If you are really worried about volume when using a pc, there are phone apps and computer programs that can use a microphone that you plug in (phones obviously have these built in) to detect decibel levels and you could use that to check your volume whenever you are worried about it being too loud. This is down to the content creators and how loud they recorded, edited, and rendered their audio. For example two different YouTube videos can be played on maximum volume but produce completely different levels of sound. The speaker still doesn’t know how loud the sound is but it knows how much it is increasing or decreasing the original sound by.Ĭomputer audio can also be hard to keep at a consistent volume. These are more typically found on speaker systems that have had endless research in order to know how a resistance value will change the volume.
Numbers next to volume sliders can also mean plus or minus decibels. For example a speaker that draws mains power will be able to play sound a lot louder than a pair of headphones that plug into the audio jack and nothing else. This is because different speakers and headphones all produce sound at different amplitudes. The numbers next to volume sliders tend to refer to percentage of maximum volume, not decibels.