Different decibel scales4/14/2024 decibels) reflect exponential changes in power levels. Decibel systems are designed so that linear changes in the measurement units (ie. The range of difference in power levels between the quietest sound that a human can hear and the loudest sound before passing the threshold of hearing and reaching the threshold of pain is about one trillion times, or 10 to the twelfth power! That's a huge difference in scale. Power is the change in energy in a system over time, and is best measured on a logarithmic scale. The decibel is one tenth of a Bel, and is abbreviated dB.ĭecibels measure a change in power. They decided to come up with a type of measurement that they named the Bel, in recognition of Alexander Graham Bell's work with early telephones. The first need for a decibel system came about many years ago, when telephone companies were trying to measure losses and gains across power grids. Incidentally, decibels are also used to measure a large number of other logarithmic-based scales, such as power and voltage levels. The decibel system is a logarithmic system that is appropriate for exponentially variable sound levels. Your ears can hear everything from a light wind rustling through distant trees, to a loud jet engine, and they need to be able to process sounds appropriately. The decibel is the unit used to measure the intensity of a sound. This post is directly related to video #08 in my Audio Recording tutorial series, which is embedded below.Īlthough watching the video is the best way to learn about this topic, because of my illustrations on the whiteboard, I've also put a copy of the audio portion of that tutorial video on SoundCloud, for people who would like to download it to listen to in vehicles, while travelling, etc. Today, I have a post and video to delve more deeply into various decibel systems. I also have another post and video (numerically, the next in the series after this) that will talk about the Nyquist theorem, anti-aliasing, quantization noise, Fletcher-Munson curves, and dithering. That was part six of my Basic Audio Recording tutorial series on YouTube. Not long ago, I wrote a post and produced an associated video to teach people about sample sizes, sample frequency, binary, and how it all relates to sound. Decibel-based logarithmic measurement systems are confusing.
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