Sound power, unlike intensity, is direction-independent and context-free

Evidence

The sound power level is useful for comparing the total acoustic power radiated by objects, for example ones that generate unwanted noises. It has the advantage of not depending on the acoustic context, as we shall see in Chapter 6. Note that, unlike the sound intensity, the sound power has no particular direction. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 188

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the crucial distinction between power level (context-free, omnidirectional) and intensity (directional, context-dependent).
• XREF: This distinction between context-free source metrics and context-dependent field metrics parallels the figure-ground-signal distinction from the soundscape literature.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 188