Decibel vs Sabin

Sound is the most natural thing in the world but in depth study of sound has occurred a lot later. Decibel and Sabin are two units that are used to describe certain aspects of sound. Decibel, as we all know quantifies how loud the sound of a certain source is. Certain sources, like a jet engine, have much higher decibel values compared to a car or a lawn mower. Audio requirements that are imposed on certain products are also measured in decibels. Sabin is a less known unit of measurement that has a lot of implications when creating a room where the sound characteristics needs to be excellent; theaters, cinemas, operas, and the like. It is dimensionless unit that describes how much sound is absorbed by a surface and how much is reflected. Absorption carries a lot of implications since it is directly correlated to echoes and reverberation.

The only possible values for Sabin is 0, 1, and any value in between. With 1 indicating that all the sound is absorbed and 0 to mean that none is absorbed. This not the case with Decibel as it is a logarithmic value. This means that the stated value is often a ratio between an actual value and a certain reference. Because of this, you would need to pay attention to the unit more, because it comes with a certain suffix that indicates the reference. You would not find this much complexity with Sabin as it is usually fixed.

When you are designing a home theater, you would probably need to consider both values. You would need to consider the amount of decibels your equipment can put out and whether it is sufficient to the size of the room you intend to put it in. You should also consider the Sabin values of your walls and other surfaces in order to minimize the amount of reverberation that could distort the sound and make it harder to hear each distinct sound from what you are watching.

Summary:
1.Decibel is the unit of measurement for sound volume while Sabin is the unit of measurement for the sound absorption coefficient of a surface
2.Values for Sabin only ranges from 0 to 1 while Decibel is a logarithmic value
3.While Sabin exists in a single form while there are a lot of variants of Decibel like dBm and dBu
4.Decibel is related more to the sound source while Sabin is related more to the surroundings

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