Your perception of how loud things are is utter dogshit
April 11, 2022 1:13 AM Subscribe
WTF is the name of the Goose????
posted by zengargoyle at 2:14 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by zengargoyle at 2:14 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
TIL that If a volcano falls in the forest and nobody is nearby . . . it may still scramble their pancreas.
posted by BobTheScientist at 6:25 AM on April 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by BobTheScientist at 6:25 AM on April 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
I really enjoyed this, but the part that piqued my particular interest was going into depth on the logarithmic nature of decibels - and the underlying point that human brains are often primed to notice large differences and struggle with small ones. It made me think of the data visualization and communication work that I do - that even though this video was working in the realm of audio, it's still focused on some of these ways that brains do and don't perceive differences in data, and it's interesting and surprising to see that connection.
I seem to recall a story about some cultures that have or had a counting system that was exponential, not linear, too, though I can't find that now.
posted by entropone at 6:26 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
I seem to recall a story about some cultures that have or had a counting system that was exponential, not linear, too, though I can't find that now.
posted by entropone at 6:26 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
In English our logarithmic numbers are: dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, trillions. There are technically more -illions, but no one uses them.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 6:52 AM on April 11, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 6:52 AM on April 11, 2022 [11 favorites]
On Saturday morning, there was a military flyover of our city as part of the annual Salem Muster event that commemorates the anniversary of the founding of the National Guard. For about 10 seconds, it sounded and felt like the world was ending. Every local group I follow online on Facebook, Reddit, Nextdoor, etc. was full of panicked people wondering what the hell just happened, even though they apparently do this every year. I can only imagine the level of fear that people in Ukraine must experience hearing sounds like this multiple times a day.
Cool video, and he does a very good job explaining a very complex idea.
posted by briank at 6:58 AM on April 11, 2022
Cool video, and he does a very good job explaining a very complex idea.
posted by briank at 6:58 AM on April 11, 2022
Depends on how you define sound. Is it still sound if the vibrations physically tear apart your eardrums rather than being perceived by them?
posted by acb at 7:10 AM on April 11, 2022
posted by acb at 7:10 AM on April 11, 2022
That was utterly delightful!
posted by johnxlibris at 7:11 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by johnxlibris at 7:11 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm no expert, but any sound that makes my internal organs vibrate is TOO LOUD.
posted by tommasz at 7:26 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by tommasz at 7:26 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm no expert, but any sound that makes my internal organs vibrate is TOO LOUD.
oh, so it's fine for your arms and legs to be doing Studio 54 while your bowel has to remain Amish, is that it
posted by elkevelvet at 7:34 AM on April 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
oh, so it's fine for your arms and legs to be doing Studio 54 while your bowel has to remain Amish, is that it
posted by elkevelvet at 7:34 AM on April 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
I seem to recall a story about some cultures that have or had a counting system that was exponential, not linear, too, though I can't find that now.Interesting. I've never heard of this and would be very curious if anyone can say more. At some level, most known counting systems have exponential notation: one, ten, one hundred; Kʼatun, Bʼakʼtun, Piktun; shekel, mina, talent. But, not being able to specify intermediate numbers easily seems like it would make life hard. "My brother gave me another chicken. Now I have 1.4 chickens."
Also, fun post. I expected to have bean-plating objections based on the introduction, but didn't, which is rare. Neat.
posted by eotvos at 7:36 AM on April 11, 2022
a counting system that was exponential
You might be thinking of something related to this paper, though I think I saw something more recently that I can't seem to dredge up just now.
posted by echo target at 7:47 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
You might be thinking of something related to this paper, though I think I saw something more recently that I can't seem to dredge up just now.
posted by echo target at 7:47 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
On the other side of the decibel scale, he has this: The Insane Journey To Escape Noise Pollution (19m40s)
posted by flabdablet at 7:49 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by flabdablet at 7:49 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think that goose is a Pekin duck, as evidenced by the fact that no one died.
