According to CoolEdit's statistics:

New Asteroid
Peak amplitude: 0dB
Average RMS power: -4.85dB

New Pengo
Peak amplitude: -0.37dB
Average RMS power: -5.55dB

So you can see the peak amplitude is basically identical and the RMS power
is within 1dB. The reason your SPL meter shows such a dramatic difference
is probably due to the A-weighting performed by the meter. The New Asteroid
has most of its energy below 200 Hz while with New Pengo the energy is
concentrated between 1-2 kHz. The A-weighting curve is much more sensitive
to 1-2k than it is to low frequencies (see
http://sound.westhost.com/project17.htm for a graph).

If possible, turn off weighting on your SPL meter and you will probably see
less discrepancy. It is also possible that your playback system is
providing some attenuation of low frequencies, further skewing the results.

"SA Dev" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:403cdb9a$[email protected]..
> Hi Fred,
>
> > "using the peaks doesn't work well" in what way?
>
> I've sent two files up to my FTP site at:
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~alank2/newasteroid.wav
> and
> http://home.earthlink.net/~alank2/newpengo.wav
>
> The newasteroid.wav has much louder peaks, but is only 58db when I play it
> on my system. The newpengo.wav has lesser peaks, but is 75db when I play
it
> on my system.
>
> I'm using a cheap SPL meter, radio shack digital set to MAX (report max),
> Fast, and Weighting "A".
>
> Thanks,
>
> SA Dev
>
>