All About Decibels, Whats Your dB IQ?

By Lionel Dumond, Media and Mastering Editor

Part 1
Probably one of the most misunderstood concepts in all of audio science is that of the decibel -- what it means, and what it doesnt mean. This really isnt very surprising. Most books youll find on audio production gloss over the subject, offering a rudimentary explanation at best. Whats worse, youll often see the term dB bandied about with little consideration given to the context in which its being used -- are they talking dBu, dBV, dBm, dBVU, dBFS, dBspl, or what? And being a rather complex concept, the term doesnt lend itself well to a one or two sentence glossary-style entry. For example, if you look up decibel in a book, you might read something like the smallest increment of sound which the human ear can detect -- which only happens to be true in general, but certainly isnt an accurate definition by any means. Whats more, this lack of understanding isnt limited to beginners. There are folks I know whove worked in this field for a long time who arent clear on the whole thing -- even though many of them think they are. A keen grasp of all this decibel stuff is crucial to the understanding of just about every other audio concept there is. So my question to you is this: how well do you know your stuff? Think youve got it all down? Want to find out? Okay, hotshot... its pop quiz time. Sharpen a number-two pencil and lets go. 1. The sound of your sweetie whispering sweet nothings in your ear is 20 dB. The sound of your mother-in-law yelling at you is 60 dB. How many times louder is your mother-in-law than your paramour? Youve scored some sweet front-row tickets to a Pearl Jam concert, where the SPL is 120 dB. As youre waiting in the interminably long line to get out of the parking lot after the show, you crank their latest CD on the car stereo at a level of 100 dB. How many car stereos played at the same volume would it take to produce the same SPL as the concert? There are two sound sources in a room: say, a drummer playing at 72 dB, and a guitar player playing at 66 dB. What is the loudness of the two playing together? What is the difference in dB between the nominal output levels of consumer gear (-10 dBV) and professional gear (+4 dBu)? (Hint: Its not 14 dB.) Whats the dynamic range of 16-bit digital audio in dB? Of 24-bit digital audio? Could you figure out the dynamic range of a 21-bit digital audio system? How come you can go over 0 dB on an analog two-track, but cant go over 0 dB on a DAT? How much louder is a 100 watt guitar amp than a 50 watt guitar amp?

2.

3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

If you can answer these questions with ease, then this article wasnt written for you. But, if you found yourself scratching your head and saying huh?, read on. Beware the road signs that read Caution -- Math Ahead!. Im sorry about that, but its truly not possible to gain a through understanding of dBs without a little cipherin along the way. If you are one of those people whose eyes glaze over when faced with a page full of equations, fear not. Im right here beside you! Stick with it, reread it a couple of times if you have to, and before too long the light bulb will come on, I promise you. Oh, and one more thing -- if you want to follow along with your own calculator, make sure you have a scientific type one that has a log function. Be careful not to get the log button (the function that computes the base-ten logarithm) confused with the ln button (the function that computes the natural logarithm, which is a kind of a log that marches to a whole different rhythm.) And so, come with me now if you will, as we step through the looking glass into the Wonderful World of the Decibel -- where subtraction is division, rulers are longer on one end than the other, and nothing is as it seems... Logarithmic Scales -- the Kind You Cant Play on a Piano The term dB has meaning in all kinds of scientific measurement -- from sound, to electrical or mechanical power, to voltage, and so on. The decibel scale is an example of a logarithmic scale. Other examples of logarithmic scales used in scientific measurement are the
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Richter scale (used to denote the energy of earthquakes) and the pH scale (used to indicate the concentration of hydrogen ions in a solution). Why do scientists use logarithmic scales? Well, one thing you have to remember is that scientists -- much like guitar players -- like things easy! And when youre dealing with a large range of numbers that have a bunch of zeros before or after the decimal point, using logarithms makes those numbers a whole lot easier to work with and compare to each other. Let me give you an example. Lets say youre a scientist in the way-back old days. Youre observing some phenomena dealing with sound. Youve performed a few experiments, and have taken some measurements about the intensity of sound. You know that sound is the movement of energy, and that sound intensity is the amount of energy passing through a given area per unit of time:

Intensity = Energy / (Time * Area)

Since we know that the ratio Energy / Time is equal to Power (think hard... remember your high school physics?) we can say:

