Sierra Ribbon Towers and Safe SPL

[Pogre]

Side question, and only because I am concerned, have you had your hearing checked?

I haven't in a looong time. I do have some hearing loss and have had tinnitus for at least a couple of decades now. Some young drummers are just too thick to listen to advice and wear hearing protection... I always felt like I couldn't hear myself play with plugs in. When my stepfather died I figured out how to hook the pa system, amps and concert speakers to the stereo inside the house. 15, 16, 17 years old and almost unlimited volume...

I also grew up in a hunting state and unfortunately hearing protection was not a priority when I was a kid, learning to shoot a gun. Also worked in noisy slaughterhouse and meat departments for over 30 years. It's actually amazing I can hear as well as I do.

I'm kind of afraid to get tested...

[curtis]

I haven't in a looong time. I do have some hearing loss and have had tinnitus for at least a couple of decades now. Some young drummers are just too thick to listen to advice and wear hearing protection... I always felt like I couldn't hear myself play with plugs in. When my stepfather died I figured out how to hook the pa system, amps and concert speakers to the stereo inside the house. 15, 16, 17 years old and almost unlimited volume...

I also grew up in a hunting state and unfortunately hearing protection was not a priority when I was a kid, learning to shoot a gun. Also worked in noisy slaughterhouse and meat departments for over 30 years. It's actually amazing I can hear as well as I do.

I'm kind of afraid to get tested...

Yeah...I understand where you are coming from.

When I was younger, I went to some crazy loud concerts.

People are now much more aware of their hearing, but I worry about the younger generations that wear headphone/ear monitors all the time and how loud they listen.

That said, performers now wear in ear monitors to protect hearing.

Understood about being afraid, but I think you should. I think you think the same.

[Pogre]

Understood about being afraid, but I think you should. I think you think the same.

I do. My grandma and mom both have hearing aids now.

That's another thing that I've thought about too. Wouldn't hearing aids alter or color the sound you hear? Do they work like transducers? When my mom came to visit she didn't want me turning anything up very loud until she took her aids out because I guess they can be pretty sensitive?

For the record, my mom has been in and around bands her whole life too, so I wasn't arbitrarily subjecting the elderly to obnoxious volumes, lol.

[Pogre]

Yep - we use a shallow slope on the mid crossed to the woofers, and a steep slope on the woofers crossed to this mid. Plus that SVS Ultra tower has (2) mids, that automatically cuts the excursion requirements in half, plus they are larger woofers which increases efficiency - further reducing excursion requirements at the same volume levels.

Pogre, you really can't compare one speaker to another with regard to excursion, unless it is a subwoofer with the same size woofer and similar tuning, similar filtering and EQ. It gets complicated. Our Towers were not designed as SPL beasts but I have run ours in our demo room at 110dB for hours at a time, at a listening distance of about - 9 feet in a very well damped room. We have had customers turn up the volume to insane levels at times, often prompting me in the factory area to knock on the door and ask them to turn it down a bit. We have had these same towers in our demo room, which have been seriously abused and with many thousands of hours of listening time on them for close to ten years now. We have yet to have to swap out a woofer or the RAAL 70-20xr. In fact, I believe in an early demo of the towers - I believe Curtis and some other people accidentally bottomed the hell out of the woofers when Mike (I believe it might have been Mike but I could be wrong) played an insane Linkin Park track, full range at about 110dB.

I missed this entire post yesterday because I think there were a few that came in at around the same time. 110 dB at 9' is insane and I can't imagine needing more spl than that. I know, I know... says the guy who thought 0 on his dial was only 85 dB... I was probably not far from those levels in my living room. I was wrong, but I'm learning. I really don't want to be routinely hitting unsafe levels like that. I can and will adjust my listening habits.

It's not just for me either. I have 2 dogs that I love very much (I love my wife too, but she's able to tell me to turn it down!). I feel terrible I might have been causing them harm and should have done this a long time ago.

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Even more reassuring to you - in many thousands of ribbon towers sold, we have only had (2) customers damage the RAAL 70-20xram. One because the tower got knocked over and landed square on the face, basically shattering the tweeter - and another who used the towers outdoors at his own party, threw an insane amount of power into them and burned up every component, including melting the inductors and resistors in the crossover. That was an interesting situation, as the customer attempted to blame the speaker and fought with us over the warranty -- that was until his some dropped the speaker off at our facility, met Dina and Joe - felt bad and told us the truth as to what really happened

Wow. Basically melted the entire speaker(s), CLEARLY from playing at insane volumes then tried to blame the speaker?! I give you some props for speaking kindly about one of your customers when he very obviously tried to rip you off. At least he came clean at the end. That's crazy.

[Pogre]

Okay, I just measured 94.7 dB at my seat (15' from speakers) with the volume setting at "0". Just round up to 95 dB and by my (very rough) calculations I should be hitting that with 35 watts and gives me about 8 dB headroom before reaching my amp's limits.

It's still a lot more than I realized, but I feel a little bit better. I'm pretty confident I haven't pushed it into clipping, tho still flirting with limits and exceeding safe listening levels for extended periods.

Do my power calculations sound about right, or am I missing anything?

[racrawford65]

Nice dogs!

I hear you about being young and listening to music too loudly. Alot of rock concerts. Garage band days jamming Sabbath, Deep Purple, AC/DC, etc. Car stereo - at one point I had a couple of 12" woofers along with mid/tweets and several hundred watts of power. Surprised I didn't blow out the rear window.

[curtis]

Okay, I just measured 94.7 dB at my seat (15' from speakers) with the volume setting at "0". Just round up to 95 dB and by my (very rough) calculations I should be hitting that with 35 watts and gives me about 8 dB headroom before reaching my amp's limits.

It's still a lot more than I realized, but I feel a little bit better. I'm pretty confident I haven't pushed it into clipping, tho still flirting with limits and exceeding safe listening levels for extended periods.

Do my power calculations sound about right, or am I missing anything?

Is that with the new SPL meter?
If not, I'd just wait for the new meter.

It's still freaking loud.

[Pogre]

Is that with the new SPL meter?
If not, I'd just wait for the new meter.

It's still freaking loud.

Yeah it's the new one, but mag raised a point about A v C weighting (my meter uses A weighting) and not sure if I'm interpreting correctly.

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Yes, it's freaking loud, lol.

[curtis]

I think you're fine with A weighting.
https://www.noisemeters.com/help/faq...ncy-weighting/

How does the new meter compare with the readings from the phone apps?

[Pogre]

I think your a fine with A weighting.
https://www.noisemeters.com/help/faq...ncy-weighting/

How does the new meter compare with the readings from the phone apps?

One of the apps measures +5 dB hotter and the other was -3 dB compared to the one I just got. I used some YT pink noise just now to check real quick. I plan to get much more detailed measurements hopefully by this weekend.

You mentioned you use an old laptop. I have a semi-retired laptop I can put to work for REW stuff too, so I don't have to pull my HTPC out of the stand and have cables and an extension cord stretched all across the room. I don't know why I didn't think to do that before instead of disconnecting everything and rerouting all of my cabling. Duh.