Hey folks,
Staring at SINAD numbers all the time - but what does a jump from, say, 75 dB to a stunning 120 dB truly mean in terms of "purity"? It can be tough to get an intuitive handle on it. After some thought and number-crunching (based on actual measured figures, not just guesswork!), I've been exploring a "salty water" analogy that might help make these abstract figures a bit more...tasty? Or perhaps, untasty!
The basic idea is simple: think of unwanted noise and distortion (the "NAD" in SINAD) as a tiny bit of salt. Pure water is your perfect "Signal." The less salt, the "purer" the water, and the higher the SINAD. Our unit of "impurity" will be a single, average grain of table salt, which has a measured mass of about 0.06 milligrams (mg) – it's tiny!
So, let's see what different "audio quality levels" might taste like.
Imagine you've managed to isolate that single grain of salt. If you dissolved it in just 3 tiny drops of pure water (that’s about 0.16 mL), you'd have a concentration of roughly 375 milligrams of salt per Liter (mg/L). That’s noticeably salty for sure! In our analogy, this kind of obvious "impurity" is like a lower SINAD score, say around 61 dB, where the flaws in the audio are pretty apparent.
But what if we start diluting it? Take a fresh single grain of salt and dissolve it in about 16 drops of pure water (around 0.79 mL). Now, the salt concentration is much lower, about 76 mg/L. This is interesting because it’s right at the lower edge of reported taste thresholds for very sensitive individuals. For our analogy, we’ll peg this level of "just barely detectable" impurity to a ~75 dB SINAD. This is our reference point: an audio imperfection that a keen listener might just begin to sense under ideal conditions.
Want to try this yourself?
This is where it gets fun and you can use your own senses. Isolating a single, average grain of table salt can be a bit fiddly, but aim for that! Then:
Scaling Up: What Do "Cleaner" High SINADs Taste Like?
Back to our analogy. In audio, a 20 dB increase in SINAD means the "bad stuff" (our salt) is 10 times less prominent.
If we take our ~75 dB "just barely detectable" level (1 grain in 16 drops) as a starting point:
I heard extreme claims like "120 dB SINAD is like a grain of salt in an Olympic swimming pool!" It’s used to emphasize utter imperceptibility. But is it accurate? Not even close.That single 0.06 mg grain of salt in a typical backyard swimming pool (say, 20,000 gallons or ~75,000 Liters) creates an unimaginably dilute solution. On our SINAD analogy scale, this would actually be equivalent to something around 230-240 dB SINAD! So, while 120 dB is fantastic, the swimming pool comparison is a huge exaggeration for that particular SINAD value.
Perception, Belief, and that "Cup of Water" Test
It's fascinating how these analogies are used. People might use the "swimming pool" hyperbole to convince you that flaws in 120 dB gear are impossible to hear. Conversely, remember that third test I suggested: one grain of salt in a full cup of water? The dilution there (about 0.25 mg/L of salt) actually aligns with a ~125 dB SINAD equivalent in our analogy. But as you probably found if you tried it, tasting that salt is highly improbable (wink wink); it's hundreds of times below typical, verified human taste thresholds. It just goes to show how suggestion and expectation can play with our perception!
Why This Salty Story (Sort of) Works
Our senses, whether hearing or taste, tend to notice proportional changes rather than absolute linear ones. The decibel scale itself is built on this logarithmic principle. So, while linking a specific taste threshold (1 grain in 16 drops) to a specific SINAD value (75 dB) is a choice we made for this analogy, the scaling from there (e.g., 10 times less saltiness for every 20 dB SINAD improvement) uses that same solid, perception-based logic. The salt grain and drop counts are real, calculated ways to experience these vast ratios of purity.
In any case, I am glad I now have an alternative non-audio scale for intuition.
Staring at SINAD numbers all the time - but what does a jump from, say, 75 dB to a stunning 120 dB truly mean in terms of "purity"? It can be tough to get an intuitive handle on it. After some thought and number-crunching (based on actual measured figures, not just guesswork!), I've been exploring a "salty water" analogy that might help make these abstract figures a bit more...tasty? Or perhaps, untasty!
