Noise floor

[PaulColbert]

Hello,
I have been thinking about noise floor and wonder what everyone else has in their home.
Mine is 43 db. Is this loud, quiet, average?

[theSven]

Hello,
I have been thinking about noise floor and wonder what everyone else has in their home.
Mine is 43 db. Is this loud, quiet, average?

Honestly I don't know and perhaps someone else with more experience will chime up. What did you use to measure?

[technodanvan]

I'm seeing around 36dBA, but this is at around 6 am, so probably quieter than normal. It's cooler in the morning so the a/c doesn't run as much.

[theSven]

I'm seeing around 36dBA, but this is at around 6 am, so probably quieter than normal. It's cooler in the morning so the a/c doesn't run as much.

Are yo using REW or something else to measure? Educate me here 😀

[technodanvan]

I ended up buying a decent sound level meter from amazon for my REW setup, a Reed 8060. It's a direct read instrument so is sensitive to any spikes; it does not have the capability to average, but you can set it to 'slow'. There are less expensive meters that do the same thing (around $40 or so) with allegedly similar performance (with 1.5dB or so of actual). I've used Reed devices in the past for professional applications so I figured I'd splurge a bit.

It did not occur to me to use REW, but I'm not sure that type of microphone (a Dayton EMM-6 or equivalent) is best anyway since it is probably more directional.

https://www.reedinstruments.com/product/reed-r8060-sound-level-meter

[JonMarsh]

One nice thing about living in a somewhat isolated rural community, that is, a small town with a patchwork of developments out among agricultural fields (corn or garlic or onions, anyone?) is how quiet is is, if the air HVAC is not running. When I have gone to CA this summer on a few trips to close out one storage unit, the ambient noise level at 2AM in the morning is very annoying compared to the essentially dead silence I am used to now, even during much of the day.

Of course, my measurements system is selected for wide dynamic range and very low noise, also. One should also remember that dropping the noise floor 10 dB is a large change in the absolute level, about 3.3x.

Otherwise, it would be impossible to get the distortion measurements I'm seeing on POC crossover + driver assemblies with the latest parts. Remember, I measure distortion in dB, because it is much more sensitive to exposing/diagnosing low level issues than a % scale that bottoms out at 0.1% like the bottom range for Accuton measurements.




Both my Rødetest system and Pocket CLIO can confirm low ambient levels, under 30 dB. Of course, most of this is low frequency noise...

[JonMarsh]

One other thing I find affects the "noise floor substantially is the housing build- struck pay dirt with the developer here and their construction quality for thermal design. I think a few different factors are at play in this regard...

• 6" studs and heavy insulation in outer walls
• deep crawl space with deep OSB floor studs and heavy insulation - when it's 5 degrees outside in the winter, walking on the bare floor with bare feet you'd swear it was spring or summer- the insulation is that good.
• vaulted ceiling but with heavy insulation for thermals
• Very well made doors and windows, heavy construction with argon filled double paned glass. Touching the windows in the middle of winter you'd never guess it was cold outside- never had a home with that level of windows before. Certainly not in CA. But then my CA friends with 30% smaller houses have over double the heating bills in the winter.

I had the garage wall and ceiling construction insulated, as one of the options, but now I need to get some Dow Corning kits and do the garage doors.