Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Highest dB Level? Fact, Conjecture & Urban Legends
Pro Sound Web: I’ve been told that a church in L.A., with 8.000 seating, hit something like 172 dB at the console. Is this possible? Someone else told me there’s no way to exceed 130 dB at the board. So I’m looking for the highest dB level anyone’s seen at the house console.
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The article began to remind me of the comments section of a youTube video that claimed an f-16 can fly faster than light; full of people who have a generally good grasp of physics and technology, and enjoy making the proposed urban myth sound ridiculous. I will join their ranks:
At most frequency ranges in the human hearing range, the amplitude of the vibrations in the speaker would need to be so large, that the speaker would need to have the structural integrity of a jet engine...
I didn't really know about these dB limits, but apparently neither do a lot of other people. Even though I didn't really know about what was being argued, reading the thread of posts was hilarious. The title of the article intrigued me, and I expected to find a somewhat serious article about the limits of sound. Instead I got a bunch of sound people arguing and joking about the highest dB level possible. It was great to read through all of them, and I think that I actually learned something in the process (though I'm not sure what). Also, to me the article was somewhat unclear about how they were measuring the sound. Parts of it were discussing highest level in general, but other parts were talking about highest level at FOH booth. I guess putting a bunch of posts from people arguing about something sometimes isn't the most effective way to make a cohesive article (it was still really funny to read though).
Didn't we talk about this with the Screaming Meanie trucker alarm clock? As some of the commenters point out, dB is measured on a logarithmic curve, not a line, and the power required is directly relational. I'm not any kind of expert on sound equipment, but I'm fairly sure that to produce 172 dB, as Mr. Norville points out, you would have to harness the energy of a rocket. Now, I have been trying to better understand the relation between frequency and dB for some time now. Low frequency sounds can be higher on the dB scale and not be painful to the human ear. From what I can read, it seems like it would be possible to have a dB rating that's very high as long as the frequency is very low. The pressure from the sound waves in this case could still be quite damaging however, and would definitely not create a pleasant churchy atmosphere, even for L.A.
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