iPhone at the Royal Academy of Music

On Thursday 20th November the iPhone was tested as a noise dosimeter a the Royal Academy of Music. The app was downloaded from iTunes, sound meter, and left to run during a rehearsal for 15 minutes, along with a Cirrus Research CR110 noise badge. Results look promising, calibration is tricky and the iPhone is not 100% stable!

Urban Wind Turbines - saviours or statues

CIBSE / ASHRAE together with IMechE have invited Dr Stephen Dance and Prof Tony Day to give a presentation on Urbines. Put a date in your diary, 13th May 2009, London South Bank University, 5.30pm. The flyer is...
Two 6 kW roof top wind turbines located in the middle of London have been
closely monitored for 2 years - wind speeds, noise, vibration and most
importantly electricity generation. These turbines are a traditional
horizontal axis and a more unusual vertical axis design. Tony Day and Steve
Dance will present the findings of the comparison of two turbine types in
this very real central London location of Elephant and Castle.

Acta Acustica Journal Now Available

The Acoustics Group through the European Acoustics Association now has access to Acta Acustica. Please make use of it!

iPhone as Integrating Sound Level Meter

On Monday 10th November the Acoustics Group tested sound level meter apps for the Apple iPhone. Using the iPhone external microphone it is possible, via Sound Meter by Faber Acoustical, to use the iPhone as an integrating sound level meter with reasonable accuracy, measuring LAeq,T. LCpeak can be measured but not simultaneously. The OS is a bit wobbly, calibration with a standard calibrator is possible. The max sound level is limited to around 95 dBA. The app costs $20.

KTP Award with Capita Symonds won

On the 10th November 2008 the Acoustics Group were awarded a 3 year Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Capita Symonds on Roof Top Wind Turbines. This was good timing as today the Quiet Revolution turbines all over Britain switched themselves off... Too windy!

MARU / Acoustics Group / Arup Project

On 10th November 2008 Nicky Shiers joined the Acoustics Group as a PhD student. Nicky will be working with the Medical Architecture Research Unit (MARU) and Arup on the acoustics in hospitals. Nicky is now an EPSRC Case Award scholar, previously she was attending the Masters course in Environmental and Architectural Acoustics. We wish her well in her studies

Royal Festival Hall Measurements

Georgia Zepidou and Stephen Dance were at the Royal Festival Hall to undertake comparative dosimetry measurements for the rehearsal and performance of the London Philharmonic Orchestra on 7th November 2008. They were lucky enough to listen to Gennadi Rozhdestvensky! Life isn't so bad...

New class 1 Sound Calibrator

The Acoustics Group have taken delivery of a new class 1 sound calibrator.

New Norsonic 140 Sound Level Meter

The Acoustics Group have just taken delivery of a new Norsonic 140 Sound Level Meter from Campbell Associates. The unit is for auralisation experiments, recording the sound and then measuring speech intelligibility. I hope the measurements and recordings agree with the computer simulations!

Svantek 958 Sound Level Meter

The Acoustics Group have upgraded the Svantek 958 4 channel analyser to include a noise capability using a Class 1 prepolarised 0V Chinese microphone from Shanghai. The meter can now measure octaves and 1/3 octaves, percentiles and reverberation time.