Perception of 'Loud'

[Low End Bee]

I thought we were quiet to medium. Happy Jack think otherwise.

[JTUK]

LOUD is too loud and loud is for ear plugs.
Why you should be wanting to go further than this is beyond me as
the audience probably doesn't have ear plugs anyway.

I will not put up with mush anymore..and my ears can't take it.
The one bonus we have of our old drummer leaving is that our ears..
and the audience gets a rest. It is no compliment when the first thing
people say about you is...oh that loud band..

I have 400w, 550 and 750w rigs and the latter two get taken
out to the appropriate gigs now, IMO. But I also know
that because of the way I play...virtually everyone will get more
volume out of my rigs than I ever will.

I turn the amp up to a certain volume and that is that... I don't see the point of
going louder if the mix has gone..and no ones ears will thank you for it either..

[TimR]

[quote name='MoJo' timestamp='1371211778' post='2111242']


What I find is that to get to a comfortable level where the bass is sitting nicely under the guitars and balanced to the drums, the master control on my head is on '5'. Turning up beyond that produces little more in the way of volume. I was kind of expecting my master to be on 2 or 3 leaving me plenty of headroom. Despite the H&K head claiming to be 600w and the Schroeder claiming to be very efficient, I seem to be driving the amp quite hard just to get to gig level where I thought I'd just be tickling it.
[/quote]

As I say, it's all about frequencies. You 2x12" will have excellent bass response due to coupling of the speakers and good excursion. All the power will be going where you want it, into the bass frequencies which don't sound loud. Put the same power into something that is strongly EQd in the 1000-2000Hz region and has no bottom end because of poor excursion so that's all EQd out then all that power is going into a frequency region that will be painfully loud.

It's why people keep harping on here about boosting the mids to cut through.

[cytania]

The whole point of bass is to mesh in with the drums and become one big groove engine.

[stingrayPete1977]

If I needed more than my 4ohm 2x12 and 900watt head because of the drummer I'd be off, don't care which famous musicians he has deafened in the past

[Damonjames]

I will stand corrected here, but there is a genuine misunderstanding about the relationship between watts and loudness. A Watt is an electrical unit of energy calculated by multiplying amps ( as in ampere NOT amplifier 😜) by volts ( if memory serves). What it does not take into account is HOW it transfers this electrical energy into mechanical energy eg its efficiency. An extremely efficient rig will sound significantly "louder" than an extremely inefficient rig of the same wattage.
Frequency also has a lot to do with perception, higher frequencies are usually perceived as "louder" than a lower frequency of the same dB spl.
But I'm getting too technical. I've found if anyone can actually hear a bass player, it's usually perceived as too loud 😀

[grandad]

85dBA ->140dBA.