| Maybe I just live on the planet, but I don’t have this problem with dB and to me, it sounds like you’re the alien. Maybe you could elaborate, or give a motivating example? I just don’t remember encountering the problem you’re describing, and it’s unfamiliar to me. There’s something about your experience that I don’t understand, but I don’t know what it is. |
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| ▲ | viraptor 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Moving from EE to audio to radio is enough to go through a few iterations of "people just write dB but mean completely different things". I got used to it, but that doesn't stop me from saying it's a bad idea and we should improve things for the next person. | | |
| ▲ | klodolph a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Audio, the only gotcha I’ve seen is that -10 is -10 dBu and +4 is +4 dBV. That one is sloppy. But this comment doesn’t illustrate your point, and I still don’t really understand where you’re seeing this. | |
| ▲ | sanderjd a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yeah exactly. Lots of people here can't seem to distinguish between "thing that I'm used to" and "thing that is good practice". But these are totally different. I'm used to and thus comfortable with lots of things that are nonetheless terrible! |
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| ▲ | 00N8 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I often see pop sci articles saying something like '400 dB would represent a sound strong enough to tear the world apart', or 'military sonar is X dB -- strong enough to liquefy your organs at Y distance'. It's rarely clear to me which of these usages of 'dB' are directly comparable. I think the dB measurement for sonar is a different scale/unit than the one for hearing damage thresholds in air, but I couldn't figure out how to convert between the two last time I spent a few minutes trying to look it up, so in my opinion it can be fairly confusing. | |
| ▲ | sanderjd 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The explanation and motivating examples are in the article. | | |
| ▲ | klodolph a day ago | parent [-] | | The article only had bad examples in it, I was hoping for perspective from someone that made sense. The voltage / power example doesn’t make sense. It’s always power or voltage squared, which are equivalent when the load is resistive. | | |
| ▲ | sanderjd a day ago | parent [-] | | The articles examples were fine. You (and lots of others here) are being obtuse. |
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| ▲ | sanderjd 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes. The point is that for some reason dB seems particularly susceptible to people dropping the units. For instance, I've heard loudness of sounds described in decibels for my whole life, and first saw the actual units people are describing when I read this article and thread today. | | |
| ▲ | drob518 2 days ago | parent [-] | | That’s because you’re a casual observer. If you’re an audio engineer, recording things, designing microphones, amps, or speakers, then you’d know it. Trust me. I’m a digital electrical engineer (computer engineering, basically). I thought that dBs were weird, too. My dad worked in microwave communications systems for his career and dBs are perfectly natural for him. Ditto my daughter who is an audio engineer. Dropping units when you’re working in a particular field is quite common, as who wants to be needlessly wordy when it’s redundant and everyone in the industry understands it? IMO, this article is just the author raging about his own ignorance. | | |
| ▲ | sanderjd a day ago | parent | next [-] | | That's the whole point. You're failing to communicate clearly. You think it's fine because you're used to it. But it's bad. That you are used to and comfortable with something does not imply that it is not bad. | |
| ▲ | viraptor 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | There are two paths: "it was weird but then I got used to it, you're just ignorant" or "it was weird, I got used to it, but we should improve the situation". I know which side I want to be on. Even if it takes decades like the data SI prefixes. | | |
| ▲ | drob518 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | You’re discounting familiarity as being stupid. The real path is “it was weird but once I spent some time with it, it made perfect sense.” | | |
| ▲ | sanderjd a day ago | parent | next [-] | | No, it doesn't make perfect sense. It's a bad practice to leave off units. You just got used to it and seem to have developed pride in being in the in-crowd of people comfortable with an unclear jargon, and that has now blinded you to a bad status quo. Many such cases! | |
| ▲ | JadeNB a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > You’re discounting familiarity as being stupid. The real path is “it was weird but once I spent some time with it, it made perfect sense.” I don't think either of your parent's paths say that: > There are two paths: "it was weird but then I got used to it, you're just ignorant" or "it was weird, I got used to it, but we should improve the situation". I know which side I want to be on. Even if it takes decades like the data SI prefixes. I believe that they're saying that, yes, experts get used to it, after which it makes complete sense (as would any arbitrary but consistent convention, once you got used to it), but, in any living field, there will constantly be non-experts looking to become experts. If there is a way to make the process easier for them while not introducing any lack of precision that would hamper experts, then why not? |
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| ▲ | klodolph a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | What’s to improve? I think the situation works well for people who work in the fields that use dB. | | |
| ▲ | sanderjd a day ago | parent [-] | | The improvement would be to specify the units you're working with, as is well known best practice in all science and engineering disciplines. |
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| ▲ | viraptor 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, that's what the whole article is about... | | |
| ▲ | drob518 2 days ago | parent [-] | | But it’s not. He’s raging against dB. | | |
| ▲ | viraptor 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Yes. He's complaining against dB with no reference, not against dB(A) for example. (Apart from the naming of some of them being silly) | | |
| ▲ | davrosthedalek a day ago | parent | next [-] | | But dB without reference makes sense in many many occasions. Either because the reference is implicit (not ideal, but we have many implicit assumptions in communication), or because it's genuinely a ratio. Attenuation, gain. If you every find an "official" written document that uses dB not as attenuation/gain and is not specifying the reference (at least in a footnote), it's written either by idiots or for idiots, or both. | | |
| ▲ | sanderjd a day ago | parent [-] | | No it doesn't. It's always bad for the actual unit to be implicit. | | |
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| ▲ | klodolph a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | dB(A) is a weighting. It’s not a reference and it’s not units. I think some of the confusion here comes from people not actually understanding units. A-weighting describes how different frequencies are summed up. It’s like saying “RMS”. RMS is not units, A-weighting is not units. You can apply A weighting to voltage, digital signals, or audio. They all have different units but can all be A-weighted. You could invent a new unit for A-weighted audio, but you would need several. |
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