Inverse square applies to a light emanating perfectly spherically that isn&#x27;t bouncing from anything else. If your room doesn&#x27;t have dark walls, you will need much less than the inverse square law would suggest.<p>Similarly, if you apply the &quot;inverse square&quot; law to sound waves as if they are emanating in a perfect sphere from our mouths, it&#x27;s pretty easy to show that you&#x27;ll never hear anybody very well, even shouting at the top of their lungs, from even a few dozen feet away. However, between the fact that our voices are partially directional and the fact that we pretty much always have a floor of some kind and are often in rooms that provide even greater constraints, we are rarely in situations where inverse square actually applies to our audio.