“db” in physical Noise Levels, Analog Audio Equipment, Digital Sound Software. What are these and how they relate? Why are conversations at “60dB” and why is a Digital Software scaling it from negative to zero?

Question

If in Digital Sound Software there’s a meter from -60 to 0, what’s the best “range” (for the lack of knowledge) of sound someone can record at? Considering that people who will listen to that recording can adjust their speaker volumes up and down.

In: Engineering

Answer 1

dB is a relative scale that scales up logarithmically. In sound equipment the reference pressure is often implied which is wrong as there are no standard. Most likely the dB on your equipment are dBa which are adjusted for human hearing. Because it is just a relative scale you can have negative values, it just means that relatively to the reference the sound you are producing has less pressure.