On Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:22:07 -0400, Jud McCranie
wrote:

On Fri, 10 Aug 2007 01:27:18 -0400, mm
wrote:

I've never heard this before. AFAIK, a 10 decibel increase is twice
the volume. It was chosen that way to be a round number, 1 bel.
------

I looked it up, and a 3 dB increase approximately doubles the power.

I think I would phrase it that doubling the power results in a 3db
increase.

But more important is that power and volume are not the same thing.
So there is no contradiction between what I said and what you just
said.

Because of the way our ears and brains work, it takes a lot more than
twice the power to result in twice the loudness. That's a reason,
maybe the whole reason, that Bels and decibels were defined.

If we heard sound in a linear way, we could have measured it using
ergs, or dynes, or watts, I'm not sure what, but one of the already
existing or newly created measures for power.