Is a 3dB or 10dB Increase in Loudspeaker Volume Perceived as Twice as Loud?

I got lost in all this ... so far I have read everywhere that an increase by 3dB is a double increase in volume. However, the article http://audiomania.info/articles.php?id=34 shows that 3dB is a clearly audible increase in the volume for the human ear, while 10dB is twice as loud. Where is the truth? If I misunderstood something ... this article probably concerns amplifiers, I mean mainly loudspeakers.

As far as I know, 10 dB is an audible doubling of the volume. But as our hearing is logarithmic to hear something twice as loud. This thing has to play 10 times louder, which means you have to deliver 10 times more power.

what a difference whose ear hears.
The more important thing is that when we connect the second speaker, we have twice as much pressure, i.e. an increase of 6dB.

It is difficult to define something like "hears 2 times louder".
From the technical side:
Providing 2 times more power gives a profit of 3dB
Adding a second speaker with the same signal gives a gain of 6dB
The human notices a difference of 1-1.5dB

irek2 wrote:

what a difference whose ear hears.
The more important thing is that when we connect the second speaker, we have twice as much pressure, i.e. an increase of 6dB.

2 times more pressure is not a coincidence 3 dB?

Lp = 20 log P / P0

Li = 10 log I / I0

So 2 times the intensity is 3dB, the pressure is 6dB

Intensity vs pressure ... what's the difference ?? I read everywhere, unless, instead of 1 speaker, we give two the same, the effectiveness increases by 3dB, so it sounds 2x louder.

Added after 4 [minutes]:

aaa ... I think something is already up So in plain, unprofessional language: intensity is the "amount of sound" measured with an instrument, and pressure is the "amount of sound" heard by a human ....? And because the human ear has a logarithmic scale, when the measured value increases 10 times, the hearing by the human ear will be 2 times louder.

Intensity is a measure of energy, while sound pressure is a measure of pressure deviations from "normal"

And the intensity is directly proportional to the square of the pressure, hence the differences. An increase in intensity twice causes an increase in pressure (averaged) by the root of 2.

Hello....
I will write as I wrote in one of my first posts here .... there was a fight between the two men I don't remember who (but not eqtkontra silversound ........... I miss them) ..... . it is impossible to say that it is 6 or 10dB, it is an individual subjective feeling, therefore large discrepancies depend only on the person assessing it ............. the matter is useless as a discussion about the superiority of Christmas over Easter, or it cannot be done, and here math does not work.

One mosaic to say what has already been written by the predecessors of 3dB requires 2x more power louder

Yes, the quarrel was cult ...
With these 10dB, it is apparently true and also applies to other stimuli - touch, heat, etc. But how can you say that it is 2 times louder, or that my tooth hurts 3 times more. It's just like cosmetics, after which you are 30% healthier and 70% more radiant:] For me twice as loud it is when you place another child of the same size next to a screaming child and make them scream in unison. Of course, I ignore the mutual radiation resistance between children :D

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Hephi

Thanks to you, many things have already understood

irek2 wrote:

what a difference whose ear hears.
The more important thing is that when we connect the second speaker, we have twice as much pressure, i.e. an increase of 6dB.

So do you think that if I add a second loudspeaker in my car and I still supply 1kW, the pressure will jump from 142.8 to 148.8?

Well, not if you add a second loudspeaker with the second 1KW boost, theoretically you will have 6dB more. But as you know, only theoretically. Measurement in the open air will give exactly 6dB more, but in a car it depends on which glass will break
Well, but two speakers and two amplifiers are a different category and a different competition and twice as expensive and the cup is probably the same

no, same category yet.
But let's not get off topic.
The CRX windows withstand 156dB calmly

Once, my colleagues and I conducted a test of the amplifier in the chamber and during this test the "volume" increased 2x, ie 3dB, when we increased it from 50W to 200W. But it all depends a lot on the speakers used. Each company's loudspeaker works differently and has different parameters.

kosmaty wrote:

during this test, the "volume" increased 2x, ie 3dB, when we increased it from 50W to 200W.

But what do you mean by "loudness". How did you measure it? Measuring the acoustic pressure? Or something else. If so, the result of 3dB is weak in my opinion, and it is strange that it came out like this. After all, there should be + 12dB of pressure for + 6dB of power. And how much "volume" here?

Why + 12dB? After all, there are decibels, so that there is always the same number of them. 6dB of voltage and power is the same, but differently looks on the "normal" scale - 1.41 and 2, but it is precisely because 1.41 voltage increase gives a 2-fold increase in power. And pressure is the acoustic "equivalent" of voltage.

3dB came out instead of 6, because the loudspeaker has power compression - what specific loudspeaker it was. For example, PD1850 (speaker for PLN 2,000, 18 with a 5 !!! inch coil) has according to manufacturer's 2dB compression at full power, so let alone "cheap" loudspeakers for several hundred zlotys, not to mention those for several dozen ...

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Hephi

Well, companies like Mackie or RCF here "cheat" customers by giving max spl, e.g. 130dB for the 400W loudspeaker, because they give without taking into account the power compression and in addition in the peak (4x more power) it looks like PMPO power, even dexon gives max spl taking into account power compression (blah, I had the opportunity to find out that there is practically no difference in volume with the LDM 315 pro sound a little better but they were buying on decibels as evidenced by these companies)

The loudspeaker used is: BEYMA 12``M-300
I don't know anything about him.
Is it good, maybe different, is it reliable?