posted by Bee'sWing at 7:54 AM on April 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Bee'sWing at 7:54 AM on April 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
oh, so it's fine for your arms and legs to be doing Studio 54
My arms, at least, get waved in the air like I just don't care. The less said about what my legs are doing the better
posted by tommasz at 8:15 AM on April 11, 2022 [5 favorites]
My arms, at least, get waved in the air like I just don't care. The less said about what my legs are doing the better
posted by tommasz at 8:15 AM on April 11, 2022 [5 favorites]
I work directly underneath a Naval 'touch and go' practice field so WHAT? WHAAAT? WAIT A SECOND.......ok what?
posted by The otter lady at 8:20 AM on April 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by The otter lady at 8:20 AM on April 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
Kʼatun, Bʼakʼtun, Piktun; shekel, mina, talent.
Jake Thackeray has some more counting words for us.
posted by Paul Slade at 8:22 AM on April 11, 2022
Jake Thackeray has some more counting words for us.
posted by Paul Slade at 8:22 AM on April 11, 2022
I'm no expert, but any sound that makes my internal organs vibrate is TOO LOUD.
Behold the XF-84H, loud enough to incapacitate nearby persons even inside structures or other vehicles, because engineers went completely insane during the early Cold War era.
posted by aramaic at 8:49 AM on April 11, 2022 [5 favorites]
Behold the XF-84H, loud enough to incapacitate nearby persons even inside structures or other vehicles, because engineers went completely insane during the early Cold War era.
posted by aramaic at 8:49 AM on April 11, 2022 [5 favorites]
Remours of the Brown Note remain unverified.
posted by Paul Slade at 8:55 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Paul Slade at 8:55 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
Good post.
If you ever want to get a room of engineers to groan, just have their project manager ask "All we need to do is measure the sound, how hard could it be?"
The answer is: really, really hard, but it will be impossible to explain that to anyone who doesn't know physics.
posted by SunSnork at 9:08 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
If you ever want to get a room of engineers to groan, just have their project manager ask "All we need to do is measure the sound, how hard could it be?"
The answer is: really, really hard, but it will be impossible to explain that to anyone who doesn't know physics.
posted by SunSnork at 9:08 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
OK, that was pretty amazing. I knew a little bit about how sound perception is affected pitch, but that demonstration of him "screaming" vs him "whispering" was amazing. I kinda want to know a lot more about what might affect that.
posted by midmarch snowman at 9:09 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by midmarch snowman at 9:09 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
Also, if you put an electrical engineer and a sound engineer in a room and prevent them from leaving until they agree what a decibel is, there's a good chance they'll both starve to death.
posted by SunSnork at 9:14 AM on April 11, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by SunSnork at 9:14 AM on April 11, 2022 [5 favorites]
I kinda want to know a lot more about what might affect that.
The main differences will be in A) dynamic range (the difference between the loudest part of the screaming and the quietest is very narrow compared to his soft speaking), B) sort of "spectral density" (my own term for it) -- i.e. how much of the loudness is in various parts of the frequency spectrum, bass, mid, treble, "presence" frequencies), and C) the perception that high frequency content that is "hissing/fizzy" is perceived way louder than the same volume of high frequency content that doesn't sound like it's clipping.
That part is probably a little bit of a cheat because of A. The "time-integrated LUFS" (here's a link to a music-oriented discussion of LUFS) of the screaming part will certainly be higher than the average LUFS of the soft talking part, even if the dB-meter is higher in the softer part. I'd say it's only a little bit of a cheat because it really is IMO a good example of how the spectral content of a sound can affect its perception, sometimes more than the raw dB level.
posted by tclark at 9:24 AM on April 11, 2022
The main differences will be in A) dynamic range (the difference between the loudest part of the screaming and the quietest is very narrow compared to his soft speaking), B) sort of "spectral density" (my own term for it) -- i.e. how much of the loudness is in various parts of the frequency spectrum, bass, mid, treble, "presence" frequencies), and C) the perception that high frequency content that is "hissing/fizzy" is perceived way louder than the same volume of high frequency content that doesn't sound like it's clipping.
