Room noise, noise floor of your room

[Thomas savage]

What's the 'normal' level of background noise ( when no music is playing) in your listening room?

Is it a case of lower the best, and is there things we can do to bring it down if it is indeed important?

 

[Thomas savage]

Mines 40db

 

[Purité Audio]

That I would have thought is on the high side of 'normal' I imagined you lived inn the middle of the countryside with no electrical appliances and just the gentle lowing of cows?
Keith

 

[Thomas savage]

That I would have thought is on the high side of 'normal' I imagined you lived inn the middle of the countryside with no electrical appliances and just the gentle lowing of cows?
Keith

More like in the middle of one of those ghastly turn of the centery new villages.

What's yours at purite HQ

 

[RayDunzl]

Is it a case of lower the best?

I'd say yes.

Are there things we can do to bring it down if it is indeed important?

In my case, turn off the PC (or go fanless someday). Beyond that, probably nothing will be done here. When music is playing the noises disappear except at the quietest moments, so...


Music Room:
Sunday 9:36 am. UMIK-1 and REW
36dBA
46dBC
51dBZ

Dominantly fan noise from PC and maybe refrigerator out in the kitchen. Outside sounds are rarely noticeable

dB scale is roughly 120dB at full scale.


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Bedroom:
34dBA

Distinctly quieter in there. Body noises - breathing, neck joints grinding, finger sliding on laptop trackpad dominate...

---

I'm not convinced the readings are not primarily "USB Mic Self Noise" if there is much of a thing.

 

[iridium]

In most homes the background noise increases as soon as the music starts.
This is due to many issues, but I will write about most floors, and it does not matter if it has carpet on it.
The music frequencies, especially in the low octaves energize the floor structure; it vibrates.
Causes:

• Low quality floor joists [newfangled I-joists are the worst].
• Floor joists are not deep enough [trampoline] and not supported adequately.
• Floor joist are not engineered properly. The deflection limit should be l/600 or better to minimize vibration [most residences are probably l/240 or worse - that means the floor under load would deflect one inch across 20 feet].
• Subfloor - lousy quality, not thick enought, inadequate fasteners [many high quality screws are proper].
• The layers just mentioned are not also connected with high-quality construction adhesive.
• Top cosmetic layer, if wood floor, must be adequately fastened to lower layers.

Of course you could construct the worst quality floor structure in order to have a huge KAZOO.

iridium.

 

[fas42]

Not something I've worried about, in the slightest. Because I aim to be able to run my systems at any volume I choose, and I don't worry about extracting maximum extraneous, non-musical bass rumblings from my recordings, the room space has always been "quiet enough". If the quality of reproduction reaches a certain standard then what's on the recording totally dominates the "sound space" that I'm taking notice of - for me, it's an automatic process where the mind gets drawn to that which has the uppermost subjective impact.

 

[Thomas savage]

Still it's kinda Intresting.. So far only the Scrutinizer and I have provided measurments..

 

[fas42]

That 30 to 40dB range seems pretty typical, you would be fighting hard to get it into the 20's. We live in a country setting, but the main road is just across the way - one heavy truck hitting his exhaust brakes kills good numbers stone dead ...

 

[RayDunzl]

I mostly have to deal with golf carts, but that is daytime only. Then there is the big grass mower, makes a few passes once or twice a week.

Last night, while we in the garage, three teenage hoodlums walked down the middle of the street talking and playing music from... what? The two boys seemed not to be carrying anything bigger than a cell phone, but the girl had a backpack... hmm...

Yes! Backpacks with speakers is a thing now.

Here's a fancy one...

 

[fas42]

Words fail me ...