unit of loudness. Loudness is a subjective characteristic of a sound (as opposed to the sound-pressure level in decibels (decibel), which is objective and directly measurable). Consequently, the sone scale of loudness is based on data obtained from subjects who were asked to judge the loudness of pure tones and noise. One sone is arbitrarily set equal to the loudness of a 1,000- hertz tone at a sound level of 40 decibels above the standard reference level (i.e., the minimum audible threshold). A sound with a loudness of four sones is one that listeners perceive to be four times as loud as the reference sound.