dB to sone Conversion 2

[kaiserman]

Does any one know if there is a conversion from dB to sones? I have taken a tremendous amount of noise data in dB and dB(A) and the customer is now requesting we supply the data in sones. Any sites? texts? books?

Thanks,
Kaiserman

 

[anands78]

Im sorry I dont know the answer, but why would anyone want the units as sones when db is easier(I think..am I wrong??) to comprehend?

 

[IRstuff]

try looking at page 4 of the following document:

http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~jackph/2002s/PS04.pdf

TTFN

 

[MikeyP]

The reason that sones would used rather than sound pressure level in dB or sound intensity level in dB is that sones represent a measure of PERCEIVED loudness rather than some physical measure.

Loudness (sones) depends heavily on the type of stimulus (eg pure tone or white noise, continuous or burst). A detailed description of perceived loudness can be found in "Handbook of acoustics" by Malcolm Crocker. A slightly simpler approach is given in "Fundamentals of Acoustics" by Kinsler and Frey. It works by first expressing the measured level of sound as the Sound Intensity Level at the ear in dB (NOT A-WEIGHTED) and converting each frequency level to Loudness Level in phons (not Loudness Level is still a physical quantative measure not a perceived qualitative one - different to Loudness in sones). The loudness levels can then be converted to a loundess in each band which can be summed (arithmetically not logarithmically) to give a total loudness level. The examples given in Kinsler and Frey are for combinations of pure tones only.

The reason that data only exists for white noise or pure tones is because each relationship between loudness and loudness level must be determined by carrying out psycho-acoustic tests on large numbers of people for each different kind of stimulus.

M