Intensity = Power / Area

And so, since sound intensity is the amount of sound power per unit of area, and we scientists measure power in watts, lets express our measurements in watts per square meter (W/m2), shall we? Okay, so far, so good.... Now suppose, if you will, that youve found that the smallest sound intensity that most people can hear is .000000000001 W/m2. You also discovered that the intensity that makes people start to wince in pain is 1 W/m2. Of course, youve taken a bunch of measurements in between as well, like .000792710162 and .000006288415. Just try conveniently comparing those numbers! Quick -whats the difference between .000792710162 and .000006288415? Try figuring that one out in your head! Lets see if we can make these numbers smaller and easier to work with. Instead of using these unwieldy numbers in their raw form, lets try taking the base-ten logarithm of these numbers, and working with those results instead. It just so happens that:

log (.000792710162) = -3.1 log ( .000006288415) = -5.2

Now... doesnt that look a whole lot less daunting? We can easily see here that the difference in the logarithms of these wacky figures, is an easy-to-handle 2.1. Yes... but 2.1 what? What are we going to call this difference number? You suddenly come up with a brilliant idea -- youll call it a Bel, after your boyhood hero, Alexander Graham Bell! (Alexander Graham Bell was your boyhood hero, wasnt he? Come on, work with me here, people...) You take all this into your boss, hoping for a pat on the back and maybe even a big raise. He looks at it and says, Hmmm... I like it. Good work. But I dont like that messy decimal point. Get rid of it! So, you decide to change your units a little bit, by multiplying both sides of your equations by 10.

10* log ( .000792710162) = -31 10* log ( .000006288415) = -52

But then, your difference isnt 2.1 any more, its now 21. The units are now one tenth the size of the Bel you came up with before, so you decide to call this new difference unit a decibel, or dB for short. A decibel is one tenth of a Bel. But gee... why stop there? Remember, were lazy scientists here. Cant we somehow make this stuff even easier? We sure can, because we know that our friend the logarithm can do a cool trick -- it can turn subtraction into division!

10* log (x) - 10* log (y) = 10* log (x/y)

In other words, we dont have to take the logarithms of both numbers. We can simply derive the ratio of the two numbers, and only have to do one logarithm calculation, instead of two! (You have to remember, this was long before scientific calculators were invented -- scientists had to use slide rules to figure all this stuff out, so the fewer logarithm calculations, the better!)

10* log (.000792710162 / .000006288415) = 21 dB

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So, now you know why scientists like to use logarithmic scales -- when youre dealing with a huge range of numbers, it just makes comparing things a whole lot easier! The Decibel Difference -- Nothing Else Compares! Cool. Now we have a convenient way of comparing two unwieldy numbers. But -- and this is a very crucial point to understand -the number we always come up with is not an absolute value, but is a comparison between any two measurements (or, more precisely, the difference in their logarithms, times 10). Remember, we came up with this decibel thing to show the difference between two measurements. Therefore, it makes no sense unless youre dealing with two numbers, right? Lets see if we cant refine our system a little more... So far its been a pretty hard day; so you decide to knock off work early and have yourself a couple of brewskis on the old laboratory expense account. As youre holding down a barstool at your favorite local pub, you find yourself starting to scribble on a napkin. Suddenly, you shriek out loud, Eureka! How about, instead of dividing two measurements we want to compare, that we just pick some reference number that will remain constant, and divide all our raw measurements by that number? The results would still be the same!. Heres what you scribbled on your napkin. Lets call the reference number B.

10* log (x/B) - 10* log (y/B) = 10* log [(x/B) / (y/B)] = 10* log (x/y) = difference in dB
By golly... it works! You ecstatically wave your hands in the air, jump off your stool, cram the napkin into your pocket, and impulsively kiss the waitress as you skip out the door. Everyone in the place now thinks youre a nut. Back at the lab, youre now faced with the task of picking a good reference number. Looking over your experiments, you remember that the smallest intensity you found most people could hear was 0.000000000001 W/m2. How about using that as a reference? This way, any single measurement could be expressed in dB, as long as we always remember that were comparing it to 0.000000000001 W/m2. You can see that your dB is still expressing a difference -- there are, in fact, still two numbers involved. Its just that the second number will just be an implied quantity of 0.000000000001 W/m2. You anxiously check it out to see if it works:

10* log ( .000792710162 / 0.000000000001) = 89 dB 10* log ( .000006288415 / 0.000000000001) = 68 dB 89 dB - 68 dB = 21 dB

Man.. are you a genius or what? Youve invented the decibel! Good for you. Just dont go around getting a swelled head over it now.

