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| ▲ | drob518 a day 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 a day 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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| ▲ | drob518 a day ago | parent [-] | | But it’s not. He’s raging against dB. | | |
| ▲ | viraptor a day 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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