this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
470 points (97.2% liked)
Technology
58094 readers
3216 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This "conversion" from decibel to per cent is more than ridiculous.
Why? dB is logarithmic so it's difficult for people to picture how loud something is, if that's the only number given.
And so are our ears. That's why we use db. So 12db is not perceived by us to be 94% quieter.
So its 94% less sound because this seems sound calculated -12db in % with conventional formulas?
How would we describe perceived sound exactly, not many people can imagine something when given a db value? Maybe we should?
When loudness is described there's often lists with examples of things with their typical loudness specified in dB, so you can compare against things you may have heard.
See the image chart here
https://decibelpro.app/blog/decibel-chart-of-common-sound-sources/
I have done a lil research but what i needed was this site. Great resource, maybe even coolguides material.
Well, 93.7% to be more exact. Did you recalculate it yourself the same i did ?
Your calculation was about energy. But the calculation of energy is next to useless when you are trying to compare two different noises. You need to care about perception.
The perception of noise is quite complicated. But as a rule of thumb: when some noise changes by -10dB, then you hear it about "half as loud".
Source: I have a university degree in acoustics.
So for the reduction of -12dB here, it will be perceived as "nearly half as loud". Very different than the "94%" is suggesting.
It’s also only 2db overall, the one frequency they dropped that much.
We agree that the -12dB is what's important for human hearing ... Now, you may agree that the 94% reduction is what counts regarding engineering // fabrication // design.
-2db* and 37%*
Why are you perpetuating the wrong information?
The snippet quoted in the original comments and referenced in subsequent comments refers specifically to the decibel reduction of the frequencies being targeted by the invention, not the volume of the overall sound.
Is it? Because the next sentence in the paragraph (and the only sentence missing in the quote) is the overall sound reduction. Which is far more important and far less misleading than saying 12db and 94% quieter.
Its intentionally misleading to deceive people, and than the general public incorrectly defends it, this is you.
You omitted the most important data, it’s 2db overall, not 12db.
So your own “recalculation” isn’t even in the right ballpark as the correct answer.
Its people that misinterpret the information and perpetuate it like you are doing here that makes these look far better than they actually are.