The title of the article is misleading, there will still be booms:
> Several U.S. companies are working on a new generation of luxurious supersonic passenger aircraft with much quieter sonic booms and improved fuel efficiency
There is a tonne of progress in atmospheric modellingn that lets us predict how the thump will be refracted to and reflected from the ground. So yes, you still have the same energy being dumped into the atmosphere. But less of it turns into audible sound, less of it arrives in one go, and less of it ever reaches the ground in an audible form.
108 dB is the proposed FAA allowable pressure at the surface of the earth. They didn't come up with this number arbitrarily they did it with consultation with the supersonic plane companies and if those companies could achieve much less than 108dB then the proposed limit would be lower.
If that loud sound is roughly boom-like in shape and texture, and caused by an object moving faster through its medium than the speed of sound of its medium, then they are, in fact, the same thing.
I lived in the area where boom did their flight tests and the local news would announce days when they were testing. FWIW, I think they used scaled down aircraft so production aircraft may vary, but the boom was more of a thump. It comes on quick though, so some potential for startling, not on account of volume so much as sonic attack.
> Several U.S. companies are working on a new generation of luxurious supersonic passenger aircraft with much quieter sonic booms and improved fuel efficiency