Loudness is usually tied to volume and adds boost a lower volume levels and cuts it back as the volume rises, at some point no longer providing any boost.



https://support.sonos.com/s/article/2850?language=en_US

Loudness is designed to compensate for normal changes in the ear’s sensitivity when listening to audio at low volumes. When enabled, this setting will boost certain frequencies, including bass, during low listening volumes.

Are you seeing too much boost as the volume increases but it is fine at lower levels?

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well, if you turn off loudness and crank it up you most certain can tell the difference... maybe the levels of lowering boost should come sooner?

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Interesting, I couldn't find much aside from the link I posted above so I decided to try it myself to see what I thought.



I pulled up some music with a decent low frequency content (Johnny Cash from Napster) and switched my controller app to the Room Settings for my (not TruePlay) paired Play 3s that have the tone controls set flat. I was able to adjust the volume using the 3's buttons while toggling the loudness on and off to compare the sound.



I gave up at about 80% (due to spousal irritation) but when toggling it on and off the Sonos loudness was still very apparent at that level.



I normally listen at lower levels where the loudness seems to be about right but at louder settings I think I agree that it might be a little too much.



I'll have to give this a look (when the spouse is out) on my Play 5s and maybe my ZPs to see if they are the same.

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That's what I mean... it should be easy to fix in the software... even better would be if you could set the levels yourself.

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Some information on Equal Loudness.



I haven't seen any studies about the uniformity of the contours between individuals of similar age and noise exposure. Nor have I seen any studies regarding how the contours might change with the age and noise exposure history of an individual. These are very difficult experiments to design. In my anecdotal observations the loudness effect differs from individual to individual and, since it is such a complex effect, the control characteristic is a crude approximation of what is required.



Since the equal loudness contours are tied to the absolute sound pressure level in the room, in theory Trueplay could calibrate the loudness compensation to the room.

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Past noise exposure in my case makes a huge difference, my ears are down 15 dB at 500 Hz, 40 at 2000 and 60/80 at 4000 so I don't do any listening tests or comments without my hearing aids in and set to flat mode.

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High frequency loss is not always a handicap. For some reason humans have little tolerance for different interpretations of aural events, as opposed to accepting visual illusions as fun and interesting. My father had noise induced high frequency loss starting in his twenties.The top few notes on a piano were mechanical thuds. When I was a child we had some heated arguments over aural events. We both felt that the other missed all of the important points. He was better at diagnosing mechanical issues because they have significant low frequency components while I was distracted by the highs. When it came to electronics, he would claim something sounded "good", but in my opinion there were no highs. Eventually, I figured out how this worked and can accept that two individuals undergoing the same stimulus can have different opinions of what happened. Now, I can use science to prove and explore some of these points. He never fully acknowledged that the mechanics of his perception were dramatically different from mine, and that these differences led to our contrasting conclusions.



Kudos for wearing your hearing aids. My father was reluctant to wear his hearing aids (he didn't need them, right?) and didn't wear them enough to get used to them. As we would raise our voices in an effort to enhance understanding, he would chastise us: "Don't yell, I can hear you". (not)

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A big problem with not wearing hearing aids, if needed, is that while that won't make your ears worse it does lead to changes in your brain and loss of your ability to understand speech.



Mom was dumb and either didn't wear hers or wore some scam brand that was just an amplifier for many years. When we caught her and got her good hearing aids her frequency response as corrected is pretty good but her speech comprehension is below 70% and there is no fixing that.



Hopefullt Sonos will have a comment on the original Loudness issue on Monday.

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