While you're out at the electronics store looking for a stereo for your Toronto loft, you may notice that many of the speakers are rated in decibels. If you've studied physics or music to any extent, you're probably already familiar with what a decibel is and how to use it do rate stereos against one another. If you haven't, you're missing a crucial piece of information that can help your decision making process. This article will provide you with a basic overview of the concept of the decibel, which will hopefully rectify the situation.

If you want to get technical, there's a whole sheaf dedicated to describing the concept of a decibel in physics books as a measurement of the intensity based on the logarithmic scale. However, you will rarely run across it used to measure anything other than sound, so for simplicity's sake we can define a decibel as a measurement of the loudness of sound. It was invented in the 1920s by the Bell telephone company to measure the deterioration of sound intensity over the length of cable. The base unit, known as a bel, is a tribute to the telephone's inventor, Alexander Graham Bell.

Figuring out the decibel power involves working with base ten logarithms, so few people outside the audio industry have any need to work with these equations. All you, as an electronics buyer, really need to know is how is how decibels correspond to certain common sounds. How many decibels, for instance, does an Ontario architect's jackhammer make when he breaks ground on a new project. How many decibels is the sound of your dishwasher? This gives you a frame of reference that will allow you to choose a product.

Here are some frames of reference that will allow you to get a handle on the decibel. Whispering in a quiet library is equivalent to about 30 decibels. A normal conversation with a friend is more like 65 decibels. The sound of a motorcycle engine rates at about 100 decibels and rock concerts blast your ears with 115 decibels of music. The factory machinery used to produce tamper evident bands would be about 125 decibels, and a jet engine ranks at 140 decibels. The loudest sound the human ear can hear is 194 decibels.

The important thing to remember about the decibel scale is that above about 90 decibels, your hearing begins to be damaged if exposure is prolonged. Anything over 125 decibels is actually painful to hear, and even short sounds at 180 decibels or more will cause instant permanent hearing damage. Therefore if you take a high decibel rated stereo home to your Mississauga real estate, make sure to follow the instructions with regard to listening volume and exposure times.