Chapter 1
Audio Basics
When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of science.
—Lord Kelvin (Sir William Thomson), nineteenth-century physicist
Volume and Decibels
When talking about sound that exists in the air and is heard by our ears (or picked up by a microphone), volume level is referred to as sound pressure level, or SPL. Our ears respond to changing air pressure, which in turn deflects our eardrums, sending the perception of sound to our brains. The standard ...
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