Sound level meter app and ambient noise floor measurements

I suspect they can be accurate enough if you can calibrate them against a known ‘proper’ spl meter; but if I had one of those I wouldn’t need an app!

This is rapidly turning into a rabbit hole. I was initially just curious about how ‘quiet’ my living room really is, and was surprised to find it somewhere around 40dB. I’ve just measured again (washing machine now finished two rooms away) and get ~35dB on my (Android, Sound Meter PRO) phone and 37dB 30 second average on my iPad (SoundMeter X)

What’s your experience?

Andy

That seems pretty normal. Are you in a relatively (but not completely) quiet neighborhood environment?

Thank you Akimo. Good sanity check!

I’m in a rural village (about 2000 residents) in the UK. Nearest larger town about four miles. It’s pretty quiet if the local wood pigeons shut up.

I shouldn’t have been surprised because I really had no knowledge about what to expect the ambient level to be. I was probably en-route to setting a normalised listening level of around the 74dB recommended for small space professional mixing. Or at least comparing it with what I normally do!

And at that point, the app calibration to the device mic sensitivity becomes important, along with the actual programmed characteristics such as weighting.

Andy

… and as a further data point, ten minutes work in Reaper creating a three minute pink noise track that Roon can then normalise to -14 LUFS gives me playback at ~ 73dB at 1m from the loudspeaker, ~ 70dB at normal listening position!

I’m quite pleased with that…

Andy

Best of luck with your project