The loudspeaker is good and reliable, I know I had loudspeakers on them and you have researched what often because it is a mid-range speaker (or rather a mid-bass), not a woofer

Everything is beautiful, but already 4 topics within these "dB" have scrolled - please, let's stick to the topic ...

https://www.elektroda.pl/rtvforum/topic103857-0.html - this topic was mentioned. But it was fun to argue

I started this topic because I wanted to know how to look at speaker efficiency. I wanted to know if the efficiency is higher by 3dB = 2x higher "volume". However, your posts show that this "loudness" is a subjective feeling and it is impossible to clearly determine how much it will be. So I wonder why in such magazines as e.g. "Audio" in the latest issue in one of the tests I read that some loudspeakers have a 3dB greater efficiency than the other, so it sounds 2x louder. Besides, I also remember from car tests, i.e. the noise they make while driving, the authors of these tests emphasized a little that the noise greater by 2-3dB is twice as much. This strange world .....

And it's not like that 2x louder it was supposed to be 10 times more power ??

Quote
http://audiomania.info/articles.php?id=34
"3 dB is the smallest increase in volume clearly recorded by the human ear"
"10 dB is a two-fold increase in human perceived loudness, for which we must increase the power 10 times, i.e. increase the voltage 3.2 times."




People, let's finally come to a conclusion and let's finish the topic so that people find out something, and not so much that I don't know anything myself. It seems to me that I can agree with these quotes from the website. Especially with the former? And you? The latter quote is harder to measure (subjective feelings), but there must be something to it as well. Probably someone researched it and statistically that's how it turned out.
What do you say?

Make yourself a tee. In a sudden leap, increase the volume of your music by 1,2,3,6 dB and answer yourself when you hear the difference. I am at the computer, with the winamp, using the preamplifier in the EQ (I set, for example, -5.5 dB and then turn on the eqaualizer button), I hear the difference from, say, 1.3 dB on the computer speakers, although I can make a suggestion (because I know that it is to come change - I press the button itself). 3 dB (2.9 in the Winamp) is a clear change, 6 dB (5.5) I would call a double volume difference, 10 (9.7) is even more.
Subjective feelings, you say. Let's see who dims better or who has better hearing ...
Apparatus, measurements, power, voltage and pressure ratios - yes, even fractions of dB come out nicely. In the topic to which I linked in my previous post, everything is exactly written in the table.
Subjective feelings can be very different, no one will tell anyone that for him, for example, 20 dB is not 2x louder. Musicians have a more sensitive hearing, acoustics know this and that about dB, and most of the nation says "make a half tone quieter" anyway.
Greetings.

Musicians have a sensitive "musical" hearing (i.e. they distinguish changes in frequency, taste harmonics, often distinguish a few times better changes in intensity - this is related to HEARING MEMORY) - they often have physically damaged hearing - even as a result of frequent staying in noise ...

You will stone me, but I hear the differences in the intensity of the order of 0.5 - 0.7 dB - someone else determines the level ... In 90 percent of cases I noticed the change well in any case - in the case of a 100Hz, 1kHz and 4kHz sine wave. The lower and higher than these values it is more difficult - due to the sensitivity of hearing ... When it comes to music - it is more difficult, but below 1 dB we went down. Everything in the range below 105 dB maximum, then it becomes more difficult ...
The question of still hardware - you can not so-called computer loudspeakers - that is, some micro "series" (if the band 400Hz - 8kHz is "wide") define your full potential ...

In fact, all considerations about dB can help only in approximating the maximum intensity - and also approximate, because it depends on the compression of the converters, room, etc. ... the music itself - and learn to distinguish the level of nat. sound - in one word, noise ... - depending on the frequency ... Then you can define for yourself - well, these 3 dB are twice as louder for me, for example, but below the intensity of the order of 120 dB, where I feel right now. .. There is no need to worry so much about it.

Above 120 dB I can only distinguish the difference of 135-140dB for 16khz. On the basis of "it hurts a lot" - "it hurts weakly because I can't hear anything anymore" . The matter of sensitizing hearing ... Each of us has a hearing as individual as our musical taste and that's it, there's no need to mess around. So it is best to use it when creating your own "dream" loudspeakers, because our hearing also includes our preferences.

maybe I will describe the experiment we conducted at the university:
There were about 40 people sitting in the room. A reference signal (white noise) was emitted from the loudspeakers, with a certain level of sound pressure. We defined this reference signal at 100 points. Then a signal with a changed pressure level was emitted (within +/- 20dB). The audience's task was to assign a number proportional to the impression of the sound compared to the reference signal. The ratings of the listeners varied, some rated + 20dB at 100, others at 300, and for -20dB from 5 to 30 ... However, after averaging the results and plotting the dependence of the rating on the pressure level, the line appeared confusingly resembling an exponential curve. After the logarithm, it was possible to determine the straight line factor, i.e. a factor that determines how much the pressure level must increase for the average listener to rate the loudness as twice as high. To everyone's surprise, it turned out that the volume doubles when the pressure level is increased by about 10dB. This is an average result, because as I wrote above, the opinions of the listeners were very divergent ... in general, 10 dB is only an approximate value, because the loudness of the sound also depends on factors such as, for example, bandwidth (the result would probably be different for the signal sinusoidal and for noise).

Hello

I wanted to know what is the difference between the sound pressure level and the sound pressure level? Both are given in decibels. The sound pressure itself is given in Pascals.
For example, car speakers produce a high level of sound pressure but a lower level of intensity. How is it possible that they generate a lot of pressure but at a low volume? It should be the same because pressure is pressure.

I found a "graph" of pressure and sound pressure levels on the goggles. At 20uPa it is 0dB. Doubling the pressure gives + 3dB.
So at 40uPa it should be 3dB, at 200uPa - 10dB.
And it is different because at 200uPa it is 20dB. This is true when adding 6dB. And why is 6dB added and not 3dB?

greetings