Wednesday night I headed over to the Val Air Ballroom - the venue chosen by (someone obviously not familiar with the acoustics of the room) the David Crowder * Band. I did not bring my earplugs - and as I quickly discovered, I should have. Neither was I equipped with my trusty SPL meter, but I can estimate that at its loudest, the concert easily hit 110 SPL. (And that's using a C-curve, not an A-curve, because only stupid people pretend that low end doesn't exist.)

There are three levels of loud.

Loud Enough, Obnoxious Loud, and Stupid Loud.

Loud Enough (LE) is what I typically run a Point Of Grace praise and worship service at - generally around 95 SPL. This is loud, but pleasantly so: it matches the energy level in the room, and is only for a short period of time. For musical "hits", I'll bring things up a bit, but then right back down. This is for two reasons: (1) I like my hearing. (2) I'm sure everyone else does, too. Next on the scale is Obnoxious Loud. (OL) OL is from 95 SPL up to about 100. It's irritating, and will cause hearing loss if you listen to it for too long. Then there's Stupid Loud, (SL) from 100 SPL on up. It's distracting, painful, and tends to make people leave with tinnitus. I have no respect for sound engineers who run things that loud. It shows that they're too incompetent to create a good mix that can stand on it's own without resorting to painful, ludicrous levels of volume.

I'm not going into great depth or analysis because this is a rant. So there!

(Update: my new policy on sound focuses less on actual SPL, and more on the best volume advice I ever got: "The volume should match the energy level of the room.")