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But it’s not. He’s raging against dB.

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)

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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.

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sanderjd a day ago | parent [-]

No it doesn't. It's always bad for the actual unit to be implicit.

	▲	davrosthedalek a day ago \| parent [-]
		The unit of a gain/attenuation is [1]. There is no implicit unit in that case.

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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.