Decibel ratings for music

[Kyblack76]

You can download the DD-1 tracks off of the D'Amore site I believe. If they're 103 dB, then you should be fine using the -15dB tone for your music of 89dB. I don't believe the 1dB difference between your music and the tone will hurt it at all.

i think he has SNOWS tracks loaded.. that are every bit as good....... what i use..

[ILuvJDM]

You can download the DD-1 tracks off of the D'Amore site I believe. If they're 103 dB, then you should be fine using the -15dB tone for your music of 89dB. I don't believe the 1dB difference between your music and the tone will hurt it at all.

never seen anyone that uses the -15 that dont know better.... just saying...

again, -15 is a relative number. -15 for my 89dB music is perfect. -15dB for a Bass Mekanik CD is not.

[reedal]

While I had a somewhat similar question about music being different in a recent post, and curious of how to make it all the same, I don't believe that I will use the program. I don't mind turning the volume down on songs, but the reason for my trying to figure out what I could do about my music being recorded at different levels than what I have set my gain with, was simply out of curiosity of how others avoid damaging their gear besides just turning it down. I only have a couple songs that make my subs stinky with gains set with the -10dB tone. But I might just tune it with a -7dB tone. While the majority of this thread was pointless in my eyes, you have answered a question for me. Thank you. Please post what you find out about the DD-1 dB levels. I would appreciate it for my own knowledge base

[MrSkippyJ]

If all of your music is the same volume just use the 0db track

[ILuvJDM]

If all of your music is the same volume just use the 0db track

I appreciate the advice

While I had a somewhat similar question about music being different in a recent post, and curious of how to make it all the same, I don't believe that I will use the program. I don't mind turning the volume down on songs, but the reason for my trying to figure out what I could do about my music being recorded at different levels than what I have set my gain with, was simply out of curiosity of how others avoid damaging their gear besides just turning it down. I only have a couple songs that make my subs stinky with gains set with the -10dB tone. But I might just tune it with a -7dB tone. While the majority of this thread was pointless in my eyes, you have answered a question for me. Thank you. Please post what you find out about the DD-1 dB levels. I would appreciate it for my own knowledge base

Will do. I downloaded the tracks but they're .wav instead of .mp3 so I'm trying to work around that currently.

[reedal]

You can download the DD-1 tracks off of the D'Amore site I believe. If they're 103 dB, then you should be fine using the -15dB tone for your music of 89dB. I don't believe the 1dB difference between your music and the tone will hurt it at all.

never seen anyone that uses the -15 that dont know better.... just saying...

Well all the cool guys with walls use it right? I mean how else am I going to hair trick.....

But I think for OP's music if all is set to 89dB, that will work if the -0dB tone is ~103dB. I certainly wouldn't for my music. I know damn well my shit would burn up in a heartbeat.

[Smoove]

Blame the music companies. I've asked this question before. Your tuning can't completely fix what they can't agree on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

The stages of the CDs loudness increase are often split over the three decades of the medium's existence. Since CDs were not the primary medium for popular music until the late 1980s, there was little motivation for competitive loudness practices then. CD players were also very expensive and thus commonly exclusive to high-end systems that would show the shortcomings of higher recording levels.

As a result, the common practice of mastering music involved matching the highest peak of a recording at, or close to, digital full scale, and referring to digital levels along the lines of more familiar analog VU meters. When using VU meters, a certain point (usually −14 dB below the disc's maximum amplitude) was used in the same way as the saturation point (signified as 0 dB) of analog recording, with several dB of the CD's recording level reserved for amplitude exceeding the saturation point (often referred to as the "red zone", signified by a red bar in the meter display), because digital media cannot exceed 0 decibels relative to full scale (dBFS). The average level of the average rock song during most of the decade was around −18 dBFS.^{[citation needed]}

1990s

In the early 1990s, CDs with louder music levels began to surface, and CD levels became more and more likely to bump up to the digital limit,^{[note 1]} resulting in recordings where the peaks on an average rock or beat-heavy pop CD hovered near 0 dB,^{[note 2]} but only occasionally reached it.^{[6][not in citation given]}

The concept of making music releases "hotter" began to appeal to people within the industry, in part because of how noticeably louder some releases had become and also in part because the industry believed that customers preferred louder sounding CDs, even though that may not have been true.^[7] Engineers, musicians, and labels each developed their own ideas of how CDs could be made louder.^{[citation needed]} In 1994, the digital brickwall limiter with look-ahead (to pull down peak levels before they happened) was first mass-produced. While the increase in CD loudness was gradual throughout the 1990s, some opted to push the format to the limit, such as on Oasis's widely popular album (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, which averaged −8 dBFS on many of its tracks—a rare occurrence, especially in the year it was released (1995). In 1997, Iggy Pop assisted in the remix and remaster of the 1973 album Raw Power by his former band The Stooges, driving the level to −4 dBFS in places.^[6]

[Broke_Audio_Addict]

It's .wav for a reason, mp3s suck.

[ILuvJDM]

Alright, I admit defeat. The method I was using did not work. I admit I was wrong but still don't understand why...? I can't find the post now, but during one of my extensive google searches I read a thread about MP3Gain that said the SPL shown in decibels in the program directly matches the SPL of music in decibels and any overlap (-5, -10, etc) would lower the SPL directly in the song by that amount. This lead me to believe that to achieve a "-5dB overlap" that I would need a 40hz tone at 84dB in my program, since 89dB is real music for me.

Anyways, I set the headunit at 0dB on the SMD CD, which didn't show any distortion at max volume (35/35), then went to the amp and tried to do the -15dB tone and I had to get a sliver away from completely maxed on the gain knob to see distortion, so I decided that wasn't correct. I switched to my 89dB file I made of the 1000hz tone and couldn't even get the signal light to pop up until I hit 35/35 volume. So scratched that idea as well. I went ahead and did the SMD CD at 0dB 40hz, 0dB 1000hz and then set the amp with 0db 1000hz (just mids amp at this time). I got great results with the DD1 and DMM (showed 21.4v which is about 110w out of my sundown 100.4). I ended up setting the headunit volume at 30/35 and then hooked up the speakers and everything sounded great. I didn't go past 25/35 because it gets too loud for my taste sitting in my driveway, but I'm sure at highway speeds or with the windows down it will sound great.

Either way, now that it's set, I can listen to any music I want at the same volume level and be alright. I will leave the 100.4 at 0dB and my sub amp will probably go to -5dB.

[Broke_Audio_Addict]

No way.