Anyone with a decibelometer in London?

[Codswallop]

Hi PHers,

favour to ask - does anyone in London have a decibelometer? Just want to get a quick db reading of my car's exhaust before an event. Need to know if I need extra silencing or not

Thanks

[SonicShadow]

Bear in mind if it's marginal, environmental factors may well nudge it over the limit (or they might nudge it the other way). Also, cheap dB meters have a tolerance of a few dB so you'll want to test it with something better than a cheap Maplin one.

[Krikkit]

Best guess you may as well use a phone app, it's a calibrated microphone anyway...

[Paul_M3]

I have the 'Soundmeter' app on my iPhone.

I was checking my exhaust with a decent noise meter at the weekend, and a very brief check showed the phone app to read a couple of decibels higher.

So whilst not good for accurate measurement, the app may be useful if you were trying out temporary bolt on silencing and wanted to see roughly how effective it is.

[normalbloke]

That's an awesome word!

[Slidingpillar]

SonicShadow said:

Bear in mind if it's marginal, environmental factors may well nudge it over the limit (or they might nudge it the other way). Also, cheap dB meters have a tolerance of a few dB so you'll want to test it with something better than a cheap Maplin one.

With the permission of a noise tester at Gurston, I tested my cheap Tandy one against a proper one. Pretty good actually, within a dB of the expensive one he had.

[CrutyRammers]

Slidingpillar said:

SonicShadow said:

Bear in mind if it's marginal, environmental factors may well nudge it over the limit (or they might nudge it the other way). Also, cheap dB meters have a tolerance of a few dB so you'll want to test it with something better than a cheap Maplin one.

With the permission of a noise tester at Gurston, I tested my cheap Tandy one against a proper one. Pretty good actually, within a dB of the expensive one he had.

Same at IVA - my cheapo ten quid ebay special was within 1db of VOSA's one. Plenty good enough.
IIRC phone microphones don't work well with loud noises so the phone apps aren't great for measuring exhausts.