My dream would be to have the loudness reach its minimum (no boost) state at -14db on the volume scale. My reasoning? You can boost the loudness up to 14db above flat, so it should cap out in such a way as to not cause clipping at maximum volume.

Agreed, but does anyone actually run their eq. at max boost? Personally I adjust gain down and even then I've found a few dB make a huge difference. I think you could be a bit less conservative and say zero boost at -6dB. Considering that currently loudness is having an effect at zero attenuation, and no one is complaining about clipping.

If you are cranking on more than this I would think there'd be a serious deficiency in audio reproduction (or hearing)

The only problem with my choices of parameters is that they are only appropriate for my car and my amps. If someone tended to run their stereo at -25 DB all the time instead of between 0 and -10 like I do, then those cut-offs would be wrong for them.


Herein lies the problem, it all depends on your setup. Standard listening for me is about -30 dB. I guess the default setup has to assume that you are using the full range.

A next step of loudness control:
peek loudness (I guess that this is the one we have already)
attenuation value of zero loudness. default loudness reaches zero at -6dB
attenuation value of peek loudness. default loudness reaches peak at -45dB

It would make sense to move the peek between -14dB at +30dB (the opposite extents of the eq.)

I'm going with a linear function between the two points. (Since we already have logarithmic volume and trying to superimpose logarithmic functions makes my head hurt.)