There are better ways, if you optimize for ease of understanding and not ease of use.
dB-based units make working between parts of a circuit, different devices etc. a breeze because adding 6dB in one part and removing it in another will result in no change in level. This is something the totally uninitated use every day in audio applications (typically that would be dBFS).
What other system do you propose? One where clipping audio has a level of 100% (0dBFS) and the dialog of a movie has 10% (-20dBFS) while the background atmo has 0.003% (-50dBFS) and the noise of the recorder has 0.000001% (-120dBFS)?
You can probably see why we use a log scale here..
dBFS is mostly fine. It's not used to communicate about loudness to anyone beyond experts. Loudness of machines is just specified as dB, and that gives manufacturers soooo much wiggle room, as to be useless.
dB-based units make working between parts of a circuit, different devices etc. a breeze because adding 6dB in one part and removing it in another will result in no change in level. This is something the totally uninitated use every day in audio applications (typically that would be dBFS).
What other system do you propose? One where clipping audio has a level of 100% (0dBFS) and the dialog of a movie has 10% (-20dBFS) while the background atmo has 0.003% (-50dBFS) and the noise of the recorder has 0.000001% (-120dBFS)?
You can probably see why we use a log scale here..