Meaning & use
phon
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Meaning
nouncountabletechnicalphysics
A unit that measures how loud a sound seems to a listener, found by comparing it with a pure tone of 1000 hertz at a known decibel level.
Grammar: A countable unit: a sound of 60 phons.
Patterns
- a sound of 60 phons
- measure loudness in phons
A quiet library has a loudness of about 40 phons.
The engineer measured the loudness in phons rather than in decibels.
A conversation at normal volume registers around 60 phons.
Word forms
| plural | phons |
|---|
Common combinations
- measured in phons
- Perceived loudness is measured in phons.
- loudness level in phons
- The loudness level in phons rises more slowly for low notes.
- equal-loudness contour
- The chart shows each equal-loudness contour in phons.
- reference tone
- Each phon is set against a 1000-hertz reference tone.
Synonyms and how they differ
Word family
Commonly confused: phon or phone? phon or decibel?
phon vs phone
A phone is a telephone, or a single speech sound in linguistics. A phon is a unit of loudness.
phon vs decibel
The decibel is easily mistaken for the phon, but it measures physical sound pressure, not what people hear.
Practice
Why do acoustic engineers sometimes prefer the phon to the decibel?
Choose one answer.
The phon is tied to human hearing and perceived loudness. Counting waves per second describes frequency in hertz.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “phon”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.