Loopy Pro: Create music, your way.
What is Loopy Pro? — Loopy Pro is a powerful, flexible, and intuitive live looper, sampler, clip launcher and DAW for iPhone and iPad. At its core, it allows you to record and layer sounds in real-time to create complex musical arrangements. But it doesn’t stop there—Loopy Pro offers advanced tools to customize your workflow, build dynamic performance setups, and create a seamless connection between instruments, effects, and external gear.
Use it for live looping, sequencing, arranging, mixing, and much more. Whether you're a live performer, a producer, or just experimenting with sound, Loopy Pro helps you take control of your creative process.
Download on the App StoreLoopy Pro is your all-in-one musical toolkit. Try it for free today.
Measure db loudness of headphone volume
I know you can switch on a db meter on the iPhone to measure if your headphone volume is too loud. This doesn’t work on my iPad and I want to know if I am listening to safe levels to protect the ears you know. I just can’t find a way to see how many db I am listening at. Safe levels should be around 70db, but how to know this? I can buy a db meter and stick it in my headphone, but I wonder if there is a more convenient option..
Comments
I suppose but i don't know if this notion falls down due to the logarithmic maths,,, that an approximation might be, if you play something in your iOS DAW maximized close to -1 dB full scale / true peak, and the headphones in question had a nominal SPL of 100 dB, then you would want the headphone output on your audio interface turned to -30 dB full scale / true peak,, maybe?
but this might be nonsense.
maybe an acoustician amongst us will enlighten.
basically i'm querying do the negative values on full scale (in the digital domain), translate in the opposite direction on a positive SPL scale relative to the max output of the gear being played back through. if that makes sense.
also begs the question are we talking about RMS averages or peaks, I don't know.
i might have to test this idea on the monitors one day and find out, so my monitors are spec'd as being 114dB SPL at one meter away, as the max output, so if I have a loudness limited master outputting at regular peaks of -1 and the audio interface master channel peaking regularly at -44, would I get a measurement one meter away of 70 dB SPL? I do not know, but gotta be worth a go.
whatever it is it will sound shockingly low, i think most of us are listening at unsafe levels for extended amounts of time. 70 is very conversational level (EDIT, ok 60 is actually conversation level, 70 is loud conversation level. cafe levels). for what its worth you can safely turn it up for deep listening checks for a few minutes at a time, just not hours and hours.
.
This is what I found.
Great to know
So, I bought a Decibel meter, and used the method in the youtube by sticking it through a piece of cardboard inside one side of my headphone. I can weight db A or db C on my meter. Db C is measuring much higher than A, but I don’t know the difference really. What metering should I use to know if my headphone volume is not too high, is it db A or C?
dB(A) basically filters out all low frequencies, so it is insensitive to bass. Unfortunately, while it is thus physically less relevant than dB(C) (which takes into account bass frequencies as well), it's probably the scale you'll have to use because all reference tables with noise levels are in dB(A).
(The reasoning behind filtering out the low frequencies in the dB(A) scale is the supposedly lower sensitivity of human hearing in that frequency range. Although this seems to vary widely between individuals. For example, for me personally, the flatter dB(C) scale much more accurately reflects how loud I perceive a sound than dB(A).)
Thank you for your reply. I already thought db A was too good to be true, so I do my measurements on the db C setting of my device. It works very well by the way, and gives a good idea at what leaves you are listening too.
This is the one I bought: https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B0BPBFRYL6?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
Sure. The problem is as mentioned that you won't find any references for dB(C) values.
I'm a bit skeptical about the accuracy or relevance of dB(A) values, even if widely accepted in the scientific community. For example, when a huge truck passes by my house, enough to cause vibrations and rattling the windows, a dB(A) noise meter will basically read nothing (< 40 dB(A), "Quiet library"). It's really quite baffling how this is used everywhere.
My pet "conspiracy theory" is that the "scientific community" is aware of the fact that modern society, especially road, rail and air traffic, are causing so much obvious and unhealthy noise pollution that they want to keep it out of public conscience by "inventing" totally nonsensical scales like dB(A) that explicitly ignore the problematic frequency ranges.
Smart eh? 😜
(They'll also essentially read zero for stuff like noise from wind farms)
True about those horrible wind farms. Greenwashing.
We live in a time we can’t even trust scientists anymore, too many hidden agendas.
And money flows 😉 (no, it's not a conspiracy theory, most research these days IS dependent on funding by organizations and institutions which choose whom to fund or not based on agendas. Sorry!)
