noise level of our rooms and sound pressure level of music playback

have you ever checked these?
what if the room noise level measures 90db while music is played back at like level? music playback shall be how much louder to present itself conducively?

can noise floor of hifi equipment be measured with any ordinary spl meter?
has room noise be mistaken as noise floor of equipment?



cheers

room noise measured ~45db and with airconditioner, it was ~52db which means ~7db noisier
airconditioner added ~7db noise?
Pardon my ignorance :">

noise measurement is not like simple addition. If the aircond running measured 52dB on the SPL , then even if the other background noise of 45 dB was removed, the running aircond would still measure 52dB on an SPL meter.

mugenfoo gave the right answer

If your background noise is 90dB, you need to move house. Sustained noise at that level will damage your hearing!

10 violins playing at 80db don't add up to 800db, but do they measure higher than 80db? i guess not but why louder sound perceived? or it is there increased loudness? if 1 of the violins plays at 5db louder, you think the spl would show "85db"?

i THINK each sound source could be an entity perse churning out spl "independent" of each other thus spl of any instrument is perceived in its very own right eg a violin and piano simultaneously playing at 80db and 82db respectively shall be perceived of their spls in their very own right, but not any combined spl so to speak!!!

hypothetically when room noise is removed from any given listening room, music enjoyment therein is surely of higher quality due to least sonic contamination


emm... i have just come to think about this noise matter and thus come to realise more, lots of thanks to mgf and dr for answering




regards

Hi TLKoo,

When 1 loudspeaker is playing at 80dB, two will be about 83dB. In your example that will be about 90dB if they are playing identical sound. When you use different sound for each then it will be negligibly lower than 90dB. You can find the online calculators at sengpielaudio.com to do the math.

Generally, human hearing perception discards sound that is masked by a louder sound. This is something to do with psychoacoustics and masking. So as per you example if your music is at 60dB and you have 10 different source making 52dB noise. Your 60dB music would have been masked by the noise at about 63dB.

Studio noise level is about 20 to 30dB. Most music rooms are around 36dB or lower and that is largely due to the air conditioner noise. If your music dynamic range contains information below the threshold of room noise than it matters because you won't be hearing them.

Most high-ender with a dedicated room benefit from lower room noise because they could hear details, which would otherwise masked by the "higher" room noise. Even your ordinary CD player played in dedicated quiet room will bring out extra details.

ST

thanks for the explanations
no need detailed calculations but some basic conceptual understanding...



regards