Do You Have the Power to Take the Pressure? So, now you know the story of the decibel. To review: The difference, in dB, between any two POWER measurements (lets call them x and y) is:

dB = 10* log (x/y)

Theres a darn good reason I put that word POWER in all capital letters. And here, we come to another crucial point -- there is a distinct difference in sound power (watts), sound intensity (watts per square meter), and sound pressure (Pascal). Hold on, Ill explain what I mean in a minute. Pay close attention now; because this is a major source of confusion when it comes to decibels!

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As long as were talking sound power (in watts) or sound intensity (watts per square meter), the formula given above is perfectly good. However, when you commonly hear the term dB bandied about in terms of loudness of sound, people usually arent talking about sound power or sound intensity, but more accurately sound pressure levels, or SPL. After all, its the pressure a sound exerts on our eardrums that determines how loud that sound is to us! Sound power is measured in watts. Sound intensity, as weve already discovered, is the ratio of power over a given area, and is measured in watts per square meter (W/m2). Pressure, on the other hand, is a measure of force over a given area. Since force is expressed in Newtons (N), pressure can therefore be expressed as Newtons per square meter (N/m2). The more commonly used unit is the Pascal (Pa). (1 Pa is the same as 1N/m2 .) The relationship between intensity (I) and pressure (P) is defined as:

I = P 2/
where (the Greek letter rho) is air impedance -- a constant which is determined by atmospheric pressure, air temperature, and so on. For normal conditions, and at room temperatures, the value of is very close to 400. Therefore, the threshold intensity of hearing we mentioned before -- .000000000001 W/m2 -- correlates to a pressure reading of about .00002 Pa:

.000000000001 W/m2 = (.00002 Pa)2 / 400

At the other end of the scale, the threshold intensity of pain, given before as 1 W/m2 , correlates to a pressure of about 20 Pa:

1 W/m2 = (20 Pa)2 / 400

So, in terms of sound pressure levels, the range of human hearing is about .00002 Pa to 20 Pa. Theres still one other thing to consider concerning the relationship between intensity and pressure. Notice that the intensity of a sound does not vary directly with pressure, but as the square of the pressure. Look at the formula again: I = P 2/. Think about what is happening here. When pressure doubles, intensity quadruples. When pressure quadruples, intensity goes up by a factor of sixteen, and so on. Unfortunately, that means for pressure calculations, our old formula, dB = 10* log (x/y), wont work any more! Fortunately for us though, it shouldnt be too tough to pressure our equation into shape for our purposes!

dB = 10 * log (x/y), where x and y are measurements of sound intensity

Substituting the expression P 2/ for these intensity measurements, we get:

dBspl = 10 * log [ (Px2/) / (Py2/) ] = 10 * log (Px2/Py2) = 10 * log (Px / Py)2 = 20 * log (Px/Py)
This is almost the same as our formula for power, except this time we have to multiply by 20 instead of 10. It is this term -- dBspl -- that is being referred to about 99% of the time when you hear or read the term dB concerning the loudness of a sound. This is in fact exactly what you are measuring when you use a sound level meter -- the pressure on the mic, referenced to .00002 Pa, and expressed in terms of dBspl. Often, the dB reading shown on a meter is a weighted measurement; something well explore more deeply in Part II of this article. The problem is that almost nobody attaches the little spl to the end, which tends to make things needlessly confusing! When it comes to loudness, just remember that dB is just kind of understood in practice to mean dBspl. The reference measurement against which SPL is measured is .00002 Pa, which is a good approximation of the lower threshold of hearing for most normal, healthy youths. Thats the figure to use for the bottom of the fraction in the formula above:
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dBspl = 20 * log (Px/ .00002 Pa)

Since log 1 = 0, it doesnt then take a lot of head scratching to figure out what the dB level of the smallest audible sound is, does it?

20 * log (.00002 Pa / .00002 Pa) = 0 dB SPL

Pay attention to that last equation, because it points up a neat-o property of the dB: Because log (1) = 0, any measurement that is equal to the reference measurement is always 0 dB, regardless of the dB designation in question. This holds true for dBm, dBu, dBV, dBFS... it doesnt matter. You see this more clearly in a moment. The loudest sound pressure we can tolerate is about 20 Pa, as weve already noted. Can you figure out how to express this in terms of dB? If youve been following closely so far, it should be no sweat:

20 log (20 Pa / .00002 Pa) = 120 dB

So, now you know that the dynamic range of human hearing is approximately 120 dB. Actually, Im sure you already knew that. But, now, you know why. Of course, just about every other sound you can hear is going to fall somewhere in the range between 0 dB and 120 dB. Just for fun, Ive included a handy-dandy table of common sounds, and their approximate loudness in dB, remember, in this table, dB means dBspl!

