Originally posted by Josuah:
If my sound treatments completely absorb 200Hz @ 85dB, but not so 200Hz @ 100dB...
If your sound treatments cause a dip at 200Hz, then they will continue to do so, by the same amount, irrespective of volume level. That's why there are no volume-based equal-loudness curves for rooms, just for our human hearing.
But it seems what people are describing on AVS Forum is that because our hearing is less sensitive at high frequencies, and likewise people like feeling bass, then if you are listening at -30dB Audyssey Dynamic EQ will boost bass and high frequencies so you can still hear/feel them.
There's more going on than that, and it has nothing to do with whether people like "feeling bass" or not. As the volume level is lowered, we hear low frequencies drop much faster than the rest of the frequency range. Same with high frequencies, though to a much lesser extent. Likewise, sounds around us will appear to drop in volume faster than sounds in front of us.
In order to compensate for this inconsistency in our hearing, specific amounts of boost have to be applied to the surround speakers, the bass and a bit of the treble. This has little to do with the fact that our hearing is "less sensitive at high frequencies" and more to do with how our hearing behaves when volume levels change. And because this inconsistency changes based on volume level, the correction has to be dynamic as well (i.e., different correction curves have to be applied, depending on how far away the level is from calibrated reference).
Hardly. It's measured phenomenon, with correction curves calculated as early as 1933.