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dB connected to volume gain?
Tue, 06/15/2010 - 06:43
I just got a pair of new hearing aids that are Audeo SMART IXs. They have a +/-10dB setting on the remote. As far as the dB scale goes, shouldn't a 10dB mean 10X the gain? It makes sense to me that this would mean I would get 10X the volume, but I turned the hearing aids up as far as they would go and I don't think the volume even got to twice as loud, well it might have gotten to twice as much but definitely not 10 times as much. How is gain defined in regard to hearing aids? When it gets to a 10dB gain is there something other than volume that is multiplied by a factor of 10?
The human hearing system that has no defects and is working normal works on a log scale. So twice the volume in reality is just barely recognizable. It takes until 10 times as loud for it to be recognized by the human ear as approximately twice as loud.
In a regular hearing ear it takes about +3 db (volume increase) for the brain to get the first notion of sound increase.