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The Secrets in the Recipe... uh, I mean, Reference To review so far: 1) The difference (in dB) between any two POWER measurements (lets call them x and y) is:

dB = 10* log (x/y)

2) The difference (in dB) between any two PRESSURE measurements (Lets call them Px and Py) is:

dB = 20 * log (Px / Py)

Okay all well and good so far. But you know as well as I do that theres more to this story. So, what youre probably asking right about now is, whats the deal with all this dBu, dBv, dBV, dBm, dBVU, dBFS, and so on? Help me! Im drowning in alphabet soup! Relax... once you understand what the term decibel really means, all the rest of this stuff is easy! Remember, the designation dB denotes a comparison between two numbers (of the same type, of course -- you cant use dB to directly compare, say, volts to watts). One of those numbers is usually a reference of some sort. That little bit on the end merely reminds us whats being measured. The reference level to which various measurements are compared have become standardized over the years, as Ill explain below. dBm and dBVU Now weve already discussed the derivation of dB as concerns power measurements. We talked about it in terms of sound power (measured in watts), but as we know, there are lots of other phenomena that can be discussed in terms of power -- like electricity, for example. Back in the good old days, before LED ladders and fancy LCD displays and such, audio engineers relied on a device known back then (as it is today) as a VU meter. A VU meter is nothing very fancy; merely a cool little device consisting of a needle attached to a magnet, such that as the current in the magnet increases, the needle turns clockwise. "VU" stands for Volume Unit, a term developed during the early days of radio. The problem with VU meters when they were first introduced was that all of them were different. That is, until the late 30s -- when a bunch of engineers sat down and decided to standardize the VU meter such that whenever the power in a circuit was one milliwatt (1 mW rms), the VU meter would read 0 dB, or, in other words, 0 dBm = 0 dBVU. The little m in dBm stands for milliwatt. The dBm is a measurement of power, always referenced to 1 mW.

dBm = 10 * log (Power / 1mW)

Knowing this, its pretty easy to express the power in a circuit in terms of dBm. You already know what happens when the power in the circuit is 1mW. This is the reference power level -- and when a measurement is equal to the reference level, the formula always yields zero, remember?

10 * log (1 mW / 1mW) = 10 * log (1) = 0 dBm

As weve said, this is the reading that would normally cause a VU meter to read 0 dBVU. If you see that your VU meter jumps from 0 dBm to +3 dBm, you know that the power in the circuit has doubled, because

10 * log (2 mW / 1mW) = 10 * log (2) = 3 dBm

What if the needle drops from 0 dBm to -6 dBm? What is that telling us?

10 * log (0.25 mW / 1 mW) = 10 * log (.25) = -6 dBm

Whats happened in this case is that the power in the circuit has dropped to one-quarter of its previous value.

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Now I would hate for you to think that every VU meter you see is graduated in dBm, for this is not the case! When other types of gear were invented, engineers decided to use VU meters for them as well, and calibrated the meters such that the measurement that was equal to the reference measurement would make the meter read 0 dBVU. Take the tape recorder for example. They put VU meters on tape recorders, but this time, instead of calibrating 0dBVU to an electrical power reference, they calibrated the meters to a magnetic power reference. Magnetic power, often referred to as flux, is expressed in Webers per meter (W/m). Since the magnetic flux of recording tape is pretty small (good thing, too -- Id hate to have my fillings sucked out by a reel of tape!) we usually use nanoWebers per meter (nW/m). A nanoWeber is one-billionth of a Weber. The VU meters on a tape recorder were set to read 0 dBVU at whatever the recommended recording level of the tape was. The first recording tape put out by Ampex sounded pretty good at 185 nW/m, so those old Ampex machines used 185 nW/m as the 0 dBVU reference on the VU meter. The cassette standard is 160 nW/m, so the VU meters on a cassette deck are calibrated such that a flux of 160 nW/m on the tape causes the VU meter to read 0 dBVU. The dB meters on modern professional analog decks are calibrated to match the much hotter recording levels possible with todays high-tech oxide formulations -- 250 nW/m and up. The spec sheet on a particular deck will usually tell you how many nW/m 0 dBVU means on that decks meters. dBu (a.k.a. dBv) Think back again to that high school physics class. We know from Watts Law that there is a relationship between power and voltage, dont we? Watts Law states that:

P = V2 / R
where P is the power in Watts (W), V is the electrical potential in Volts (V), and R is the resistance (or, in this case, impedance) in Ohms (). If you remember from our discussion of dBm, the reference power used in that case was 1mW. As I said, this standard was developed in the 1930s -- and back then, the input impedance of every piece of audio gear made was 600 ohms, period. Tape decks, mixers, preamps, power amps, everything -- if it had an input, the resistance from the hot wire to the ground connector was 600. Thats just the way things were back then! So the question now becomes: What voltage does it take to generate 1 mW of power across a 600 impedance?

