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Pulling a bit out, to try to find intuition:

   log_2(10) ~= 10/3

   10^(1/10) ~= cubeRoot(2)
So the first 10 decibels are ~= the first 10 powers of CubeRoot(2)

"dividing by 10^n until you reach 1<y<10" is the operation: CubeRoot(2)^k -> CubeRoot(2) ^ (k mod 10)

So, the scaling operation on 2^m = CubeRoot(2)^3m is going to land on multiples of 1/3, and then sorting will put them in order.

You want 10 values, so you take the first 10 powers of 2. CubeRoot(2)^{0..9}

Remaining question: why do you get 10 distinct values? Well, it's because 2^a and 2^b only scale to the same value if (by logarithms) a - b = 10j.



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