Microsoft made a -23 decibel room, but how does that work exactly? Once something hits 0 decibels how exactly can we measure it getting more quiet than that?
In: 24
The decibel works on a logarithmic scale, not a linear scale.
That is to say, 80 dBs is 10x louder than 70 dBs. But that also means that 0 dBs is just 10x quieter than 10 dBs, **not** that it is “0 sound” the way that 0 km/hr is 0 speed.
So negative decibels are just some multiple quieter than that 0 dB point, which has a nonzero amount of sound.
Edit: it’s bothering me a bit that I didn’t define “quieter” better. The precise measure is that of energy intensity. So the pressure waves of a 0 dB sound have 1/10th the energy of a 10 dB sound. Our ears measure this difference in energy as loudness or quietness.
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