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Perception and Watts: Doubling of power

There's a curious rule of thumb, which to my ears seems mostly true:

  • To double the perceived volume, you must output 10x more power.

10x power = 10 dB by the way.  We've read this as we were buying amps and trying to decide between 100w/channel and 150w/channel.  We are told, repeatedly that 50 W difference isn't really that much.

On more than one occasion I've tested this and found it's pretty much spot on.  Here's my question:

How can any of us really tell what half as loud, or twice as loud is?

I mean, think about this for a bit.  I cannot tell half as bright, or twice as bright, but it seems I actually CAN tell what half as loud is.  How does this even begin to work in the ear/brain mechanism?? 😁

erik_squires

Showing 1 response by emergingsoul

emergingsoul
1,309 posts
 

It’s all about Appalachian mountains versus the Rocky Mountains when it comes to frequency definition.

The ability of ears to differentiate between all those pressures circulating via sound waves, or pressure amplitudes, is truly remarkable. So the more precise those waves can be transferred from speakers the better it should sound.  And somehow higher wattage delivered through higher quality amplifiers is really helpful and so difficult to explain.  I guess a lot has to do with how quick an amplifier responds to all those frequencies in terms of making sure that all the power demands are spread to reproduce all those frequencies in an incredibly fast manner with very low distortion.

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