P = V2 / R .001 W = V2 / 600 V2 = .001 W * 600 V = sqrt (.001 W * 600) V = .775 Volts

We see that it takes about .775 V to generate 1 mW of power at 600. Even though the 600 impedance standard went the way of the dinosaur long ago, the .775 V reference remains as the reference voltage for dBu. Theres one more very important detail to note here. Notice that power varies as the square of the voltage. This is the analogous situation to the dB derivation of sound pressure, given earlier. In fact, voltage can be (and often is) thought of as electrical pressure. If we do the same substitution calculation for voltage as we did for SPL, we get the times 20 formula:

dBu = 20 * log (voltage / .775 V)

Theres something you may be wondering at this point -- why the u? Well, it wasnt always that way. The term dBu was originally written as dBv (with a small v), and in fact youll still see old-timers use dBv sometimes. The problem was that folks kept getting their dBv (small v) confused with dBV (capital V), and we cant have that now, can we? So, dBv was changed to dBu. Just remember that if you ever see the term dBv being used anywhere, it means dBu, or that the person using it has fallen into the same small v-capital V confusion. Speaking of which...

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dBV Weve come a long way since the days when the impedance of gear was 600. On todays stuff, youre likely to encounter much higher impedances -- 10,000 or more. At impedances that high, power dissipation is pretty low (in fact, were talking microwatts here now) because impedance and power are inversely proportional (Watts Law again: P = V2 / R). Remember that the dBu uses .775 V as a reference, which some engineers thought to be kind of awkward -- and because the 600 standard had been abandoned, there was no special significance to that .775V reference level any more. So, a new standard was developed -- dBV -- that instead, uses a nice, round, 1V as a reference instead.

dBV = 20 * log (voltage / 1V)

You can see that dBu and dBV are very similar! They both compare voltages; its just the reference levels that are different. A side trip -- Professional vs. Consumer Levels There has always been a lot of confusion about the whole issue of the nominal operating level of professional gear versus the nominal operating level of so-called consumer gear. You may have heard that professional gear is + 4 dBu and consumer gear is - 10 dBV. Because only professionals used this stuff back when it was new (and expensive!) technology, and the older dBu designation was all they had to work with, the original designation of operating level (expressed in dBu) has stuck. By the time consumer audio products were introduced in a big way, the dBV has been invented, and so dBV was used for consumer gear. Remember, they are both simply ways of comparing voltage levels -- nothing more. That + 4dBu is somehow inherently better than -10 dBV is a big, fat myth, kept alive by the somewhat arbitrary labels of professional and consumer attached to them. Ill just bet that a lot of you have glanced at this +4 / -10 thing, and just assumed that the difference between the levels is 14 dB. But now we know better, dont we? The reason the difference isnt 14 dB is because the reference levels between dBu and dBV are different! Remember, dBu is referenced to a voltage level of .775 V, and dBV is referenced to 1V. Armed with the knowledge you now possess, can you figure out what the true difference in operating level is, between + 4 dBu and -10 dBV?

+4 dBu = 20 * log (voltage / .775 V) voltage = 1.228 Volts -10 dBV = 20 * log (voltage / 1V) voltage = 0.3162 Volts 20 * log (1.228V / 0.3162V) = 11.79 dB
You can confirm this by doing a little experiment. Plug a piece of consumer gear with -10 dBV outputs into a piece of gear with + 4 dBu inputs. If they both have VU meters, calibrated such that 0dBVU on each piece of gear corresponds to its nominal operating level, youll find that 0dBVU on the consumer gear causes a reading of -11.79 dBVU on the pro gears meters. dBFS We now come to a relatively new, yet all-important dB designation, the dBFS, which stands for decibels full scale -- a kind of dB designation created especially for digital gear. This one is a little strange because, unlike all the other dB varieties, the reference level isnt at the bottom, or somewhere near the middle, but at the very top possible measurement. This means that 0 dBFS designates the highest possible level, and that all other measurements expressed in terms of dBFS will always be less than 0 dB -- in other words, a negative number. This is why, on digital gear using VU meters (where 0 dBVU means 0 dBFS), the 0 is at the top of the scale, and the meter can never read higher than that. Lets take16 bit digital audio as an example. The term 16-bit means that the level of any sample can be stored as a 16-bit binary number (a binary number with 16 placeholders). As we know, the binary number system only has two digits, 0 and 1. Therefore,
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the highest possible 16 bit binary number is the number with all 1s: 1111 1111 1111 1111 (binary). So the formula for dBFS in a 16 bit digital system is:

dBFS = 20 * log (sample level / 1111 1111 1111 1111)

