Decibels to sone / vice versa
by Sound on 12/13/05 at 02:59:35

This is an amazing little site, thanks for all the effort you put in to it.

Sound is based on subjective measurement but you can always estimate. I want to know how many sone represent 1 decibel, and does it follow that 2 decibels, and so on are equal to twice the amount of equivalent sone?

If not then how many sone would 20 or 40 decibels represent?

I am not really interested in attempting to figure out how the measurement is made but more of a table to compare various values.

Re: Decibels to sone / vice versa
by Robert Fogt on 12/14/05 at 04:24:38

1 sone is 40 decibels (1 kilohertz)

A sound is of x sones if the listener describes it as x times louder than 1 sone.

The phon is also a unit of subjective sound loudness, but the phon is more closely related to the decibel. A sound of 20 decibels will be about 20 phon depending on how it is perceived.

You can convert between phon and sone. If you estimate that decibel and phon are the same you can convert between decibel and sone.

a sound of x sones = 10 log[sub]2[/sub] x + 40 phons

a sound of x phons has loudness 2[sup](x - 40)/10[/sup] sones

Re: Decibels to sone / vice versa
by Sound on 12/14/05 at 06:19:10

I see, thank you for the information.  :)

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