On 2/2/2012 3:41 PM, Rick Womer wrote:
I have this nifty new receiver, which sounds great--a huge improvement over my 38-year-old Pioneer. What puzzles me is the volume control: Minimum volume is -90dB (mute), and maximum is +15dB. Huh? What is zero dB? Is it an arbitrary point? Is it linked to some undisclosed property of the unit? I can tell you that 0dB is too loud to be in the room with using the tuner, barely tolerable with a CD, and just a bit loud with an LP. Otherwise, the scale makes no sense to me.
dB is a logarithmic scale of ratios. 10 deciBell is one Bell, or a factor of 10. 3dB is a factor of two, or a stop. So if you have your camera to change settings by 1/3 stop, they change by about 1dB.
Note, that depending on whether you're talking amplitude or power, 10dB could mean a factor of either 10 or 20, I never really did sort the math out on that.
In the case of your new toy, I would presume that 0dB means full volume, without clipping any of the peaks that you are likely to see in normal listening. So my guess is that +15dB means pushing things into the red, in case you're playing music with less dynamic range, pure sine waves, or you don't mind a little distortion for when you just simply have to rattle your neighbor's windows.
-- Larry Colen [email protected] (from dos4est) -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
