Production Glossary
Decibel
The decibel (dB) is a single unit that is employed when measuring the magnitude of a sound. The decibel scale is important because it assigns levels of sound that the human ear can hear from the lowest (0 dB) to the highest (85 dB, which can cause hearing loss).The term decibel is derived from the rarely-used unit, the bel. A decibel is one-tenth of a bel. Aside from measuring the intensity of sound, decibels are also used in electronics, digital and video imaging, and optics.
