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Isn't noise cumulative? a technical question
I'd like to try to clarify something for myself and any other dummies like me
who dont quite get this. I sometime read posts or articles where the writer says that the noise figure of a particular peice of gear (for instance, a mic) is less than something else (perhaps the noise of the room or another peice of gear or whatever). Someone might say (and they have) that the noise figure of a particular mic is lower than the ambient noise in the room and therefore the mic noise is a non-issue. I take this to mean that they are saying that the noise in the room sort of swallows up the mic's self noise and nullifies (masks?) it. Lets say for example that a mic has 22dBA self noise figure and that the room has 40 dBA ambient noise. (excuse me if I am quantifying these figures wrongly) I get the impression that the combination of these two noises added together would not be 62dBA as would seem logical to me. If the noises did add together in that way then I dont believe people would say not to worry about a mic's self noise because the room is so much noisier. Instead they would be saying that the mic's self noise is just as important in the 40dBA room as it would be if the room noise was 20dBA. So, I hope I'm getting the context for this question across, even in my clumsy way. If I understood enough to ask it right I'd probably know the answer. So, does the noise of different links in the chain combine in a linearly additive way or is it more complicated than that? For the purpose of this question can we set aside the issue of how much noise is actually problematic or audible and can we just stick to the theoretical way in which noise combines with other noise, all other things being equal? Garth~ "I think the fact that music can come up a wire is a miracle." Ed Cherney |
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