How much sound does a sone sound have?

[FreezerBoy]

... if a sone sound did sound sones?

Home Depot had an interesting display in the bathroom fan section tonight. A box that provides audible examples of sones, sort of. Something like like 1.5, 4.? and I forget. The latter examples were clearly too loud for smaller grows but, I found myself thinking that the 1.5 was "workable," 1 or lower may be usable "as is."

Anyway, I never had a clue what a sone sounded like before (not that I was an expert in dB) The curious may want to swing by their HD bath section.

 

[ItsGrowTime]

WTF is a sone?

 

[FreezerBoy]

sone |sōn|
noun
a unit of subjective loudness, equal to 40 phons.
ORIGIN 1930s: from Latin sonus ‘a sound.’

It's a measurement or value commonly used by bigger and/or high end fans in place of dB. Supposedly, for reasons that are greek to me, there's no formula to convert to dB. This left me at a complete loss imagining the sound level. Now I have a vague idea.

 

[Bulénath]

0.4 sones is extremely quiet.

Panasonic Whisperfans are what I use.

All three of my cabinets are just two or three feet from where my head rests each night, and I have insomnia. All three cabinet's main ventilations fans include two 80cfm models and a single 70cfm model (now discontinued) & all are rated at 0.4 sones or less. I needed something really quiet becasue I am a light sleeper, and obviously grow in my bedroom.

If you grow in a seperate room, you should be able to get away with much more noise, without fear of security risks.

I think Home De Pot or your local Fan store should have different types of Bathroom fans available on display.
You should be able to check out thier Sone rating and compare them all, then find the one that suits your needs based on how it sounds.

But as for CFM per Sone, Panasonic Whisperfans are about as good as it gets.


Hope this helps.

 

[FreezerBoy]

0.4 sones is extremely quiet.

That actually means something to me now, sort of. If what I heard was 1.5 then 0.4 must be pretty darn quiet.

I still remember the first time I heard of SCSI cables. SCUZZY? I thought they were yanking my chain. Sones meant about as much. Till now.

 

[kaljukajakas]

The world is full of all sorts of funny units...

About those whisperline fans, how far away is that 0.4 sone measured? 3m/10'? That's quieter than it ever gets in my bedroom Mostly because I live in a city and 0.4 sone or about 30 dB is a really quiet backround noise - practically library quiet. With traffic etc there's usually more backround noise in an urban environment, about 1 sone or 40 dB.

 

[Guest 18340]

I swear, i learn something new everyday.
Just lastnight i was bitching about how loud my bathroom fan is. Sone. Nice.

 

[FreezerBoy]

The world is full of all sorts of funny units...

About those whisperline fans, how far away is that 0.4 sone measured? 3m/10'? That's quieter than it ever gets in my bedroom Mostly because I live in a city and 0.4 sone or about 30 dB is a really quiet backround noise - practically library quiet. With traffic etc there's usually more backround noise in an urban environment, about 1 sone or 40 dB.

Well now I'm more confused than ever. There were no actual gauges on the box, just printed, graphic gauges with marks no numbers. What I thought was 1.5 sones was much quieter than my 30 dB axial fan. Of course, that axial's been running virtually non-stop for 15 years ...

 

[Bulénath]

The world is full of all sorts of funny units...

About those whisperline fans, how far away is that 0.4 sone measured? 3m/10'? That's quieter than it ever gets in my bedroom Mostly because I live in a city and 0.4 sone or about 30 dB is a really quiet backround noise - practically library quiet. With traffic etc there's usually more backround noise in an urban environment, about 1 sone or 40 dB.

How Panasonic Co. meausres the sone rating itself & from what distance, I cannot tell you, for that is thier secret to successs.

I can tell you, however, that I am an insomniac who lives in a quiet country town, and I use my three 0.4 sone main ventilation fans literrally a few feet from where my head rests every night. Like 2-4 feet tops.

We all have yet to see an accurate sone to dBA conversion, anywhere on the net, and it pisses me off!

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

I've read somewhere that 1 sone is equivalent to 40 db. I read several conversions where the sources admittied their conversions were educated guesses at best. Wikipedia below: (I'm not sure they're positive either.)


"What is the coversion between Sone and Decibel (dB)?

