Tom,

>Jim;
>
>Are you saying that my explaination was not reasonable? :) Well, I gave less than a Readers Digest version.

Not at all. Just showing that there is indeed a 'sound pressure reference'. How else could you give someone a hearing test?

>As an electronics technician we used values like .707, etc. When I took “The Calculus” in engineering college, we had to solve for peak, average and peak-to-peak values. It took over 9 pages of calculations to get the same one line question/answer we obtained as technicians using commonly used formulas. However, we had the satisfaction of knowing “we had done it correctly – no short cuts”! :)
>

Yeah, gotta love those shortcuts :-) All I need to know is Ohm's Law, the proofs matter not to me.

>By the way in engineering we looked at things differently for a number of reasons. One was peak power vs. time. As an example a one-microsecond spike can destroy an electronics component (or your ears).
>

Yes indeed! In a former life, I worked as an EMC tech. Great fun destroying multi-million dollar gear to test those limits. 2-3 kv Spikes on all lines in or out, 1kw RF from 3' away from 1-1000 MHz, etc. Also fun watching spec's change on the fly IYKWIM.