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Well if I remember back from my college days, it goes something like this. Hopefully my 'second way of describing it' doesn't confuse any more!!! In that sense when someone says "minus twenty dB" it SHOULD mean "one tenth as big" and if the same person says "minus twenty VU" it should mean 0.123 Volts AC RMS.ĮDIT: Damn, it took me so long to write that reply that John has already covered some of what I wrote.
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just like "minus six dB" means "half as big" and plus six dB means "twice as big". Plus two dB means "two dB louder" and nothing more. Try to practice NEVER calling any VU meter reading "plus two dB" and instead call it "plus two VU". Sorry if it got confusing, but I'll stop there, to try and see which bits I might need to explain.
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There is more than one convention for what it means when a needle points to zero, where the red bit turns into a black bit, but typically we say that it's 1.23volts, which is 4dB over one milliwatt in a 600Ω line. Ten dB UP from 1 volt would be 3.1 volts. think of it as a near neighbor of 'Pi'!) so 10dB down from 1 Volt would be 0.31 volts. TEN dB therefore is multiplying or dividing by the SQUARE ROOT of ten in linear terms. since it's 1volt minus 20dB (which is a tenth) then minus another 6dB (which is a further halving of the result). or any combination thereof- decibels, you multiply or divide or any combination thereof- linear voltage. So when you cumulatively add -or subtract. =You add more, and it's the same as MULTIPLYING in linear terms.Ģ0dB less than a volt is 0.1Volt. No fractions this time, it's EXACT.ĭecibels are LOGARITHMIC. again it's actually twelve-point-zero-four dB, but you get the picture.Ģ0 dB = "TEN TO ONE". MINUS 6dB means half as much.ġ2dB therefore means Four-to-one. (actually it's 6.02dB, but let's not split hairs.) PLUS 6dB is twice as much.