| ▲ | viraptor 2 days ago | ||||||||||||||||
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. | |||||||||||||||||
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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. | |||||||||||||||||