[Elecraft] 10 dB or 3?

[Don Wilhelm]

Ted,

I am not going to comment on the dB aspect, but the XYL and I have had 
great success in restaurants by asking the staff to turn down the music 
(or TV or whatever was making electronic sound).  In many restaurants, 
it seems that the staff want to listen to *their* music over the din of 
patrons voices, and that only makes the situation worse.

Lowering the music level will lower the overall noise level 
considerably.  People tend to talk louder in a setting where there is 
loud audio background - they want to talk with their table partners over 
the electronic noise.

I don't know how to counter the Holiday season when you have "Jingle 
Bells" or "Grandma got run over by a Reindeer" blasting in your ears - 
eat and shut up may be to only way to counter it or be branded as Grinch 
or Scrooge.

Of course, there is always the one restaurant patron who has no concept 
of "inside voices" that becomes an irritant to everyone else.
Choose restaurants with carpet instead of hard floors for a further 
decrease in ambient noise level - soft wall hangings help too.

73,
Don W3FPR

On 12/13/2018 12:16 PM, Dauer, Edward wrote:
> A very unpleasant dinner last night at a restaurant with a reported noise level of 84 db – about the same as a gas engine lawn mower seated at the next table – raised what is probably an elementary question.  3 db is the familiar doubling of power, and in an audio environment is a doubling of acoustic energy, I understand.  However, I have read that ten db is what results in an apparent doubling of the sound level as we hear it.  Is the difference attributable to something like an AGC circuit in the human auditory system?  And as for RF transmitter power, does it take a ten db increase rather than 3 to effect an apparent doubling of audio amplitude in the ears on the other end of the QSO?  Never mind the S meter – I mean the actual ability to hear a signal over the noise, or over the QRM.  Help, anyone?
> 
> Ted, KN1CBR
> 
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