Anyway, getting far too political...
wow, that's very interesing. a friend recently was playing (djing) a venue, and , being particular about sound was not happy that everything sounded scooped (mids), and far too bassy, but the venue engineer refused to rebalance. turns out that the high bass and no mids served them well for noise level meters and nearby residents and complaints handling, clearly then this was a case of db A being how they get around things. it made no sense to me when he told me coz we know how much its the other way round with bass being so much energy and so impossible to treat and really annoying for a resident. now it makes sense.
But it’s still a bummer that there is no db C safety data, it’s a bit of a wild guess now as I definitely don’t trust the db A levels for my ears. I think I am going to aim a bit higher than 70 db C, maybe 75, and will up it for deeper listening and mastering. But for general building a track I try to stay in the safe zone.
although, now admittedly i don't know exactly, given that db A is "weighted" to human hearing might that actually make sense? i admit i don't fully understand but the human ear, the hair cells that detect frequencies, start at the outer edge of the spiral with the highest frequencies and the further in to the ear you go you eventually get to the lowest frequencies, right? so a question then, if you're listening to bass and nothing else, at a loud exposure, does that damage (flatten) the same hairs the first ones in the ear that detect high frequencies? IE does it matter what frequencies are too loud, is it just that its the high frequencies that you end up destroying first no matter what frequencies you expose your ears to, or, is it that overexposure to particular frequencies flattens specific hairs responsible for that range? could it be that db A is perfectly correct as far as health is concerned? even if its misleading as far as actual perception of lower range sounds
A lot of questions, but to get these answered we need to ask an otolaryngologist (had to look that word up
)
those are my band mates. oto, larry, ngolo (plays football when not in the band), and err, gist? ok the last one is a lie.
Yes, @Bruques, hearing loss is largely frequency-specific due to the construction of the ear as an analog spectrum analyzer, as you described.
(for completeness sake: At some point, the noise will be loud enough to damage non-frequency-specific parts of the ear too obviously, like the eardrum itself or the little bones that connect it to the cochlea.)
Maybe the measurement method is not super precise, but it’s better than nothing. Nobody has a clue at what levels they are listening to without any measurements. And since we are working with audio (and most of us probably on a daily basis) we are pretty much in the dark about what healthy sound levels are when it comes down to using headphones.
A good point about high isolation headphones. I have been working with over ear Audio Technica for a couple of years but can’t find any info about the level of isolation. They do isolate but can still have and hear conversations.
Good tip. I see it’s isolation is 20 dBA. As I use it on my iPad I see I need the 32 Ohm version of the Beyerdynamic.
Well, when the gas prices in Europe are going to the roof and we can’t heat our homes anymore, then at least I will have warm ears.
I like what you write and will definitely do some review research on this headphone, the price is reasonable as well. Thanks again!
@Slush said:
I don't personally think the 32 ohm is a good idea even if it is for less powered headphone sockets. I've owned all 3, and the 250 ohm is slightly better sound quality, and the fact that it is then quieter when not run through good interfaces, means its already solving part of the problem that led you to create this post. At the loudest they are loud enough, and when played lower than that means you're taking better care of your hearing health. You basically can't push them as hard as other phones and that's a good thing, in my opinion.
Interesting point, do you know how loud the 250 ohm version can go on the mobiles?
I do because I've used them for many years and once in a while I've been on a plane or a train with a mobile device and 250 ohm DT770s, I can't tell you what the dB (A) measurement was
, so I can only use vague language like "loud enough". A smidge lower than being able to completely drown out train / plane sounds, but as I say that for me works out better as I then don't succumb to deafening myself, and in all other scenarios I had the better sound to check mixes through. It's extremely subtle difference in quality but I think they are a bit more accurate, a bit less distortion, and, healthier for the lower SPL.
I understand you can’t put a db number on it. But as I read from your opinion it’s loud enough. It’s not that I need very loud at all, it’s just that I don’t want to end up with something way too low sounding.
Yeah no problem at all. I've done plenty of listening in public spaces with an iphone 6s and 250 ohm headphones and i'm grateful for them being a little lower and so yes it's kind of misleading the way many reviews seem to claim that you HAVE to drive 250 ohms with an amp or they will be too quiet, it's a bizarre mischaracterization and I wonder if they've ever even plugged them in and tried.
(Quality of sound and even DAC is a different reason to use dedicated gear, but the volume argument is a misrepresentation).
Here's someone other than me who did try and shared their result (with the 990, applies as it's the same result),
@Slush Apple has a guide on the website on how to measure decibels with your iPad. Here is the link:
https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/use-headphone-audio-level-features-ipade8c21895/ipados