BAASnotes.com – Bay Area Audiophile Society

How is it that an audio engineer, an Amazonian tribesman, and a small child think alike?

In audio:

• Frequency bands are commonly expressed in octaves and decades
• Volume settings (attenuation) and gain are expressed in decibels (dB)
• Treble falls off rapidly with distance – exponentially in fact

The common ground is that all of these quantities are logarithmic (the inverse of logarithmic is exponential).

Well, it turns out that reclusive tribes deep in the Amazon think the same way. So do small children.

Click the link above for a fascinating look at the Munduruku tribe and its numerical methods. (They can only count to five!)

And click here to learn more about logarithms in audio.