Sound Level Meter as Software Application

R. Barański AGH University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics, Department of Mechanics and Vibroacoustics, Al. A. Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Krakow, Poland

Full Text PDF

Nowadays, technical possibilities to build and implement new solution in industry or scientists research are very wide. PC computer with dedicated environmental software makes building equipment previously reserved to FPGA systems possible. In this article we focus on building a sound level meter application. The main reason to undertake this problem was to check precision of sound level meter consisting of a dedicated computer program and the main board integrated sound card. All algorithms were implemented in LabVIEW 8.6, thus we call our system SLM_LV_v1.2c. In testing SLM_LV_v1.2c we have performed the calibration procedure in the Vibroacoustics Laboratory of the Department of Mechanics and Vibroacoustics (a Calibration Laboratory accredited by Polish Centre for Accreditation). The presented results show that our meter in a specific range meets requirements for 1st class sound level meters. Certainly, we can not use it as regular sound level meter without any other research like e.g. type approval, but at the same time we can consider it to be an inexpensive sound level indicator.At the end of the paper, we present results of comparison between measurements obtained with SLM_LV_v1.2c and the popular sound level meter SVAN 945A and show some sources of errors.

DOI: 10.12693/APhysPolA.125.A-66 PACS numbers: 43.38.Kb; 43.58.Dj