For years, residential cinema design has borrowed heavily from commercial cinema. Nowhere is this clearer than in how our industry talks about “reference level.” The 85 dB calibration signal used in theatrical dubbing stages, with 20 dB of available digital headroom, has become a shorthand target for what a “proper cinema” should achieve.
Yet when we examine how content is actually produced, distributed, and consumed in the home, the idea that theatrical reference replay belongs in every residential environment begins to fall apart.
This is the central theme of the recent CEDIA white paper Reference Audio Level and SPL Capabilities. The paper highlights a simple truth: theatrical reference level is not a universal playback target for domestic spaces, and applying it indiscriminately often results in systems that are misaligned with the room, the content, and the listener.
The Problem With Treating All Content the Same
Commercial cinema is built around a single, well-defined standard:
- A -20 dBFS pink-noise signal should read 85 dB(C) at the reference seat, usually two-thirds of the way back.
- Headroom above the calibration tone allows peaks approaching 105 dB RMS (and 115 dB for LFE).
This works because the ecosystem is closed. Mix stages, review rooms, and cinemas are all aligned to the same target.
Residential playback has none of this uniformity. Much of what clients watch at home has never passed through a theatrical mix stage at all. Direct-to-streaming material is routinely mixed in smaller rooms at far lower monitoring levels, commonly between 72 and 79 dB. Even when a film does have a theatrical track, the home-entertainment version is creatively rebalanced, rather than simply a theatrical clone.
In the comparative measurements shown in the white paper, the same scene from the same film measured up to 6 dB lower on streaming platforms than from disc, even when spectral content and crest-factor behavior were otherwise similar.
This is an important point: If our clients always turn the volume dial to the same point, there will be a huge difference in level, not just between different content, but also the same content from disc vs. streaming. Nobody would argue that content creators intend this large difference in replay level.
Why Measured SPL Does Not Equal Perceived Loudness
Even if the content were consistent, loudness perception is not defined solely by the number on an SPL meter. Loudness is fundamentally subjective and is shaped by a wide set of contextual factors.
Room size matters: A large dub stage and a 5 x 4-meter living room produce very different direct-to-reverberant ratios, which can make identically measured SPL sound noticeably louder in the smaller room. Psychoacoustic studies referenced in the white paper support this, and mix guidelines such as ATSC A/85 explicitly recommend lower monitoring levels in small rooms.
Distortion matters: Systems pushed close to their mechanical or thermal limits generate additional harmonic content. These distortion products often sit squarely in the most sensitive regions of human hearing, causing a signal to sound harsh or “too loud” long before the SPL becomes objectively problematic.
Image size matters: Cross-modal research shows that listeners naturally expect higher audio levels with larger images. A 98-inch display and a 4.8-meter projection screen do not produce the same psychological expectation of scale. The white paper cites studies where preferred listening levels rose by 5–6 dB as screen size increased.
Individual context matters: Age, gender, ethnicity, hearing sensitivity, and listening habits all impact how loud we may each perceive the same measured sound.
The CEDIA paper proposes a more pragmatic, human-centred interpretation of “reference” for residential systems:
- Systems should be capable, not necessarily used at their limits.
- Playback level should be based on listener comfort, in that room, with that content.
- Headroom is essential to protect against distortion and ensure clean transients.
- Enjoyment outweighs doctrine. Domestic environments do not need to mimic theatrical dubbing stages.
The Link to CEDIA RP22
RP22 introduced four performance levels. It is important to understand the intention:
- Level 1 and 2 systems are not expected to deliver 105 dB peaks, which would likely be undesirable in a typical family living room.
- Levels 3 and 4 do require the capability to reach those levels, but that does not mean that clients should use the system to its limits. The requirement ensures headroom and linearity, not mandatory playback levels.
Our industry gains little by insisting that the only “correct” way to enjoy content at home is at theatrical mix levels that were never intended for domestic rooms. The real goal is to deliver systems that sound clean, controlled, and engaging at the levels clients actually use, while ensuring high-performance rooms have the headroom and consistency to reproduce demanding material without strain. From a small living room to a large, dedicated cinema, the levels outlined in RP22 provide the correct range of system capabilities to match our clients’ expectations.
If we can shift the conversation from rigid numeric targets to capability, preference, and context, we will design systems that satisfy far more listeners far more often.
To download the white paper, visit https://bit.ly/4iGvb0j.
