Loudness button on receiver.

Hello.

I've been working on a piece of music lately, and I regularly move from my KRK Rokit 5 monitors to a bigger home stereo setup for reference listening. I find the mix to sound absolutely wonderful on my home stereo, much more full and with wonderful low-end. For days I didn't question it until I realized that the "Loudness" button on my receiver was on, without it does sound a bit tinny compared. The fullness with loudness on is just how I wanted it, so I'm asking:

How do I replicate this?

As far as I know, the loudness function of home receivers is meant for low-volume listening, and to avoid the possibility of a flat listening experience, it boosts the high and low end. Perhaps compresses it a tiny bit?

I've tried to boost high and low, but to no avail, there's a subtlety to it I just can't hit. The loudness function really seems to hit a sweet spot on the low end.

Is there a way to figure out just how much this function alters the sound? What frequencies are boosted? Is there an industry standard?

Thank you.

If you've got a good mic setup you could always record it before and after and compare EQ curves. As you've mentioned it no doubt just boosts the low and high end - just play around with a good parametric EQ, altering the Q and frequency gain/cut spots.

However I recommend just making it sound good on your monitors - then it should sound great on other systems too like home stereo setups with vague settings like 'loudness' on them :)

I have a loudness switch on my vintage receiver, but I avoid using it. I think it's a better tactic to just mix for your monitors even though the loudness option makes it sound totally bitchin'. If you mix with too much bass on your system, it could sound too thin on systems without 'loudness' or a lot of low end.

This is also why you should generally avoid doing an entire mix with subwoofer. You'd just want to quickly reference with it.