- if you really did boost the bass by 60db, I understand that your method pushes the music down to deal with the logical clipping that would occur in the bass. so that would mean getting the music 60db closer to the noise floor.
-it also would mean that you need to push the amp section 60db louder so that the mids are still at normal listening level.
Nope, your assumptions are way off, and seem to be based on theory, not practice. Let me explain.
In my latest post about my
new EQ presets, I specifically mention (in large bolded font, copied and pasted)...
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When setting the default precut for an EQ preset, the 32 Hz band can usually be ignored.
How amazed I was in May 2015 when I tried
dramatically lowering the volume precut level while playing the high bass increments in the old "Optimized" category -- even with the precut dropped all the way down to zero --
without the slightest bit of audible distortion on most songs! And this was with the 32 Hz band
maxed out at +24 dB. This made me realize that most song recordings have such a
tremendous deficit of low-end sub-bass that you can boost 32 Hz by a whopping
24 dB on your digital EQ,…
and there will still be a deficit without any clipping!
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But wait, it gets even better. With my latest setup, if I'm boosting the low-end by 59 dB (which would be the equivalent of the
9th bass increment in my new presets), here's how it all comes together:
-- The V-Moda M-100 headphones have a natural 8 dB of bass boost in their sound signature.
-- The Cayin C5 portable amp has a 5.5 dB bass boost switch.
-- Rockbox firmware has a +12 dB bass boost feature that's totally separate from the EQ and doesn't require any kind of volume precut.
So, right off the bat, we're already getting a 25.5 dB bass boost
without using the EQ. So, on top of that, the 9th bass increment (in these EQ presets) boosts 32 Hz by an equivalent of 33.5 dB. In this 9th bass increment, the 1-kHz-to-2-kHz "baseline" has been dropped to -9.5 dB. 32 Hz is maxed at +24 dB, and there's no volume precut.
However, I usually have to attenuate 4 kHz to -15.5 dB, 8 kHz to -20 dB, and the 16 kHz band all the way down to -24 dB (using the "Treble Out" subcategory) for the mids and highs to sound normal when using the 9th bass increment. Also bear in mind that the midbass in these presets have been greatly attenuated as well in order to counteract the large midbass spillover from the 25.5 dB of pre-EQ bass boosts.
So for all the 59 dB low-end boost that's going on, we're only talking about a
24 dB reduction in the overall volume. Because in practice, that's how it comes out when played through my system. And as for hiss noise while using this preset, I can only hear it a little during quiet parts of the song. It's totally drowned out otherwise.
Now, you have to ask yourself: when would I use the 9th bass increment? Well, I often use it on classic rock songs from the '70s and early '80s. (The "Hot" midbass category often sounds best with them.) Classic rock from 35 years ago -- and especially the original masterings -- need a tremendous low-end boost to sound good. As mentioned earlier in this thread, a lot of older masterings deliberately had their sub-bass reduced in the recordings to make them compatible to cut to vinyl.
Anyway, when I mentioned the studio engineer boosting 30 Hz by 40 dB in the last post, maybe in practice, he wouldn't actually need to reduce the rest of the frequencies by 40 dB. Maybe he'd only need to lower it by
20 dB to eliminate all the
audible clipping distortion.
There is theory, and there is practice. There often can be a world of difference between the two.
Here's another example: CD quality versus 192 kbps MP3. In theory (and especially if you look at all the graphs of bit data that's lost when converting to MP3), there should be a
huge loss in sound quality. But in practice, most people (myself included) can't notice any difference when listening.
Theory vs. practice, dude. In the end, it's always
practice that wins out.
so you have 2 possibilities:
1/ it doesn't work and that's why you're ok
2/ it works and you're doing something real dangerous to your ears(but I don't believe it's possible so you're probably in-between those 2 options)
It works great and my ears are OK.
you have never heard anything with the bass at full blast in real life. a guitar bass playing would be attenuated just the same if it was right in front of you. that leads to the very obvious reason why you like more bass: you like more bass!
As I said, it's actually a combination of the two. With a sound system, I make it sound
better than in real life!