I also never really understood what was meant by “perceived” as sounding twice as loud…I figured it was too subjective, but apparently there are some safe generalizations too be made with the way human ears work.
@mrskeptic I agree
Perception and Watts: Doubling of power
There's a curious rule of thumb, which to my ears seems mostly true:
- To double the perceived volume, you must output 10x more power.
10x power = 10 dB by the way. We've read this as we were buying amps and trying to decide between 100w/channel and 150w/channel. We are told, repeatedly that 50 W difference isn't really that much.
On more than one occasion I've tested this and found it's pretty much spot on. Here's my question:
How can any of us really tell what half as loud, or twice as loud is?
I mean, think about this for a bit. I cannot tell half as bright, or twice as bright, but it seems I actually CAN tell what half as loud is. How does this even begin to work in the ear/brain mechanism?? 😁
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Here's a question, @johnnycamp5 - Lets say you play some music. Can you turn it down by half? Or can you turn it up to be twice as loud? How do you know?? I mean, I can, and I think you can too! but... how do we know what half is? |
I have recently been playing with speaker cables on my tube amp system (PM EVO 400 pre and power feeding Klipsch Cornwall 4's) and have found that the choice of speaker wire gauge has large effects on perceived volume and "control." There is nothing new here,of course, but it is fun to experiment with the so called "Western Electric" multi-stranded tinned copper wire. From 16 gauge to 10 gauge there is room for lots of slants on the sound emerging from the speakers. Since the Cornwalls are bi-wireable there is also room to play with mixing wire gauges between the bass taps and the treble taps too. Have also been experimenting with ziploc baggies filled with powdered Rochelle salt wrapped around speaker cables. This is based on a comment Caelin Gabriel of Shunyata once made about these salts being good at attenuating ambient electromagnetic noise,
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