SOUND LEVELS AND THE DECIBEL 9] Table 2-3. Reference quantities in common use. Level in decibels Reference quantity Acoustic Sound pressure level in 20 micropascal air (SPL, 48) Power level (Lp.d8) 1 picowatt(10-12 watt) Electric Power level re 1 mW 10-3 watt (1 milliwatt) Voltage level re 1 volt Volume level, YU 10-3 watt Acoustic Power Table 2-4, The Greeks had a word for it. It doosn’t take many watts of acoustic power to Prefix Symbol Multiple produce some very loud sounds, as anyone who tera T lives downstairs from a dedicated audiophile 7 will leslily, We are conditioned by iegawalt “4 electrical generating plants, 350-horsepower ™€9? " (261 kilowatt) automobile engines, and 1,500- Kile k ‘watt flatirons that eclipse the puny watt or so the milli m hi-fi loudspeakers might radiale as acoustic micro » power. Even though a hundred-watt amplifier pang a may be driving the loudspeakers, loudspeaker —p4¢g > officiency (output for a given input) is very low, perhaps on the order of 10 percent, and head- room must be reserved for the occasional peaks of music. Increasing power to achieve greater results is often frustrating. Doubling power from 1 to 2 watts is a 3-dB increase in power level (10 log 2 = 3.01), a very small increase in loudness; however, the same 3-dB increase in level is represented by an increase in power from 100 to 200 watts or 1,000 to 2,000 watts. ‘Table 2-5 lists sound pressure and sound-pressure levels of some common sounds. In the sound-pressure column, it is a long stretch 1012 109 106 102 10-3 10-6 10-9 10-12O2 CHAPTER TWO Table 2-5. Some common sound-pressure levels and sound pressures. Sound Sound level* pressure (decibels, Sound Source (Pa) A-weighted) Satumn rocket 100,000. 196 (one atmosphere) Ram jet 2,000. 160 Propeller aircraft 200. 140 Threshold of pain 135 Riveter 20. 120 Heavy truck 2 100 Noisy office, } o2 80 Heavy traffic Conversational speech 0.02 60 Private offive 50 Quiet residence 0.0002 40 Recording studio 20 Leaves rustling 0.0002 20 Hearing threshold, good ears at frequency of maximum sensitivity 10 Hearing threshold, excellent ears at frequency maximum response 0.00002 0 * Reforonce prossure (take your pick, theso are identical): 20 micropascal (Pa) 0.00002 pascal 2x10" nowton/meter? 0.0002 dyno/em® or microbar from 100,000 Pa (100 kPa), which is atmospheric pressure to, 0.00002 Pa (20 Pa), but this range is reduced to quite a convenient form in the level column. The same information is present in graphical form in Fig. 2-2. ‘Another way to generate a 194-dB sound-pressure level, besides 50 pounds of TNT 10 feet away. Common sound waves are but tiny ripples on the steady-state atmospheric pressure, A 194-dB sound-pressure level approaches the alimospheric and, hence, is a ripple of the same order of magnitude as launching a Seturn rocket, is to detonateSOUND LEVELS AND THE DECIBEL 9) Sound-pressure Sound pressure leveldB Pascal Riveter 10 = 10 <—I1Pa % 80 — << o1Pa 7 Noise near 60 — freeway <— o01Pa 50 40 <— 0001Pa 20 — Background noise 20 — in studio <— 0.0001 Pa 10 ;— Slandard reference proveure: 20%. 10-4 Pa o«< 2 yPa (Approximate threshold of hearing) ‘An appreciation of the relative magnitude of a sound pressure of 1 Pascal can be gained by comparison to known sounds. The standard reference pressure for sound in air is 20:Pa, which corresponds closely to the minimum audible pressure. atmospheric pressure. The 194-dB sound pressure is an rms (root mean square) value. A peak sound pressure 1.4 times as great would modulate the atmospheric pressure completely. A level is a logarithm of a ratio of two powerlike quantities. When lev els are computed from other than power ratios, certain conventions are