I recorded these tracks and set the various levels by measuring the RMS power for the foreground and background of each example. RMS is the average volume level. In the first example the the voice (foreground) is recorded at -17.52 decibels and the music (background) is at -37.52 decibels, which makes the foreground 20 decibels louder than the background.
In the second example the voice (foreground) is at -18 decibels and the music (background) is at about -16 decibels making the foreground only 2 decibels louder than the background.
Background music by David MacDonald (c)2004
Level 3 Success Criteria for Guideline 1.4
Note:
A 20 decibel difference in sound level is roughly 4 times quieter (or louder). Background sound that meets this requirement will be approximately four times (4x) quieter than the foreground audio content.
Transcript of voice on good contrast example:
"Usually the foreground refers to a voice that is speaking and should be
understood. My speaking voice right now is 20 decibels above the background
which is the music. This is an example of how it should be done."
Transcript of voice on bad contrast example:
"This is an example of a voice that is not loud enough against the background.
The voice which is the foreground is only about 2 decibels above the background.
Therefore is difficult to understand for a person who is hard of hearing. It is
hard to discern one word from the next. This is an example of what not to do."
I had a meeting with the forensic audio engineer for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and discussed with him the results of my examples. Our WCAG 2.0 document says if the foreground is 20db above the background then it is about 4x the volume of the background.
Power, volume and perceived volume are not the same.
Perception of loudness is logarithmic. All things being equal, when you double
the amount of power that you feed to your speakers, you get a 3-decibel increase
in the sound pressure level at the output: 3 dB is considered to be a noticeable
difference in volume. A 10-dB increase is twice as loud. Therefore, the
difference between 1 and 2 watts is equal to the difference between 10 and 20
watts—likewise for 100 and 200 watts.
“The human body perceives ten times the sound-power as being only twice as loud.
And 100 times the sound power is only 4 times as loud to our ears.
Weird but true. And actually good for us, probably designed to that effect by
evolution, so that we can hear and effectively use the extremely wide range of
sound
powers that frequently exist in various times and places.”
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/eng99/eng99325.htm
The formula for the difference in decibels between two different sound sources
is defined to be:
10 log (P2/P1) dB (where the log is to base 10)
If the foreground was 4x louder (perceived volume) than the background, it would
need to be 100 times the power of the background.
The formula would be
10 (log (100/1)) db
= 10 *(log 100) db
= 10 * 2db
= 20db
20db is a huge drop in volume, and as can be heard on my example. It will be
hard to get people who produce sound tracks to buy into our guidelines given
this ratio, I think.
David MacDonald
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…Barriers disable them.
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