The difference between Volume and Gain, and ”loudness” overall (Audio Engineering)
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Most audio processing equipment wants to do the processing at a certain level. This is what gain is for. The (very complicated) math that audio equipment does to do things like eq, compression, mixing, etc… works best when the audio is at a specific level on average.
This also sets the standard for the perceived loudness for the listener across different pieces of equipment. You want people to be able to turn the volume knob of their stereo or TV to about the middle of the band and hear the loud and soft sounds of your audio.
Gain is used to normalize those signals. If you have a band with 2 singers and one is very loud but one is very soft, you can give the mic for the soft singer some gain to balance them out.
Volume is the knob or switches on your device that let you control the loudness of whatever you are listening to.
Loudness can be measured technically in decibels with a decimeter or in perceived loudness.
For example: a quiet room with the ac running and a little city background noise is about 65db.
You usually need to start raising your voice to have a conversation with someone if the noise in a room is above 80sb
a rock band starts to get uncomfortable at about 100 dB.
Perceived loudness can depend on the frequency. A screaming toddler isn’t actually very loud. But that high pitched squeal can be deafening. It feels a lot louder than the decimeter suggests it is.
On the other hand, an orchestra can be very loud but because it fills out a good portion of the frequencies that we can hear, it sounds much quieter than the decimeter suggests.
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