That part is probably a little bit of a cheat because of A. The "time-integrated LUFS" (here's a link to a music-oriented discussion of LUFS) of the screaming part will certainly be higher than the average LUFS of the soft talking part, even if the dB-meter is higher in the softer part. I'd say it's only a little bit of a cheat because it really is IMO a good example of how the spectral content of a sound can affect its perception, sometimes more than the raw dB level.
posted by tclark at 9:24 AM on April 11, 2022
Great post, flabdablet!
Things must have been fairly interesting ~36 hours after Krakatoa's eruption at the antipodal point, which is apparently somewhere in Colombia.
posted by jamjam at 9:43 AM on April 11, 2022
Things must have been fairly interesting ~36 hours after Krakatoa's eruption at the antipodal point, which is apparently somewhere in Colombia.
posted by jamjam at 9:43 AM on April 11, 2022
a counting system that was exponential
This was discussed on this episode of Radiolab. Apparently, some societies do count exponentially, and possibly we all did as babies and had to learn to count in a linear way. It's fascinating. I love the example of "2 different ideas of what number if halfway between 0 and 9: 4.5 and 3."
and the underlying point that human brains are often primed to notice large differences and struggle with small ones
But humans are actually really exceptional and perceiving very small changes in level; it's just the range across where we can detect those changes is enormous, so we use a log scale. The just noticeable different in level varies non-linearly as a function of frequency and level, but in many cases it's on the scale of a single dB or less.
I'm no expert, but any sound that makes my internal organs vibrate is TOO LOUD
I think about this a lot. Because of course - human hearing is just sounds vibrating your internal hearing organ, the cochlea. Can you 'hear' with other organs? I don't know. There was a series of interesting studies some years about that people who tended to really enjoy very loud EDM clubs were also more likely to enjoy things like swings and rollercoasters, presumably because both the loud bass of EDM and swings stimulated the vestibular organ in similar ways.
posted by Lutoslawski at 10:10 AM on April 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
This was discussed on this episode of Radiolab. Apparently, some societies do count exponentially, and possibly we all did as babies and had to learn to count in a linear way. It's fascinating. I love the example of "2 different ideas of what number if halfway between 0 and 9: 4.5 and 3."
and the underlying point that human brains are often primed to notice large differences and struggle with small ones
But humans are actually really exceptional and perceiving very small changes in level; it's just the range across where we can detect those changes is enormous, so we use a log scale. The just noticeable different in level varies non-linearly as a function of frequency and level, but in many cases it's on the scale of a single dB or less.
I'm no expert, but any sound that makes my internal organs vibrate is TOO LOUD
I think about this a lot. Because of course - human hearing is just sounds vibrating your internal hearing organ, the cochlea. Can you 'hear' with other organs? I don't know. There was a series of interesting studies some years about that people who tended to really enjoy very loud EDM clubs were also more likely to enjoy things like swings and rollercoasters, presumably because both the loud bass of EDM and swings stimulated the vestibular organ in similar ways.
posted by Lutoslawski at 10:10 AM on April 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
I once worked for a church with an old and massive pipe organ. Sometimes when the organist was practicing I would stand in front of the pipes. It wasn't all that loud but the largest pipes really moved the air in an almost subsonic fashion. Nothing quite like having your internal juices and giblets jiggling about in a baroque manner...
posted by jim in austin at 10:11 AM on April 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by jim in austin at 10:11 AM on April 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
Lutoslawski, it occurs to me that three is “midway” between one and nine, because exponentials can’t actually access zero.
I wonder whether the long historical gap between the invention of arithmetic and the invention-slash-discovery of zero is related to a biological preference for exponential counting systems.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 10:32 AM on April 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
I wonder whether the long historical gap between the invention of arithmetic and the invention-slash-discovery of zero is related to a biological preference for exponential counting systems.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 10:32 AM on April 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
it occurs to me that three is “midway” between one and nine, because exponentials can’t actually access zero
quite right
posted by Lutoslawski at 10:43 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
quite right
posted by Lutoslawski at 10:43 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
I guess I should have said 'fairly interesting ~18 hours after Krakatoa's eruption at the antipodal point', though they would probably have been at least somewhat interesting after ~36 hours as well.
