What's Twice as Loud?

We have discussed sounds that are equally loud. What about sounds twice as loud?

Experiments have shown that an increase of somewhere between 5 and 10 dB will sound twice as loud:

In more research-controlled environments, for a 1000-Hz sinusoid at moderate to high levels, a difference of 10 dB doubles the loudness.

This serves as the basis for another scale of loudness called the sone.


``Music 175: Loudness'' by Tamara Smyth, Department of Music, University of California, San Diego (UCSD).
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Copyright © 2019-04-11 by Tamara Smyth.
Please email errata, comments, and suggestions to Tamara Smyth<trsmyth@ucsd.edu>