Is sound "additive"?

Felthove-- you're right-- weird question, and thinking about it makes my head hurt, but presumably much of it would depend on room size and acoustic properties, ie the way sound "bounces" off the walls and around the room. IMO the bigger the room and the "deader" the acoustics, the less the effect. But in a smaller more "live room", you may have chaos?? Of course theaters use multiple speakers in very large rooms, but they must be strategically placed?? :>). Cheers. Craig

If you were to add more speakers, yes, the sound will get louder. Since dB are meassured on a logarhitmic scale, you can't just add the dB numbers up. The sound will keep on increasing and increasing. Now, some speakers will probably end up canceling out some of the others, but if you have very large numbers of speakers that are placed well, you get a truly awesome effect. You know how a bunch of people wispering in a room generates a presence, well, a bunch of speakers playing at very low volume create a similar presence. It is very stimulating to the brain, and can also become very tiring after a while.

i'm not sure if my math is correct but i *do* know that, basically, ewe have to double your power to get an additional 3db of gain. so, perhaps, if one subwoofer is playing at 90 db, adding a second at 90db (which is another way of doubling the power), would give a total of 93db?

even if my math is off, two subs at the same level will definitely be louder than one - one of the reasons (besides imaging & soundstaging) that i recommend using a stereo pair of subs instead of yust one: at any given volume level, the distortion will be measurably - and audibly - lower.

doug s.

Doug- I am pretty sure that you are correct. It is additive, and not arithmetically. You would need an additional channel of amplification of course to power the second (third, etc)speaker. There are actually noise models that allow you to "add" noises of different dB level to give a total noise level. Same would be true for music.

Thanks guys. That helps.