On edit, I just can’t get this right. It would have taken ~54 hours after the eruption for the second echo to arrive.
posted by jamjam at 10:44 AM on April 11, 2022
On edit, I just can’t get this right. It would have taken ~54 hours after the eruption for the second echo to arrive.
posted by jamjam at 10:44 AM on April 11, 2022
fairly interesting ~18 hours after Krakatoa's eruption at the antipodal point
Luckily for any witnesses at the antipodal point, the planet isn't a perfect sphere and the speed of sound through various kinds of weather systems isn't constant, so while the wavefronts converging from literally every direction would most likely have made some kind of roar, I don't think they could have stayed synchronized enough to deliver all of that energy as a single bang.
posted by flabdablet at 11:41 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
Luckily for any witnesses at the antipodal point, the planet isn't a perfect sphere and the speed of sound through various kinds of weather systems isn't constant, so while the wavefronts converging from literally every direction would most likely have made some kind of roar, I don't think they could have stayed synchronized enough to deliver all of that energy as a single bang.
posted by flabdablet at 11:41 AM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm no expert, but any sound that makes my internal organs vibrate is TOO LOUD.
Avoid Miami at all costs. Also don't grow up next to an Air National Guard base. The F4s they had when I was really little were a loud rumble, like artillery exploding on the hill a few miles from my grandparent's house, just for a long time. The F16s they were replaced with sounded like they were tearing open the sky when they took off or just flew overhead.
posted by wierdo at 11:53 AM on April 11, 2022
Avoid Miami at all costs. Also don't grow up next to an Air National Guard base. The F4s they had when I was really little were a loud rumble, like artillery exploding on the hill a few miles from my grandparent's house, just for a long time. The F16s they were replaced with sounded like they were tearing open the sky when they took off or just flew overhead.
posted by wierdo at 11:53 AM on April 11, 2022
Surprised not to see any quotes from Mr. Hotblack Desiato. Or, hmmmm, has he gone back to being “unavailable,” for tax reasons?
posted by armoir from antproof case at 12:57 PM on April 11, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by armoir from antproof case at 12:57 PM on April 11, 2022 [5 favorites]
A few years ago I got the opportunity to skulk around NASA Goddard, ostensibly to see the JWST which was then under construction, but also to just see the place in general, which has a ton of very cool stuff, some dating back to the Apollo era. One of the neat things is this very heavily sound-insulated room, which is connected to this rather large speaker, which—rumor has it anyway—is the "loudest speaker in the world".
I'm not sure if that's been verified by the Guinness Book of Records or anything, but it is undoubtedly very loud. The person giving the tour wasn't familiar with how it worked, except that it requires a rather large supply of cryogenic nitrogen to operate, and generally they send out emails warning everyone before they turn it on.
The speaker and the room are capable of simulating the acoustic signature of a Saturn V during liftoff and main burn (as well as, one assumes, a bunch of other rockets), and are used to test spacecraft and associated components.
Nobody present was able to conclusively answer the question "what would happen to you if you were in there and someone turned the speaker on?" except that (1) you would probably die, and (2) it would not be a pleasant way to go.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:06 PM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure if that's been verified by the Guinness Book of Records or anything, but it is undoubtedly very loud. The person giving the tour wasn't familiar with how it worked, except that it requires a rather large supply of cryogenic nitrogen to operate, and generally they send out emails warning everyone before they turn it on.
The speaker and the room are capable of simulating the acoustic signature of a Saturn V during liftoff and main burn (as well as, one assumes, a bunch of other rockets), and are used to test spacecraft and associated components.
Nobody present was able to conclusively answer the question "what would happen to you if you were in there and someone turned the speaker on?" except that (1) you would probably die, and (2) it would not be a pleasant way to go.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:06 PM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
Also, if you put an electrical engineer and a sound engineer in a room and prevent them from leaving until they agree what a decibel is, there's a good chance they'll both starve to death.
