by adrian_b | 2025-05-22 12:11:33+00:00
Decibels are not ridiculous, but very frequently the notations for quantities expressed in decibels are ridiculous.

The decibel is an arbitrary unit for the quantity named "logarithmic ratio".

Logarithmic ratio, plane angle and solid angle are 3 quantities for which arbitrary units must be chosen by a mathematical convention and these 3 units are base units, i.e. units that cannot be derived from other units. For a complete system of base units for the physical quantities, there are other 3 base units for dynamic quantities that must be chosen arbitrarily by choosing some physical object characterized by those quantities, i.e. a physical standard (originally the 3 dynamic quantities were length, time and mass, but in the present SI the reality is that mass has been replaced by electric voltage, despite the fact that the text of the SI specification hides this fact, for the purpose of backward compatibility), and there also are other 2 base units for discrete quantities (amount of substance and electric charge) which must be established by convention.

Like for the plane angle one may choose various arbitrary units, e.g. right angles, cycles, degrees, centesimal degrees, radians, or any other plane angles, for the logarithmic ratio one may choose various arbitrary units, e.g. octave, neper, bel, decibel.

So if we choose decibel all is OK. Decibels have the advantage that for those used to them it is very easy to convert in mind between a logarithmic ratio expressed in decibels and the corresponding linear ratio, so it is very easy to make very approximate computations in mind, but good enough for many engineering debugging tasks, in order to replace multiplications, divisions and exponentiations with additions, subtractions and rare simple multiplications, for a quick estimate of what should be seen in a measurement in a lab or in the field.

The problem is that whenever a logarithmic ratio is specified in decibels, it must be accompanied by 2 quantities, what kind of physical quantities have been divided and which is the reference value. Humans are lazy, so they usually do not bother to write these things, assuming that the reader will guess them from the context, but frequently the context is lost and guessing becomes difficult or impossible.

An additional complication is that one never uses logarithmic ratios for electric voltages or currents, but only for powers. When it is said that a logarithmic ratio refers to a voltage or a current, what is meant is that the logarithmic ratio refers to the power that would be generated by that voltage or current into an 1 ohm resistor. A similar problem exists for sound pressures, because logarithmic ratios are used only for sound intensities, so where sound pressure is mentioned, actually the corresponding sound intensity is meant.

This complication has appeared because voltages, currents and sound pressures are what are actually measured, but powers and sound intensities are frequently needed and using logarithmic ratios with different values for related quantities, while omitting frequently to mention the reference value, would have caused even more confusion than the current practice.