On Sun, Aug 03, 2008 at 05:38:17PM +0100, Steven Chamberlain wrote: > Under the K-20 system, it seems the maximum SPL when monitoring with two > speakers would be a scary 106 dB(C) This would happen if you have a sine wave going up to the maximum peak level. At that point the meter would indicate +20dB, and be rather reddish. For anything else the DPM indication is not a good indication of the real SPL. The K-20 scale is designed to be used for music that has a natural dynamic range, e.g. classical or any truly 'unplugged' genre, and that is not or only very lightly compressed. 0 dB on the meter should correspond to the loudest parts of the music, and the average level would be lower, i.e. well below 83 db(C). The 20 dB headroom above this is for transient peaks that must be reproduced without limiting or clipping. > I think the K-14 system might be more to my own taste. I believe it keeps > the 83 dB(C) reference level, but with peaks up to 100 dB(C) in a > two-speaker setup. Sustained exposure for 2 hours even at the maximum > level should still be safe as per the OSHA limits, but of course that level > should rarely be reached anyway. The K-14 (and K-12) scales are for music that is more agressively compressed and limited. If modulated to average 0 dB on the K-14, that will be acutally sound somewhat more loud than the uncompressed version using the K-20 scale. You seem to make the mistake that using a K-meter you are supposed to use it as a DPM, trying to get out the maximum. That is not the case, the idea is that the loudest parts of you program should indicate around 0 dB on the RMS scale. -- FA Laboratorio di Acustica ed Elettroacustica Parma, Italia O tu, che porte, correndo si ? E guerra e morte ! _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
