Human hearing spans seven orders of magnitude in sound pressure
Evidence
In psychoacoustics, values of the sound pressure between 10-5 Pa (absolute threshold) and 102 Pa (threshold of pain) are relevant. In order to cope with such a broad range of sound pressures, the sound pressure level, L, is normally used. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 61
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- XREF: The dB log scale discussion connects to the earlier Milgrom work on how quantitative scales enable comparison; also connects to soundscape literature’s signal/keynote framing.
Related
- Human hearing spans sound pressures from 10-5 to 102 Pa (similarity 0.95)
- Audible pressure range spans over a million to one, forcing a logarithmic scale (similarity 0.88)
- Human hearing spans a 6.4-million-fold pressure range from faintest to painful (similarity 0.88)
- The audible pressure range spans six orders of magnitude from threshold to pain. (similarity 0.87)
- Hearing spans a pressure range greater than a million to one (similarity 0.86)
- Human hearing spans a ratio of millions between faintest and painful sound (similarity 0.86)
- Human hearing spans 150 dB and three decades of frequency (similarity 0.85)
- Loudness is not reducible to sound pressure level or signal power (similarity 0.84)
- Human hearing detects pressure changes of a few parts per billion (similarity 0.84)
- Hearing sensations correlate with stimulus magnitudes but only within the audible range (similarity 0.83)
- Humans discriminate level differences of under half a decibel across a 100 dB range (similarity 0.83)
- Sound intensity level and sound pressure level are roughly equivalent (similarity 0.83)
- Sound pressure is tiny pressure deviation, and human hearing spans a specific Pa range (similarity 0.82)
- Reported sound levels almost always refer to pressure, matching human hearing (similarity 0.82)
- Sound pressure level is the standard because it matches hearing (similarity 0.82)