If the attention of a listener is consciously directed toward perceiving sounds, then he is capable of estimating the relative magnitudes of pairs of sounds. The judged magnitude of a sound heard by a listener is called its loudness. By making quantitative judgments of the relative loudness of pure-tone stimuli at measured sound pressures and by adopting one tone and sound pressure as a reference, a quantitative relation between loudness and sound pressure can be established for pure tones. The resulting loudness scale is a ratio scale because it is derived by judging ratios of loudnesses. Next, by subjectively equating the loudnesses of other sounds to that of the reference tone the loudnesses of the other sounds can be determined.
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