Are Lpeak and Lmax Different?

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Newcomers to the field of acoustics are often overwhelmed by the number of different level metrics used to characterize environmental and community noise. To make matters worse, almost all of these metrics are abbreviated with capital Ls and reported in units of decibels. The purpose of this article is to help distinguish between three of these Ls: Lpeak, Lmax, and Lmin. Of the three, Lpeak is the easiest to understand, so we’ll start there.

Lpeak

Lpeak stands for peak level. The peak ...

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What is a Decibel? — Logarithms & Math

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In the previous post, we learned that the decibels belongs to a group of units called a relative units. This means that decibels are always expressed as a ratio of a measured value to a known reference value. There is, of course, a bit more to decibels than dividing one number by another, but don’t worry—the math isn’t too bad. We’ll walk you through it nice and slow.

So, why bother with more math in the first place? Shouldn’t it ...

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