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Audiophile Related - Understanding power, peak, contious and dBs

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TimFox:
It is vaguely like temperature in degrees F or C (not K):  you can say that the difference between 80 and 60 degrees is twice that between 80 and 70 degrees, but you can't say that 80 degrees is twice as hot as 40 degrees.  (Analogy only)

Conrad Hoffman:
Loudspeaker power specs are near to worthless. If you actually fed the rated power to most speakers they'd go up in flames or at least fry the voice coils. The only number to care about is the sensitivity. From that you can predict dB output. Remember that music is an unpredictable waveform, anything but a constant power, and your speaker placement in a given room has a huge effect, so these calculated results may not predict how loud you think it sounds.

madires:
And there are more things to consider. The impedance of the speaker changes with frequency, it's not a flat line. Tthe power needed for an agreeably listening experience at home isn't high unless you live above a night club. Clean 10W plus a good set of speakers is totally sufficient. If you want to know more about SPL weightings regarding human sound sensitivity you can start with dB(A) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-weighting).

TimFox:
A very important detail about actual audio waveforms (both music and speech) is the high peak to average ratio, compared with a continuous sine wave.
A higher power amplifier also has a higher level at which it clips the waveforms.  Presumably, clipping the waveform is annoying to the listener.
Of course, with electric guitars and similar systems where music is being produced, rather than reproduced, the distortion and clipping of the amplifier is part of the musical instrument, so the considerations are different from those applicable to high-fidelity reproduction of recorded sound.

DW1961:

--- Quote from: Siwastaja on August 02, 2020, 01:21:15 pm ---Remember that "volume" is just a psychological concept, not a scientifically measurable number.

The only way to say how many dB of power you need to add to "double the volume", is to ask volunteers to listen to different power levels and ask them about when they felt it "doubled".

--- End quote ---

I'm getting that.


"Whatever level you perceive as twice as loud, it is not at +3dB, which is twice the power. It is normally more than +6dB (4 times the power). Historically it is considered to be around +10dB, which is 10 times the power. This following table summarizes the increases (the loudness is based on 10dB gain for double loudness).

+3 dB =
Loudness Change +23% <----------!!!!
Sound Pressure Change 1.4
Power Change x 2


* Double the power (+3dB) gives around 25% increase in perceived volume
Four times the power (+6dB) gives around 50% increase in perceived volume
10 times the power (+10dB) gives around 100% increase in perceived volume
* https://geoffthegreygeek.com/amplifier-power/

So, I am misunderstanding how 3dB is about the sound of a pin dropping, but = a 23% increase in volume.

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