This is a bit tricky to answer. The issue is that Decibels (dB) is an empirical measurement of the difference of sound pressure of two sounds. So to make standardized measurements of Decibels requires a room with a specific ambient sound pressure, a specific atmospheric pressure and a specific ambient temperature. This way Decibels provide the user with a reproducible experimental value that could then be experienced by the curious user. The Sone takes it a step further.

The Sone measurement is a numerical representation of a human’s acoustic perception. This unit of perceived loudness was put into use after a proposal of S. S. Stevens in 1936. Since much of acoustics is important only in how humans react to the sound, it was seen fit that loudness be standardized. Loudness is a subjective measurement of the sound pressure, so one Sone was defined as equivalent to 40 Phons. Thereby one Sone equals the loudness of a 1 kHz tone at 40 dB SPL.

Now a Phon is also a unit of perceived loudness, but it is a subjective measurement of the strength (not intensity) of a sound. 1 Phon is defined to be equal to 1 dB SPL above the nominal threshold of hearing. The threshold of hearing is the sound pressure level (SPL) of 20 µPa (micropascals), equal to 2 x 10-5 pascals. Once you start measuring other frequencies in Phons it departs from the Decibel but is related to it by the frequency weighing curve (equal-loudness contour) that reflects the frequency response of human hearing. The standard curve for human hearing is the A-weighted curve, in use when indicated by the dB(A) notation.

The human auditory system is generally sensitive to frequencies in the range of 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. The human ear is most sensitive in the range of 1,000 to 5,000 Hz due to the biomechanics of the ear. The equal-loudness contour (Fletcher-Munson curve) is a representation of the measure of sound pressure (dB SPL) versus the Frequency for which a listener perceives a constant loudness. The loudness is measured in Phons and by definition two sine waves of different frequencies that have equal Phons are equally loud.

Back to the Sone, the number of Phons equal to 1 Sone was chosen so that a doubling of the number of Sones is perceived by a human ear as a doubling of the loudness of the sound. This also corresponds to increasing the sound pressure level by 10 dB. When you are dealing with frequencies other than 1 kHz, the measurement in Sones must be calibrated according to the frequency response of human hearing.

Without a specified frequency, it will be difficult to precisely reproduce the perception of the measured loudness from just the Sones value; but a value of 0.5 Sones could be reproduced by generating a 1 kHz tone at 30 dB. By definition that tone would be of equal loudness to a tone of any other frequency correctly measured as 0.5 Sones. The actual decibel measurement of different frequency tones that are rated at 0.5 Sones will vary in correspondence to the equal-loudness contour.

It is also important to note that Decibels, being a logarithmic measurement, means that the perceived loudness of 20 Decibels is twice that of 10 Decibels. For example, while a Rock concert might be rated at 120 dB, a Jet Engine rated at 150 dB is perceived as 8 times as loud as the concert. As the Decibel is in reality a measurement between two quantities, it is a dimensionless unit, like a percentage. This makes Decibel measurements not as useful as people often assume. To be useful, it should have been applied to the equal-loudness contour and have a specified distance.

Equally, the Sone should also be paired with a specified distance and should be matched with a suffix G to specify that it was calculated from frequency groups and also be notated by the suffix F (free field) or D (diffuse field). If the frequency groups are provided with the Sone measurement, along with the other values – it should be possible to accurately reproduce the measured loudness." Source: Wikipedia

 

[kaljukajakas]

Decibels are an objective measurement of sound, sones are a subjective measurement. Sort of like height or eye color vs cuteness or beauty. The latter two are usually not the subject of scientific inquiry. Well, not "real" science anyway - another quote from Wikipedia: "The study of apparent loudness is included in the topic of psychoacoustics and employs methods of psychophysics". Apparantly, if you measure sound levels in sones then you've probably earned the prefic "psycho-" in front of your job title...

 

[FreezerBoy]

So, I could be a PyschoFarmer? Cool.

 

[Haps]

OK, I got my head around the sones reality a few years ago. The key is context. you only need to understand it in a relative context to compare the level of two or more fan choices. So the reality of sones is, it is just a lesser or greater noise factor rating system between the product choices you have. Otherwise it don't mean shit.
H

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

OK, I got my head around the sones reality a few years ago. The key is context. you only need to understand it in a relative context to compare the level of two or more fan choices. So the reality of sones is, it is just a lesser or greater noise factor rating system between the product choices you have. Otherwise it don't mean shit.
H

Wiki ought to replace the four pages of shit on sones with the above paragraph.