In the theater that I managed for about 15 years we tried to keep the sound at a comfortable level. The problem we had was with visiting artists who kept demanding the sound engineer raise the sound level. It would get to the point that people would get up and leave, and I would have left too had I not been working there. I finally instructed the engineer to give the performers as much sound as the monitors could provide and keep the sound at a reasonable level for the audience. The sound engineer is not always at fault for loud sound levels.