Karaoke Forums

I went to radio shack today and bought a decibel meter. (Radio Shack about $50)

Since the human ear is not too good at putting an absolute number on "loud" vs "louder", I decided that this might be a good idea to keep the volume in the appropriate range for both hearing and equipment. Not only that the ear tires and what may sound loud early in a show may not seem as loud later on. Since I am still starting out and change a few details on my setups etc each time I thought a db meter would be helpful.

One of the things I decided to test was the different recording levels of the backing tracks by differnent maufacutrers.


I ran the first minute of a few songs that I had tracks from multiple manufacturers for, and recorded the maximum db level (keeping everything else constant). I was not running the systems anywhere near max, or a reasonable club level. It is just a test.  I placed the decibel meter about a yard away from the speaker and just watched the numbers. The only thing that changed was the song being played, all of the other levels were kept constant.

b52s / love shack / kbay----84db
b52s / love shack / sc----82db
b52s / love shack / sgb----86db
3 doors down / kryptonite / sc----81db
3 doors down / kryptonite / phm----83db
3 doors down / kryptonite / sgb----86db
Abba / dancing queen / sc----80db
Abba / dancing queen / sgb----89db
Abba / dancing queen / zoom----83db
neil diamond / sweet caroline / sgb----81db
neil diamond / sweet caroline / best----82db
neil diamond / sweet caroline / kbay----82db
neil diamond / sweet caroline / sc----76db
madonna / material girl / sgb----86db
madonna / material girl / kbay----84db
madonna / material girl / sc----82db
red hot chili peppers / give it away / sunfly ----85db
red hot chili peppers / give it away / sc----78db
red hot chili peppers / give it away / sgb----88db



Consistantly the Sweet Georgia Brown versions were loud, 4-10 db louder than Soundchoice for the same songs. Of course with most of the other manus I dont really have a good enough sampleing to make a judgement yet.

But with 10 db difference from one manu to another that is certainly enough to damage equipment or hearing in some cases. In the future I may try to run all SGB at -5 db at the start. Of course songs vary quite a bit, and adjustment is going to be needed when hearing the song but I thought the differences were enough to comment on (even with the small number I have looked at so far).

Anyone else have thoughts or experience on this matter?

I don't have a meter, but I can tell you from experience I am ready to turn down the SGB tracks right from the get-go.

SoundChoice is lower in level than PHM as well, in my experience -- their relationship to Chartbuster is similar. One reason for that is that the instrumentation is fuller (i.e. levels mixed higher) on the percussion tracks for the latter.

So in short, your findings don't surprise me a bit.