Its easy to see why they say you cant go over 0 dB in digital. Thats because, at the highest possible sample level (which is the dB reference level, in the case of digital):

20 * log (1111 1111 1111 1111 / 1111 1111 1111 1111) = 0 dBFS
Also, using the same formula, we can easily figure out the dynamic range of a 16-bit system, because we know the smallest possible sample level (other than zero, of course) is 0000 0000 0000 0001.

20* log (0000 0000 0000 0001 / 1111 1111 1111 1111) = -96 dB
So, now you know why the meters on a 16-bit DAW usually read from 0 dB to -96 dB, when displayed at their highest resolution. By following the same logic, its easy to figure out that the dynamic range of a 20-bit digital audio system is 120 dB, and that for 24-bit digital audio, its 144 dB. Ill let you do the math if you want to. (Hint: on most calculators, its easier to convert the binary numbers to decimal numbers first -- otherwise, youre likely to run out of digits!) Coming in Part Two This concludes our discussion on the mighty decibel, at least for now. In the second and final installment of this article, well talk about weighted decibel measurements, which are an attempt to more closely associate raw dBspl readings with the way humans actually hear sound. Well figure out some handy rules-of-thumb concerning decibels, and pull off a few Stupid Decibel Math Tricks. Ill also help you solve the rest of those brain teasers at the beginning of this article. You wont want to miss that, huh? Of course, if you feel ambitious, theres no need to wait for me -- feel free to go ahead and get started on them now. The article you just read presents all the knowledge required! Ill leave you with a handy Decibel Cheat Sheet. You might even want to print it out and hang it on your fridge!

binary 1111 1111 1111 1111 converted to decimal form = 65536

Until next time... happy dBs!

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Part 2
As we press on undaunted, well delve a little further into the topic of the decibel as it pertains to acoustics and audio engineering. Well do some dB calculations, develop a few handy rules-of-thumb (set off by borders, so theyll be obvious), and get into some detail about weighted SPL measurements and other attempts to quantify the loudness of sound, especially as humans perceive it. Decibel Comparisons The sound of your sweetie whispering sweet nothings into your ear is 20 dB. The sound of your mother-in-law yelling at you is 60 dB. How many times louder is your mother-in-law than your paramour? The real question here is, of course, How many times louder is 60 dB than 20 dB? Since were dealing with sound pressure levels here, the formula weve got to use is:

dBspl = 20 log (P / R)
where P is the sound pressure level in Pascals (Pa), and R is a reference value (in the case of dBspl, .00002 Pa). This is the formula we use to express the difference between two absolute pressure measurements in terms of decibels (remember, a decibel is always a difference between two measurements!) Lets write down what we already know:

20 log (PM / R) = 60 dB 20 log (PS / R) = 20 dB

where PM is the sound pressure created by your mother-in-law and PS is the sound pressure created by your sweetie. Therefore;

20 log (PM / R) 20 log (Ps / R) = 40 dB 20 log (PM / PS) = 40 dB log (PM / PS) = 2 dB (PM / PS) = 100
So, the answer is that your mother-in-law yelling at you is 100 times louder than the whispers of your lovely betrothed. Please dont invite me over for Sunday dinner, okay? There are a couple of things of note here. First, since the reference measurement R is a constant, and ends up dividing out of the equation anyway, it doesnt really matter what the actual value of R is in fact, it neednt have appeared in the calculation at all. Second, there was never any need to derive the actual values of PM and PS the problem was to determine how many times greater PM was than PS, so determining the value of the ratio (PM / PS) was enough. Knowing this, we could have started out with the equation:

20 log (PM/PS) = 40 dB
and arrived at the answer a bit quicker. So, what does this tell us? Well, we know that if any two pressure measurements are 40 dB apart, that simply means that the larger one is 100 times greater than the smaller one. This holds true whether the two measurements in question are 60dB and 20dB, 50dB and 10dB, 110dB and 70dB, or whatever. Go aheadtry different values in the formula and see it for yourself! Lets take our new found decibel comparison skills and see if we cant derive a few handy rules-to-remember, shall we? How many decibels louder is a sound if you crank it up to be twice as loud? Easy! Let PA be the sound pressure level after youve cranked it up. Let PB be the original SPL. If (PA / PB) = 2, then

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20 log (PA / PB) = 20 log (2) = 6.0206 dB

which is damn close to (a mathematical term, meaning approximately) 6 dB. We can therefore say that, as a rule of thumb:

An increase of 6dB of a sound means twice as loud.

