Talk:Loudest band in the world

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This article was nominated for deletion on 7 January 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.

nominated for deletion: see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Loudest band in the world

There seems to be something missing from these "decibel readings." A decibel isn't a unit of volume - it is a comparison of two figures (related to power, not necessarily volume at all). If you turn the voume up 6 decibels you have doubled it (no matter what it was before). Without a base figure to compare to, "136.5 decibels" (or whatever) means absolutely nothing - it doesn't relate to absolute volume at all and in fact could be any loudness (even sub-audibly soft).

These measures only tell how much they turned it up from line level. Without knowing what the base level is (which will vary from system to system) these figures tell absolutely nothing about how loud the band actually was....why one would really care is another question entirely...

Curien1000 08:08, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Right, Bel and thus decibel (dB) is a hint-word for a unit-less value which is the logarithm of a relation of two values (which can have units). These two values can be input and output of a level-changing device (e. g. an amplifier) in which case 6dB can mean a doubling or halving of a value. (But also 12dB can mean doubling of a value, see the link below for details.)

They also can be the relation between the norm pressure of the air and the maximal pressure of the air at the peak of each wave of sound. Thus, a decibel measure, being in fact a relative value, can be perceived as an absolute value, namely the sound pressure level.

In real life experiments this value often gets lower with square of the distance, so this distance to the source of the sound is important if you are interested in the loudness of the source (which is what this article is about—of course, Manowar from ten kilometers away isn't as loud as, say, my private stereo).

Especially if the source of the sound is large (e. g. towers of loudspeakers) the sound pressure level can be quite constant for a larger range around the source. So to measure this in the area of the crowd attending the concert could be okay.

--Alfe 16:09, 2 October 2007 (UTC)