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A comment on Decibels Are Ridiculous. Parent comment

Re:Decibels Are Ridiculous by bitdivision on Thursday May 22, 2025 @12:28PM (#44063646)
But that's why it's so confusing. Did they purposefully leave off the reference to indicate Watts, or did they mean volts (as I'd guess audio engineers typically do when talking about amplifiers).
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Re:Decibels Are Ridiculous by BenjiWiebe on Thursday May 22, 2025 @09:22PM (#44068917)
No, it isn't Watts if there's no reference. It's a ratio of powers. i.e. amplification or attenuation.

To have an actual amount of power, you need to reference it to some particular amount of power, like dBm for power-ratio-relative-to-milliwatt.

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