| ▲ | rocqua 2 days ago | ||||||||||||||||
> But dB is not a unit, it is a multiplier. dB on its own is unitless. The point of the article is exactly that this should be the case. But it ends up not being the case. Mostly because people use dB with reference to some assumed baseline. But also because a 20db change could be a 10x change conpared to baseline, or a 100x change compared to baseline, depending on what unit you are measuring in. | |||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | mikewarot 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||
20 dB is always the same, actually. If you multiply voltage (and thus current as well) by 10:1 (20 db) the power is multiplied by 100:1 (also 20 dB) | |||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | atoav 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | ||||||||||||||||
Yes but my conclusion would not be that Decibels are ridiculous, but that "People don't understand Decibels". Decibels are okay. They are useful. They work. The problem is that people use referenced decibel values without adding anything that would allow us to understand which reference was used. Maybe one could have come up with a better numeric way of doing the same thing (I am missing a proposal for this in the blog post), but then you'd have the XKCD-yet-another-standard problem. Everything uses dB for ages now, so dB it is or you need to convert between one and another all the time. As an audio engineer I have no issue with dB as a unit. It is much better than using raw amplitude numbers. | |||||||||||||||||