How to calibrate my headphone listening system to 85dB ?

[nandi]

Is this possible? How? Thanx

[macc]

You'd want it a bit less than that for headphones.

I found this method worked quite well, and agreed with the speakers quite well when set up correctly;

(blog) Measuring the SPL volume (dB) of headphones

Obviously there is some leakage and so on, so allow for that, and also be awre that you do want it several dB lower for cans.

But all told it helps to measure it all so you have repeatable headphone levels, IMO and IME.

[nandi]

Thanks, I'll try this!

[cjac9]

Anyone know how SPL from speakers correlates to headphones or do you guys just feel it out? It would be cool to match my monitor controller settings for my headphone amp.

[Cellotron]

Originally Posted by cjac9

Anyone know how SPL from speakers correlates to headphones or do you guys just feel it out? It would be cool to match my monitor controller settings for my headphone amp.

Quantification of this seems silly to me. Adjust the volume knob so that it is present but never painful. To me it's not like headphones are ever all that useful for making things like equalization decisions that you need to have them set at a "calibrated" level.

Getting a general sense of where your headphone amp's volume knob usually gets set to for most program material can be a helpful thing to have though.

Best regards,
Steve Berson