The basic idea is simple: think of unwanted noise and distortion (the "NAD" in SINAD) as a tiny bit of salt. Pure water is your perfect "Signal." The less salt, the "purer" the water, and the higher the SINAD. Our unit of "impurity" will be a single, average grain of table salt, which has a measured mass of about 0.06 milligrams (mg) – it's tiny!
So, let's see what different "audio quality levels" might taste like.
Imagine you've managed to isolate that single grain of salt. If you dissolved it in just 3 tiny drops of pure water (that’s about 0.16 mL), you'd have a concentration of roughly 375 milligrams of salt per Liter (mg/L). That’s noticeably salty for sure! In our analogy, this kind of obvious "impurity" is like a lower SINAD score, say around 61 dB, where the flaws in the audio are pretty apparent.
But what if we start diluting it? Take a fresh single grain of salt and dissolve it in about 16 drops of pure water (around 0.79 mL). Now, the salt concentration is much lower, about 76 mg/L. This is interesting because it’s right at the lower edge of reported taste thresholds for very sensitive individuals. For our analogy, we’ll peg this level of "just barely detectable" impurity to a ~75 dB SINAD. This is our reference point: an audio imperfection that a keen listener might just begin to sense under ideal conditions.
Want to try this yourself?
This is where it gets fun and you can use your own senses. Isolating a single, average grain of table salt can be a bit fiddly, but aim for that! Then:
- In one tiny, clean container (like a bottle cap), dissolve that single grain in just 3 drops of distilled or very pure water.
- In another, dissolve a fresh single grain in 16 drops of pure water.
- For a third test, dissolve a fresh single grain in a full standard US cup (about 240 mL or 8 fluid ounces) of pure water.
Scaling Up: What Do "Cleaner" High SINADs Taste Like?
Back to our analogy. In audio, a 20 dB increase in SINAD means the "bad stuff" (our salt) is 10 times less prominent.
If we take our ~75 dB "just barely detectable" level (1 grain in 16 drops) as a starting point:
- To reach a ~100 dB SINAD equivalent (a 25 dB improvement, making the "salt" about 18 times less concentrated), that single grain would need to be in about 14 mL of water (almost 3 US teaspoons). The original saltiness is now diluted to about 4.3 mg/L – far below almost anyone's taste threshold. This mirrors how 100 dB SINAD audio is generally perceived as very clean and transparent.
- To get to ~120 dB SINAD (a 45 dB improvement from 75 dB, making the "salt" about 178 times less concentrated), that single grain would be in roughly 140 mL of water (a bit more than half a standard US cup). The "salt" here is at a vanishingly low concentration of ~0.43 mg/L. This is truly top-tier audio performance, exceptionally "pure."
I heard extreme claims like "120 dB SINAD is like a grain of salt in an Olympic swimming pool!" It’s used to emphasize utter imperceptibility. But is it accurate? Not even close.That single 0.06 mg grain of salt in a typical backyard swimming pool (say, 20,000 gallons or ~75,000 Liters) creates an unimaginably dilute solution. On our SINAD analogy scale, this would actually be equivalent to something around 230-240 dB SINAD! So, while 120 dB is fantastic, the swimming pool comparison is a huge exaggeration for that particular SINAD value.
Perception, Belief, and that "Cup of Water" Test
It's fascinating how these analogies are used. People might use the "swimming pool" hyperbole to convince you that flaws in 120 dB gear are impossible to hear. Conversely, remember that third test I suggested: one grain of salt in a full cup of water? The dilution there (about 0.25 mg/L of salt) actually aligns with a ~125 dB SINAD equivalent in our analogy. But as you probably found if you tried it, tasting that salt is highly improbable (wink wink); it's hundreds of times below typical, verified human taste thresholds. It just goes to show how suggestion and expectation can play with our perception!
Why This Salty Story (Sort of) Works
Our senses, whether hearing or taste, tend to notice proportional changes rather than absolute linear ones. The decibel scale itself is built on this logarithmic principle. So, while linking a specific taste threshold (1 grain in 16 drops) to a specific SINAD value (75 dB) is a choice we made for this analogy, the scaling from there (e.g., 10 times less saltiness for every 20 dB SINAD improvement) uses that same solid, perception-based logic. The salt grain and drop counts are real, calculated ways to experience these vast ratios of purity.
In any case, I am glad I now have an alternative non-audio scale for intuition.
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