"Decibels" are a logarithmic expression of a dimensionless ratio. The messy part is just that people love calling their most familiar instance of a "dB [something]" unit that measures a specific thing with a built-in reference point "decibels." Which in fact this guy seems to do himself (he's talking about dB SPL).
posted by atoxyl at 1:15 PM on April 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
"Decibels" are a logarithmic expression of a dimensionless ratio. The messy part is just that people love calling their most familiar instance of a "dB [something]" unit that measures a specific thing with a built-in reference point "decibels." Which in fact this guy seems to do himself (he's talking about dB SPL).
posted by atoxyl at 1:15 PM on April 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
Maybe the thunderscreech should have been powered by the Rolls Royce Crecy engine, which was reportedly able to be heard many miles away when it was running.
posted by maxwelton at 1:18 PM on April 11, 2022
posted by maxwelton at 1:18 PM on April 11, 2022
"what would happen to you if you were in there and someone turned the speaker on?"
A couple notes from non-Wikipedia wikis concerning sonic weapons in fiction. You may recall the Weirding Modules from the first "Dune" film, but how about Project X from Atlas Shrugged?
posted by Rash at 1:51 PM on April 11, 2022
A couple notes from non-Wikipedia wikis concerning sonic weapons in fiction. You may recall the Weirding Modules from the first "Dune" film, but how about Project X from Atlas Shrugged?
posted by Rash at 1:51 PM on April 11, 2022
"what would happen to you if you were in there and someone turned the speaker on?"
you might be alright if you have some kevin shields
posted by pyramid termite at 3:32 PM on April 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
you might be alright if you have some kevin shields
posted by pyramid termite at 3:32 PM on April 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
An interesting and entertaining video. By eye we can look at something and provide an absolute measure - "that's about a foot long". We can't estimate the loudness of a sound in the same way, but we can discern differences in sound level. This is why we use a unit that expresses a ratio in comparison to an agreed absolute measure, as axotyl points out.
The wide range of loudness that most of us can hear, and the logarithmic nature of our perception are often depicted in a chart like this one.
Related - noise pollution is a thing, and groups like Quiet Parks International are working to identify places where one can still find relative quiet, as well as advocating for the preservation of quiet locations.
(...and my new sound pressure level meter arrives this week :-D )
posted by Artful Codger at 3:38 PM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
The wide range of loudness that most of us can hear, and the logarithmic nature of our perception are often depicted in a chart like this one.
Related - noise pollution is a thing, and groups like Quiet Parks International are working to identify places where one can still find relative quiet, as well as advocating for the preservation of quiet locations.
(...and my new sound pressure level meter arrives this week :-D )
posted by Artful Codger at 3:38 PM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
"I'm no expert, but any sound that makes my internal organs vibrate is TOO LOUD. --posted by tommasz at 9:26 AM on April 11"
Ah, that's usually the case until I've had some primo MDMA and then let my innards obliterate in sheer ecstatic union with the Shiva's divine AUM of absolute destruction.
posted by symbioid at 4:07 PM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
Ah, that's usually the case until I've had some primo MDMA and then let my innards obliterate in sheer ecstatic union with the Shiva's divine AUM of absolute destruction.
posted by symbioid at 4:07 PM on April 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
OK, that was pretty amazing. I knew a little bit about how sound perception is affected pitch, but that demonstration of him "screaming" vs him "whispering" was amazing. I kinda want to know a lot more about what might affect that.
I thought that cool too so I tried to test it: I used a dB app on my phone to measure the two parts of the video. The level was much higher during the 'screaming' section than during the 'whispering' section.
So something is wrong.
A. Maybe I don't know how to use the meter correctly
B. Maybe the audio process for publishing the video changes the audio so that it's not what he expected
C. ????
posted by cron at 4:13 PM on April 11, 2022
I thought that cool too so I tried to test it: I used a dB app on my phone to measure the two parts of the video. The level was much higher during the 'screaming' section than during the 'whispering' section.