This is a pretty handy thing to remember! If you are boosting a signal by 6 dB, that means youre doubling the amplitude. Conversely,

A decrease of 6 dB of a sound means half as loud.

By the same method, we can also derive the following: + 1 dB means about a 12% increase in SPL + 3 dB means about a 40% increase in SPL + 6dB means about twice as loud (200% of the original SPL) + 12 dB means about four times as loud (400% of the original SPL) - 1 dB means about 90% of the original SPL - 3 dB means about 70% of the original SPL - 6 dB means about half of the original SPL - 12 dB means about one-quarter of the original SPL

In my opinion, these are values that a good engineer should know in his head. When youre turning knobs and making adjustments to a signal based on dB values, its important to keep in mind what those values means in terms of actual sound levels. Decibel Summation There are two sound sources playing in a room: say, a drummer playing at 72 dB, and a guitar player playing at 66 dB. What is the loudness of the two playing together? Remember, decibels are logarithmic units, and cant be simply added together to produce a meaningful result. If we added 72 dB and 66 dB in the example above, wed come up with a figure of 138 dBwhich is approximately the volume of a jet engine at one meter! Remember that the upper threshold of human hearing is about 120 dB. Common sense tells us that either our answer is wrong, or were listening to one hell of a loud band. There is a formula that allows us to combine decibels levels of different sounds from different sources in this manner. If the level of the first sound is represented as dB1, and the second sound, dB2:

dB of combined sound level = 10 log (10 dB1/10 + 10 dB2/10)

If we plug in the figures in the example, wed have the following:

10 log (1066/10 + 1072/10) = about 73 dB.

There is something interesting worth noting about this equation: the result can never be higher than 3 dB above the higher of the two sound levels! In fact, if the two sound levels are the same (dB1 = dB2), the result will always be an increase of 3 dB. Also, the more the two readings differ, the smaller the increase in combined SPL will be, and of course the closer the combined result will be to the higher reading. Theres nothing magic about any of this it can all be deduced from the equation. It would be a good exercise to plug in a few numbers and verify these rules for yourself. Lets summarize these general rules: Combining two different sounds of the same level results in an increase of 3 dB.

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The smaller the difference in level between two sounds, the greater the increase in their combined SPL will be (to a maximum of 3 dB). The greater the difference in level between two sounds, the smaller the increase in their combined SPL will be.

But wait havent we already said that twice as loud means an increase of 6 dB? There appears to be a contradiction here, but really there isnt. When we talked before about a 6 dB boost in a sound being twice as loud, we were in fact talking about a single sound being boosted from its previous level. The above formula holds true only when the two sounds being compared are different. Its a subtle but crucial distinction. The formula is useful, because when we talk about sound levels combining in this manner, were almost always talking about different sounds. The fact is that if the two sounds are similar enough (i.e., phase correlated) the actual increase will be higher than predicted by the formulaand if the two sounds are the same, the increase in level can in fact be up to 6 dB. Youve scored some sweet tickets to a Pearl Jam concert, where the SPL is 120 dB. As youre waiting in the interminably long line to get out of the parking lot after the show, you crank their latest CD on your car stereo at a level of 100 dB. How many car stereos played at that volume would it take to produce the same SPL as the concert? Here were combining not only two, but several, different sound sources to determine the combined result; however, the procedure is the same. Since each car stereo is playing at the same volume (100 dB), lets use the following equation:

120 dB = 10 log (n * 1010)

where n is the number of car stereos that would combine to produce a result of 120 dB. Solving for n produces a result of 100. That means it would take 100 car stereos playing together at 100 dB to produce a combined SPL of 120 dB! Does this result surprise you? It shouldnt! From the rules of thumb we developed earlier, we know that two stereos playing together at 100 dB would be 103 dB. Applying the formula above, we find that adding a third stereo to the first two would produce a result of 104.8 dB (an increase of only 1.8 dB). Adding the fourth would make 106 dB, the fifth 107 dB, the sixth 107.8, and so on. You can see that each additional stereo makes less and less of an increase to the total resultwhich not only follows our rule, but should make intuitive sense based on your own everyday observations. When you yell at a small party, everyone hears you; when you yell at the same volume at a ballgame, you dont add much to the overall volume of the crowd! How much louder is a 100-watt guitar amp than a 50-watt guitar amp? Hey after all this mathematical gymnastics, this one is a piece of cake! We know that watts are a measurement of electrical power. Youll recall the dB formula for power measurements is:

Power dB = 10 log (P1 / P2)

where P1 and P2 are the two readings being compared. You can already probably figure out in your head that the answer to the problem is 3 dB.

