Human hearing spans a 6.4-million-fold pressure range from faintest to painful
Evidence
The ear’s sensitivity to sounds of different frequencies varies over a vast sound pressure level range. On average, the minimum sound pressure variation that can be detected by the human hearing system around 4 kHz is approximately 10 micropascals (10 µPa), or 10−5 Pa. The maximum average sound pressure level that is heard rather than perceived as being painful is 64 Pa. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 604
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- CANDY: A tidy, tweetable number: the ear handles sound pressures from 10 micropascals to 64 pascals — a ratio of 6.4 million. Great elevator fact.
Related
- Human hearing spans a ratio of millions between faintest and painful sound (similarity 0.90)
- The audible pressure range spans six orders of magnitude from threshold to pain. (similarity 0.90)
- Human hearing spans sound pressures from 10-5 to 102 Pa (similarity 0.89)
- Hearing spans a pressure range greater than a million to one (similarity 0.88)
- Human hearing spans seven orders of magnitude in sound pressure (similarity 0.88)
- Human hearing detects pressure changes of a few parts per billion (similarity 0.87)
- Audible pressure range spans over a million to one, forcing a logarithmic scale (similarity 0.87)
- The ear’s full dynamic range exists only near 4 kHz (similarity 0.87)
- Human hearing spans over one billion in power from softest to painful. (similarity 0.86)
- Normal hearing is most sensitive near 2 to 5 kHz (similarity 0.85)
- Hearing- damaging sound varies air pressure by only 0.001 percent (similarity 0.84)
- Human hearing spans 150 dB and three decades of frequency (similarity 0.84)
- Real audible sound pressures span a range of one million to one in amplitude (similarity 0.83)
- Hearing detects pressure changes, not absolute ambient pressure (similarity 0.83)
- Sound pressure is tiny pressure deviation, and human hearing spans a specific Pa range (similarity 0.83)