So something is wrong.
A. Maybe I don't know how to use the meter correctly
B. Maybe the audio process for publishing the video changes the audio so that it's not what he expected
C. ????
posted by cron at 4:13 PM on April 11, 2022
Cron - I agree, the screaming section was much louder on my iPad than the whispering. I had to lean in to hear that. There may be some loudness control or compression on YouTube.
posted by njohnson23 at 4:20 PM on April 11, 2022
posted by njohnson23 at 4:20 PM on April 11, 2022
the hardcore car audio guys hit 150, 160 on the regular. here's a 163dB Tahoe
posted by glonous keming at 4:55 PM on April 11, 2022
posted by glonous keming at 4:55 PM on April 11, 2022
Mathologer recently did a bit about circular sliderules. Some pretty neet log stuff: Reinventing the magic log wheel: How was this missed for 400 years? - YouTube.
posted by zengargoyle at 7:39 PM on April 11, 2022
posted by zengargoyle at 7:39 PM on April 11, 2022
the Rolls Royce Crecy engine
A megawatt of two-stroke V12 does indeed seem like the kind of thing that would be very, very loud.
For sheer volume vs simplicity, though, it's hard to go past a decently large pulse jet engine.
posted by flabdablet at 12:57 AM on April 12, 2022
A megawatt of two-stroke V12 does indeed seem like the kind of thing that would be very, very loud.
For sheer volume vs simplicity, though, it's hard to go past a decently large pulse jet engine.
posted by flabdablet at 12:57 AM on April 12, 2022
I used a dB app on my phone to measure the two parts of the video. The level was much higher during the 'screaming' section than during the 'whispering' section.
I downloaded the audio track for the YouTube video using yt-dlp, then opened the result in Audacity to take a look at the waveforms we're listening to.
The "screaming" section is heavily clipped and looks kind of dense and there is no silence anywhere in it. The "whispering" section, which if it were not immediately preceded by the clipped and distorted section could never reasonably be described as whispering because it's delivered in a normal if somewhat restrained conversational voice, is mixed at a level that puts its peaks much closer to full scale than anything in the distorted section, especially in the left channel, but it also contains a lot more silences.
If you were to measure the two with an meter that showed both peak and average volume, I'd expect the "whispering" section to show you a much higher peak reading than the distorted section but a rather lower average.
posted by flabdablet at 1:25 AM on April 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
I downloaded the audio track for the YouTube video using yt-dlp, then opened the result in Audacity to take a look at the waveforms we're listening to.
The "screaming" section is heavily clipped and looks kind of dense and there is no silence anywhere in it. The "whispering" section, which if it were not immediately preceded by the clipped and distorted section could never reasonably be described as whispering because it's delivered in a normal if somewhat restrained conversational voice, is mixed at a level that puts its peaks much closer to full scale than anything in the distorted section, especially in the left channel, but it also contains a lot more silences.
If you were to measure the two with an meter that showed both peak and average volume, I'd expect the "whispering" section to show you a much higher peak reading than the distorted section but a rather lower average.
posted by flabdablet at 1:25 AM on April 12, 2022 [3 favorites]
I trimmed sections of both loud and quiet parts and ReplayGain-scanned them with foobar2000's component (which uses EBU's R128 loudness measurement algorithm instead of David Robinson's original, fwiw) and unsurprisingly it resulted in about -13 dB gain for the clipressed passage and about +3 dB for the "whispering".
posted by Bangaioh at 9:42 AM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Bangaioh at 9:42 AM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
Distortion has always been one of the clues that my own perceptual apparatus has used in order to judge the loudness of things, perhaps because amplifier clipping or speaker overdrive manages to simulate to some extent the effect of overdriving one's eardrums with insanely loud sounds.
