Just for the sake of knowing...what SPL estimates Can Opener on an iPhone at six volume squares with the SE846 and a modern (loud) album?
I did some trials with SPL meters and it was in the 95 dB(A) RMS circa.
That's interesting elfary, because I'm getting numbers quite different from yours. I tried a few tracks that are consistently loud. Symphony X
Love them. But they only have one volume level. They play loud all the time and often have fairly poor dynamic range in their recordings. Going back and forth between Twilight in Olympus (Smoke and Mirrors) and Paradise Lost (title track), Can Opener's dosimeter reports my SPLs (no A weighting) ranging between 75 dB and 78 dB. Can Opener's readings are fairly consistent and within a couple of dB of the peaks I'm measuring (roughly 73 dB to 76 dB, also with no A-weighting). I got similar numbers using the loud sections from Steven Wilson's "Ancestral".
Just to be clear on my volume settings. I'm using an iPhone 6 and since Can Opener doesn't actually show those little volume squares (it shows its volume level as dB offset), I counted 6 increments up from silent, which does indeed show six volume squares once exiting the Can Opener app. I'm using modded blue filters and a Westone adventure cable (my silver litz cable would likely show higher SPLs, but only very marginally.) I'm using no EQ in Can Opener and crossfeed is bypassed. Something else must be creating the discrepancy between what we're both measuring. Which iPhone model are you using? What tracks are you measuring?
P.S. Whoops. I just discovered I made one bad mistake. I forgot I always used to set a volume limit on my iPhone (I don't use an iPhone anymore these days). Turning the volume limit off and going to volume level 6, I measure almost 80 dB. Curiously though, the numbers reported in Can Opener don't change.
