Zounds! It's Sounds!

[thebes]

From a post out of Quora Digest. Quite frankly a well tuned Klipsch setup can easily kick Krakatoa to the curb.

 

 

194 dB is the maximum undistorted sound pressure level that can be transmitted through sea-level atmosphere on Earth.
Anything more than that, the sound wave will be “clipped” at the bottom, since vacuum-like absolute pressure would be reached (0 Pa).

Much larger levels are however achievable, even on Earth.

For example:

• The Tunguska meteoric event of 1908 is calculated to have reached 300 dB. This massive explosion flattened 80 million trees over an area of 2000 square kilometres.
• The eruption of the Krakatoa volcano probably reached 230 dB on 27 August 1883. This was so powerful that the sound wave circled the globe four times. The crack was distinctively heard from over 5000 km away, more or less like from New York to Los Angeles.
• The launch of a Saturn V rocket can reach 220 dB.
• The infamous Tzar Bomba reached probably 224 dB (releasing one fourth of the Krakatoa explosion), and accounts for the largest human-made noise. Some sources report that this event created a 280 dB level, but I don’t think it can be a correct value.

All dB values in the present article are expressed as “unweighted” or “total”, whereas the human hearing perceives less in the low- and high-frequency domain. This is critically also the part of the spectrum where extreme events tend to concentrate most part of their energy.
Unweighted levels are usually suffixed with a “Z” (like zero-weighting) thus presented as dB(Z).
Levels in environmental/safety measurements are presented as dB(A), because reflect more closely the characteristics of human hearing.

 

[boom3]

As Paul said long ago, "Yawns or goosebumps?"