I turn up my stereo when my favorite part comes on even though I could hear it perfectly fine before.
In: Biology
One possibility is due to the way our ears are not linear in their frequency response with respect amplitude.
That’s a fancy way to say that as sounds get louder, we perceive more bass and treble.
This can be visualised on the [equal loudness contours diagram on this page ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour)
If we listen to quiet music, when a 1Khz tone is perceived as 40dB SPL, a 20Hz bass tone would need to be 100dB SPL for us to perceive it as being the same volume (60dB more)
But if we instead listen to the 1Khz sound at 100dB SPL, the 20Hz bass note that sounds the same to us would only need to be 130dB SPL (30dB more).
Protect your ears!
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