10 log (100 / 50) = 3 dB.

Lets Join the Real World Now So far, all the information weve presented about decibels as they apply to the behavior of sound has been purely theoretical. Weve talked about the sound pressure level without respect to frequency, which is to say, weve been using an unweighted system of decibel measurement. However, studies done over the yearsusing real people listening to real soundshave revealed that the perceived loudness of a sound depends on the frequency of that sound. In other words, the frequency response of the ear isnt flat at all, but is more sensitive to sounds in the middle of the audible spectrum than it is to low-frequency or high-frequency sounds. If you were to plot a frequency response graph of the typical human ear, youd have a graph showing 3 dB down cutoff frequencies at about 500 Hz on the low end, and 8 kHz on the high end. Youd also see a gentle yet pronounced presence peak at around 4 kHz, which indicates that the ear is most sensitive to sounds in that range.

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Unfortunately, thats not the only fly in the ointment we have to deal with, because its also true that the way in which the ear responds to various frequencies is dependent on the loudness of the sound itself. In other words, the ears frequency response is flatter for loud sounds, and less flat when the sound is relatively soft. Back in 1933, a couple of scientists named Fletcher and Munson did experiments on all of this stuff and developed a series of curves that very closely approximated the response of the human ear with respect to both frequency and loudness. These curves are sometimes referred to as the Fletcher-Munson loudness curve, or more commonly the equal response contour. If youve worked with audio technology in any depth in the past, these are probably both terms youve already heard.

These curves represent a plot of sound pressure levels of pure sine tones that are generally perceived as being equally loud. They are, in fact, the inverse of the human ears frequency response graph. As an example, take a look at the sixth curve from the top. It shows that if a 1 kHz sine tone is played at 70 dB, a 70 Hz tone would have to be played at 80 dB to be perceived as equally loud; a 16 kHz tone would have to be played at 90 dB to be perceived as equally loud, and so forth. Note how the equal loudness contour is flatter for louder sounds and much less flat for softer sounds. A few years after Fletcher and Munson published their results, acoustical engineers developed decibel weighting systems to compensate for the ears imperfect response. Nearly all sound level meters incorporate electronic filters that reflect the nowstandardized decibel weighting systems. The three most common weighting systems are A-weighting, B-weighting, and C-weighting, which attempt to compensate for soft, medium, and loud sounds respectively. By far, the most common designation youll find is the A-weighting, designated as dBA or dB(A). The A-weighting system has, over time, been adopted by government agencies like the FAA and the EPA, and is used for nearly all legislative and other official purposes, such as noise control ordinances and the like. Bweighting is rarely used nowadays. C-weighting, which most closely corresponds to the unweighted measurement of SPL, is occasionally used for sound levels exceeding 100 dB. The graph below shows the weighting curves used for most sound level meters.

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Conclusion There are several other factors which color the way in which humans perceive sound, all of which complicate to some degree any attempts to accurately express sound levels in terms of decibels. Frequency and loudness are not the whole story! These other factors include the sounds waveform, complexity, spectrum, harmonic content, duration, spatial properties, attack and decay characteristics, and the simultaneous presence of other sounds, to name a few. The study of how humans perceive, react to, and interact with music, noise, and sound is called psychoacoustics. Many in this field have tried to come up with systems to accurately quantify various aspects of sound perception, and the decibel is among the most important tools they use for this purpose. As audio engineers, producers, technicians, and musicians, a clear understanding of the decibel is important to us as well, as we pursue our endeavors in the technology of sound. If you have any questions, comments, kudos, beefs, or whatever please feel free to write me at: ldumond@prorec.com. I love getting the mail! And once again happy dBs! Lionel Dumond is the Managing Engineer at Sweetwater Sound Productions in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and is the Media and Mastering Editor here at ProRec. Unfortunately, he wasnt able to successfully explain the decibel system to the cop who wrote him the ticket for the cherry bomb mufflers on that 68 Mustang

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