metadodo
New Head-Fier
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- Jul 3, 2010
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Ok so to make it short, what does positive gain mean?
A positive gain means that whatever the input was, the output is larger (more). i.e. you gained something
A negative gain means that whatever the input was, the output is smaller (less). i.e. losing is the opposite of gaining, so you lost something
Usually output/input is described in ratios, which lends itself to expressing those numerical relationships in decibels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibels. Positive dB means positive gain (output > input), 0 dB means no gain (output = input), and negative dB means negative gain (output < input).
The only reason i mentioned it was because of your previous post before mine. Didn't want to get the OP confused. A negative gain always means a 180 degree phase shift. Negative is a term thats used outside of the field but isn't really correct, unless the amplifier is inverting the signal.
Yes, I mentioned whether or not it might be appropriate because I'm the one dragging this discussion along. The fault lies with me, no doubt.
If you're listening to music at 60dB and you want the volume twice as loud, it needs to be 70dB. If you convert that to a ratio it's a little over 3. Most people wouldn't think that makes any sense.
Just to reiterate what you're saying, what's perceived as twice as loud is roughly 10 dB greater SPL (sound pressure level), where SPL is on a 20 log scale. The SPL at twice the perceived loudness is therefore about 3.162 times greater than the other SPL.
Here's a great link that explains decibels pretty well.
http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/2004-About-dB/
Thanks for the link.
Hopefully I didn't confuse anyone further. This is definitely a very technical topic and can be a bit difficult to explain sometimes and I'm a little tired so thats not helping haha.