Eric thanks for your considered reply to my rather iritable rant. i assume=
you didn't think I was having a go at the mesenger.
> I note your careful wording or caveats
Yes indeed, I did carefully leave some outs so that no one can blame me for=
what I said! That is, don't shoot the messenger.
but...
> I have always had a huge problem in believing in Sones
> Seems to me to be "dodgy science"
> How the F*** can anyone say sound x is twice as loud as sound y?
> the equivalent of how orangey is fruit A than fruit B
You're not wrong to express these doubts. At the very least one will have
the questions of how difficult it is to make these determinations, how
repeatable they are, and also how useful they are.
The answer to the third question is that objectifying subjective qualities=
can be very useful.
}Yes indeed,
As an example, let us suppose that I am in the business of selling oranges,=
and I wish to grade them as to their beauty, then it is to my advantage to=
be able to measure qualities like "orange-ness". OK. We in this group don't=
care about how orange things are. But suppose you ask me to "Make it twice=
as loud", but I only have a knob or a slider that's labeled in dB. Then I
need to have at least some sort of a guide as to what 'twice as loud' is, i=
n
dB.
}But there is the basic problem that "twice as loud" is a meaningless
concept which extends to the fact that I have never heard such a request, a=
bit louder or a lot louder yes. I guess the reason is that ones subjective=
impression of the SPL of one sound as against 2 simultaneously heard sounds=
of equal loudness would be very unlikely to be labelled twice as loud hence=
I suggest no one would use that terminology. I agree that trying to quantif=
y
subjective impression can be very valuable, the equal loudness experiments=
from the 1930's & beyond being a good example. And I have the same
perception of the feasibility of matching the level of disparate sounds
such as your car crash & operatic soprano example.
Same level is a subjectively obvious aim, x times louder is not (IMO)
J
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