Sone

The sone is a unit of perceived loudness after a proposal of S. Smith Stevens in 1936. In acoustics, loudness is a subjective measure of the sound pressure. One sone is equivalent to 40 phons, which is defined as the loudness of a 1 kHz tone at 40 dB SPL. The number of sones to a phon was chosen so that a doubling of the number of sones sounds to the human ear like a doubling of the loudness, which also corresponds to increasing the sound pressure level by 10 dB, or increasing the sound pressure by a factor 3.16 (=sqrt{10}). At frequencies other than 1 kHz, the measurement in sones must be calibrated according to the frequency response of human hearing, which is of course a subjective process. The study of apparent loudness is included in the topic of psychoacoustics.

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To be fully precise, a measurement in sones must be qualified by the optional suffix G, which means that the loudness value is calculated from frequency groups, and by one of the two suffixes F (for free field) or D (for diffuse field).

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Unit: The word unit means any of several things:...

Perceived: REDIRECT perception...

Loudness: Loudness is the quality of a sound that is the primary psychological correlate of physical intensity. Loudness is also affected by parameters other than intensity, including: frequency (see Equal Loudness Contours), bandwidth, and duration (see temporal integration)....