Yamaha for the most part never stopped putting them in their products. My favorite Advanced Paris A12 Apex, the A10 Classic, they have loudness controls built in. If you bought something new and it has loudness control, please put it in the comments. So let me know what you think. Do you care? Do you use loudness control or do you just buy that super expensive receiver with no tone controls, no balance controls, no loudness controls and listen? Be like this video, maybe share it out to somebody that you think could benefit from it. And check out this video I just did about CD players and Blu-ray players. Yeah, I'll put it right here. Thanks for watching.
