High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The sound intensity, I, (acoustic intensity) is defined as the sound power Pac per unit area A. The usual context is the noise measurement of sound intensity in the air at a listener's location. For instantaneous acoustic pressure pinst(t) and particle velocity v(t) the average acoustic intensity during time T. Notice that both v(t) and I are vectors, which means that both have a direction as well as a magnitude. The direction of the intensity is the average direction in which the energy is flowing.