[LAD] twice as loud

[Philipp Überbacher]

Excerpts from Ralf Mardorf's message of 2010-07-23 16:04:17 +0200:
> On Fri, 2010-07-23 at 12:13 +0200, fons at kokkinizita.net wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 11:34:43AM +0200, Philipp Überbacher wrote:
> > 
> > > > > We could think about what makes judging twice the
> > > > > loudness more difficult and maybe find a relation to another phenomenon
> > > > > this way. The limits of hearing apply to everything, but what about
> > > > > factors like the time between two sounds or the length of the sounds?
> > > > 
> > > > All of these affect both masking and loudness.
> > > 
> > > Yep, but maybe some of the other possible factors match one phenomenon
> > > but not the other.
> > 
> > Indeed. As I said, this relation between 'loudness' and masking
> > is pure conjecture, I have no hard arguments pro.
> > 
> > > May I ask why you used 10*log(2/1) in your two person example?
> > 
> > You mean why power and not amplitude ? Two persons talking would
> > produce twice the power, since the signals are not correlated.
> > So if our idea of 'twice as loud' would be determined by such
> > experiences (but it clearly isn't), it would refer to power.
> > 
> > > Do nearfield effects matter?
> > 
> > Probably yes, but don't ask me how !
> > 
> > Joern's remark that the phrase 'twice as loud' doesn't make
> > sense is to the point. We only accept it because it is 'well-
> > formed' at the language level. But there is no a priori 
> > numerical value for loudness (indeed we are trying to find
> > one !), so 'doubling' it is in fact undefined.
> > 
> > Ciao,
> > 
> 
> If parents want their children to play the music half as loud, the
> parents usually have a perfect idea of what half as loud is, it quiet
> often differs to the idea of the children.

That is a very nice example indeed. I guess in many cases the parents
would use a different wording, which would add the inaccuracy of natural
languages to the problem.
-- 
Regards,
Philipp

--
"Wir stehen selbst enttäuscht und sehn betroffen / Den Vorhang zu und alle Fragen offen." Bertolt Brecht, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan