Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler saw an article about the loudest sound..

Porn.

Audio, primitive implements, camp fires and 40 year old vans are similarly good.

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Craig, there's something I'm missing in all of this. It's my understanding as I add a speaker to a system, SPL goes up by 3dB. So if I have an active that gives me 90dB with a Watt at 3 feet away, if I butt up another active that is eating a Watt, at 3 feet away I'll measure 93dB. If I add another, I'll measure 96dB. Is this not correct?

No - you need to double for every 3 dB

If one is 90 dB ... then 2 is 93 ... 4 is 96 ... 8 is 99 ... 16 is 102.

Oh my goodness, that is correct.

The formula for active SPL at 3 feet for 1 Watt electrical power as a function of the number of actives then becomes:

SPL = 126 + 10*log(n)

Solving for n at 277dB, I get 1260E12. That is 1260 trillion actives. Each one needs 4.1 peak kW for a total of 5.2 quintillion Watts. That's one order of magnitude more than all the power produced last year.

Yup - I stopped at 276 dB because it was 150 dB above the 126 dB ... which is 1000 trillion actives. That last dB needs another 260 trillion actives.

As stated earlier, Ian is gonna need a bigger factory!

That being said - it would be cool if 51 actives could have done this. We could have rebooted the Austin Power movies ...

"Give us $1 trillion, or we will play Muskrat Love at 277 dB"

That tune is a new one for me. It ought to be included in the CIA's interrogation manual.

BTW, 277dB at 3 feet away is 200 thousand pounds per square inch!

Obviously you were not around in CBC radio circa 1978~1981 when you could not find a 4-hour stretch where that song was not getting played.

Oh the horror!

I "discovered" music in 1982.