AUDIO ORIGAMI JOURNAL

Mythbuster: Louder is better...

One of the comments we often hear from customers after moving to an Audio Origami tonearm is surprisingly consistent: “I’m listening at lower volumes than I used to.”

At first that sounds odd. Most people assume better equipment encourages louder listening. In practice, the opposite often happens. When distortion is reduced, the need to turn the volume up largely disappears. The reason lies in how our ears and brain process sound.



Distortion Masks Detail

In psychoacoustics there is a well understood phenomenon called auditory masking. This occurs when one sound makes another sound harder to hear by effectively raising its threshold of audibility.

Distortion produces additional frequencies that were never part of the original recording. These artefacts sit on top of the music and behave a little like noise. When that happens, subtle information in the recording, ambience, texture in vocals, the decay of cymbals, the space around instruments, becomes harder for the ear to resolve.

The detail is still there in the signal, but your brain has to work harder to separate it from the distortion.

How the Ear Processes Sound

The inner ear does not analyse sound as perfectly separated frequencies. Instead it divides sound into overlapping regions called critical bands inside the cochlea. Within each band, stronger signals can obscure weaker ones.

Distortion spreads energy across these bands. Effectively, it fills the ear’s filters with extra energy that was never meant to be there. The perceived noise floor rises and the subtle information in the music becomes masked.

Put simply, distortion hides detail.

Why We Turn the Volume Up

When musical information becomes masked, listeners instinctively increase the volume to recover it. By raising the level, the brain tries to push the musical signal above the distortion.

This behaviour is similar to the Lombard effect, where people naturally raise their voices in a noisy room so they can be heard clearly.

In hi-fi systems the same principle applies. If distortion is masking information, the listener turns the volume up to compensate.

Clean Systems Reveal More at Lower Levels

A low-distortion system does not add these masking artefacts. As a result, the fine information in the recording remains audible even at moderate listening levels.

That is why many listeners find themselves turning the volume down rather than up. The detail, dynamics and spatial cues are already there. They no longer need brute force volume to hear them.

Clarity replaces loudness.

A Final Word About Listening Levels

It is also worth remembering that extended listening at high sound pressure levels can permanently damage hearing. The delicate hair cells inside the cochlea do not regenerate once they are damaged.

A good system should let you hear more of the music without needing excessive volume. If you can enjoy the detail, space and dynamics at comfortable listening levels, your ears will thank you for it in the long run.

After all, the goal of hi-fi is not to play music louder, it is to hear more of what is already there.