Rob;
Where I was raised (south pole of Mars, IIRC), absent any other reference, a "ratio" of 1:1 was always 0 db.
Yup. So your sound is "1" and mine is "1" and the difference is 0db, right? Cool, now I'm disgrunted over you playing in the high mid and me in the lower bass and nobody can hear me so I turn my sound up. In my enthousiasm I even double it. Now my sound is 10db higher than yours. What does this mean, exactly? Well, it's "10db over Rob". db needs a reference. For db SPL the reference level is the treshold of hearing for a baby (babies typically haven't been exposed to semi-legal free parties yet). This reference is missing in ChucK where a rather large range can be expressed in a rather abstract way so Adam's note was quite useful to me. Yours, Kas.