Sound conversions
by Charles Lhota on 11/27/04 at 09:02:35

I was looking at two kinds of speakers for Christmas and I couldn't decide between the Logitech, which suprisingly got the highest rating by Maximum PC, or the Klipsch, which always have exceptional sound quality. So I wanted to decide on which was louder, but the Logitech ones say it has a 500 watt output, and the Klipsch say a 108 decibel (dB) output, which ones are louder? >:( ???

Re: Sound conversions
by Robert Fogt on 11/27/04 at 11:04:06

The formula is:

dB = 10 log[sub]10[/sub](P[sub]input[/sub]/P[sub]output[/sub])

The formula requires the input power, so to determine the amount of gain.

Re: Sound conversions
by Charles on 11/27/04 at 12:41:24

Thanks, I put all that in my calculator and it had an aneurysm, so I re-checked the site and it said that the logitech have a 115 dB output, so now I was only wondering whether I should spend $249.96 on 7 extra decibels, sure the Logitech got good ratings and have too many features for words, but is it relally worth it?

Re: Sound conversions
by Robert Fogt on 11/27/04 at 15:23:08

The decibel scale is logarithmic, meaning an increase in 10 db is actually 10 times louder. An increase of 20 db is actually (10 * 10) 100 times louder.

Thats hard to imagine, I know, but that is how it is defined. An increase of 7 dB is more than you think it would be.

Re: Sound conversions
by albert on 12/03/04 at 11:21:20

Output of a speaker greatly depends on the efficiency of it's speakers and filters.
If you have a 100 watt box with 25% efficiency it will be louder than the same box with 10% efficiency.

At higher outputs sound distortion wil be noticable with poor speaker systems.

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