Chapter Five (Noise Pollution Control) Assit. Prof.Dr.

Nabaa Shakir Hadi

B.Sc. Course(Second Semester)

University of Babylon-College of Engineering
Environmental Engineering Department

Chapter Five (Noise Pollution Control)

Sound level meter

1. Frequencies spectrum
2. Frequency spectrum of human voice
3. Sound level meter
4. Loudness level

Frequencies spectrum
Definitions
 Spectrogram: Graph of the energy content of a signal expressed as function of frequency
and time. Graph of a signal in which the vertical axis is frequency, the horizontal axis is time,
and amplitude is shown on a grey-scale. During regions of silence, and at frequency regions
where there is little energy, the spectrogram appears white, dark regions indicate areas of high
energy.

 Wide-band spectrogram: A spectrogram produced using an analysis scheme which

emphasizes temporal changes in the signal with short-time spectrum calculations(about 3ms).

 Narrow-band spectrogram: A spectrogram produced using an analysis scheme which

emphasizes frequency changes in the signal with long-time spectrum calculations (about 20 ms)

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Chapter Five (Noise Pollution Control) Assit. Prof.Dr. Nabaa Shakir Hadi

Three examples of the relationship between the waveform of a signal in the time domain
compared to its spectrum in the frequency domain. In the top figure a sine wave of large
amplitude and wavelength is showing up as a single frequency with a high level at a low
frequency. in the middle figure a low amplitude signal with small wavelength is seen to show
up in the frequency domain as a high frequency with a low level. At the bottom figure it is
shown how a sum of the two signals above also in the frequency domain shows up as a sum.

Frequency spectrum of human voice

In typical speech, men use frequencies around 100 to 150 Hertz, women use frequencies
around 200 Hertz, and children are more typically around 300 Hertz.

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Chapter Five (Noise Pollution Control) Assit. Prof.Dr. Nabaa Shakir Hadi

Sound level meters are the instruments comically used to measure environmental noise. They
have 3 main components, a microphone, some filtering electronics (the weighting networks,
described next) and some display.

An example of Sound Level Meter is shown in Fig. below A filter is an electronic circuit
which cuts out part of the frequency content of an input signal. Weighting networks are filters
that are applied on the raw noise signal (measured by the microphone).

Loudness level
The ear is not simple linear perceiving sensor. The subjective feeling of the intensity or
magnitude of a sound depends on the frequency content, the waveform and the duration of the
noise. The loudness level of a given sound is measured by making a (statistical) subjective
comparison between the perceived loudness of that sound and that of a pure tone of specified
amplitude and frequency that seems equally loud. The sound pressure level of the pure tone in
(Phones) is then called the loudness level of the sound. Equal loudness contours monitor how
the same impression of loudness changes with frequency. An example of such contours is
shown in Fig. below.

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Chapter Five (Noise Pollution Control) Assit. Prof.Dr. Nabaa Shakir Hadi

These contours show that human is more sensitive to frequencies in the 1-10 kHz range than
below 1 kHz (it takes a lot more actual pressure to reach the same impression of loudness at
100 Hz than at 1 kHz). This conclusion is what motives the introduction of weighting filters.

For example a pure- tone of 1000 Hz with pressure level of 40 dB would impress the
human ear as being louder than a pure-tone of 80 Hz with 50 dB, and a 1000 Hz tone at 70 dB
would give the same subjective impression of loudness as a 50 Hz tone at 85 dB.

Loudness level is expressed in phons, which have the same numerical value as the sound
pressure level at 1000 Hz (sound equally loud). The number of phons equals the sound
pressure level.

For example, according to the figure a 31.5 Hz tone of 50 phons sounds equally as loud as
a1000 Hz tone of 50 phons.