This backfired nastily not long after I acquired my first decent set of speakers, a lovely little pair of Wharfedale satellites with accompanying central subwoofer. I was driving them off a nice 50 watt Proton amp and one day I was just in the mood to listen to something excessively loud, so I turned them up, and then turned them up some more, and they just kept on putting out this amazingly clean sound until suddenly one of them crackled horribly before quitting altogether and smelling bad. Fuck knows how many dB I'd been subjecting myself to before that voice coil let the magic smoke out; my brain certainly had no clue.
posted by flabdablet at 9:56 AM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
This backfired nastily not long after I acquired my first decent set of speakers, a lovely little pair of Wharfedale satellites with accompanying central subwoofer. I was driving them off a nice 50 watt Proton amp and one day I was just in the mood to listen to something excessively loud, so I turned them up, and then turned them up some more, and they just kept on putting out this amazingly clean sound until suddenly one of them crackled horribly before quitting altogether and smelling bad. Fuck knows how many dB I'd been subjecting myself to before that voice coil let the magic smoke out; my brain certainly had no clue.
posted by flabdablet at 9:56 AM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
I love seeing usages of the phrase "magic smoke" in the wild!
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:25 AM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:25 AM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
The magic smoke is basic electrical engineering theory that everybody should know about, especially the part about how the smoke is always the same colour as the wires that carry it unless you let it out, which instantly makes it lose that colour, which is of course why things stop working.
This is related to the way brown dogs make brown poos and white dogs make white poos, leaves not falling in autumn but jumping off the trees before the squirrels can get them, giant oaks being cut down when they're very old so that they can be used to make knotty-pine recreation rooms, and other true facts about biology.
posted by flabdablet at 11:04 AM on April 12, 2022
This is related to the way brown dogs make brown poos and white dogs make white poos, leaves not falling in autumn but jumping off the trees before the squirrels can get them, giant oaks being cut down when they're very old so that they can be used to make knotty-pine recreation rooms, and other true facts about biology.
posted by flabdablet at 11:04 AM on April 12, 2022
You should start a YouTube channel, give Ze Frank a run for his money.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:08 AM on April 12, 2022
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:08 AM on April 12, 2022
I trimmed sections of both loud and quiet parts and ReplayGain-scanned them with foobar2000's component (which uses EBU's R128 loudness measurement algorithm instead of David Robinson's original, fwiw) and unsurprisingly it resulted in about -13 dB gain for the clipressed passage and about +3 dB for the "whispering".
Another small digression: peak audio meters dominate now because digital audio media have a sharp clip point that peaks must stay under. when recording. Analog tape (and phonograph records) have a less well-defined maximum level, and tape distorts "softly"when peaks exceed that level. The old-skule VU meter gives a reading that corresponds more closely to loudness than peak meters do. If you go from one song to another, and you keep the same level on the VU, the percieved loudness of each will be close. Do the same thing using a peak meter, you will often get faked out if one song happens to have hotter peaks relative to the rest of its content.
posted by Artful Codger at 4:51 PM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
Another small digression: peak audio meters dominate now because digital audio media have a sharp clip point that peaks must stay under. when recording. Analog tape (and phonograph records) have a less well-defined maximum level, and tape distorts "softly"when peaks exceed that level. The old-skule VU meter gives a reading that corresponds more closely to loudness than peak meters do. If you go from one song to another, and you keep the same level on the VU, the percieved loudness of each will be close. Do the same thing using a peak meter, you will often get faked out if one song happens to have hotter peaks relative to the rest of its content.
posted by Artful Codger at 4:51 PM on April 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
At SRL we made a whistle to mount on a smallish jet engine. We used it in several shows but I had some problems when I was tuning it. I had numb patches on my face for about 20 min ,after whick my eyes crossed for about half an hr and i had trouble seeing. My teeth hurt for a couple of days.
posted by boilermonster at 12:16 AM on April 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by boilermonster at 12:16 AM on April 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
But can you handle 20,000 decibels from Batman’s modded communicator?
posted by freecellwizard at 8:01 PM on April 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by freecellwizard at 8:01 PM on April 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
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posted by WaylandSmith at 1:36 AM on April 11, 2022 [2 favorites]