Decibels app for iPhone and iPad
4.8 (
3808 ratings )
Utilities
Music
Developer: David Bannach
Free
Current version: 3.3, last update: 6 months agoFirst release : 29 Jul 2010
App size: 15.13 Mb
Want to know what noise level is around you? in the restaurant? in the train? in the office? This app will show you.
Features:
- Smooth analog display of dB(A)
- Take photo with sound level display
- Share, print, and store sound level photos
Extra Features (with purchase):
- Select frequency weightings A, C, and Z
- Record decibels on beautiful strip charts
- Annotate the strip charts
- Share, print, and store the strip charts
This app uses the internal microphone to estimate the sound pressure level in decibels (dB SPL).
Examples:
- quiet bedroom at night: 30 dB
- average home: 50 dB
- vacuum cleaner, 1m away: 70 dB
- jet aircraft, 50 m away: 140 dB
Pros and cons of Decibels app for iPhone and iPad
Decibels app good for
I think most people complain as we would expect a normal quiet room to be 0 decibel . Was myself surprised to see my home at 50 decibel but when the train passes it quickly registers an 80 to 90 Decibels ..great
Great
If you work with audio you will enjoy this simple clean app. The developer did a really nice job!
For a free app i found this also very impressive. It picked up the Faint noice of a car passing more than 70 feet from my window. Not really sure how i would apply this information except if i was working as thr "noise police" at a Beiber concert...KEEP IT DOWN!!!
Really clean and appears to respond to like a professional sound meter. Having experience with audio mixing and recording this is a great app.
Would like to see the empty space below meter with example of sound threshold for human ears. Accuracy?? - well I have to check on that. I am sure it is close enough
Looking forward to the upgrade!!!
I agree with the other reviewers that the interface could use a little more, but on the whole it seems to be fairly accurate. I was testing it while mixing at church. A fast response would be nice. Also an "A" and "C" weighting switch would be very helpful since the mic picks up the frequencies different from your ears. (ie. A Bass guitar might have an absolute sound pressure of 85db but your ears would hear it at 75db). But all in all, I like it and appreciate that its free!
Really easy and simple to use. Not sure how acurate are the readings though.
Some bad moments
The app must be flipable so that the mic is up when using it. Also a fast response would be nice. Even some lettering on the display would fill up the vast space on the display.
But it does work.
This app works ok, but it doesnt provide any reference to tell you equivalents. For example, I told my husband that I thought the cabin noise of our current car was quite high. So I whipped out my handy iPhone app to find out just how loud it is. I got a reading of 85db but then I tried to figure out what that is equivalent to and there was no facility to do that. I had to go to the app store to look them up here (as there are examples provided with the app advertising). I would suggest adding in some kind if reference do that the app is more useful.
it gave a 65-70 dB reading with only a quiet dishwasher running. the EPA recommends hearing protection at 70dB. i dont think so!
Nice analog display, but I wonder how accurate it is. It NEVER drops below 55 db even in a totally quiet bedroom in the middle of the night.
As a sound engineer i know when a db meter is being somewhat truthful, this one never goes below 50db...says its 70db while watching tv on moderate volume in my bedroom. You get what you pay for.
At first it was working fine, but NOW, it says that a totally silent room is 50 Decibels and it wont go above 100 (even in a concert!), and its not accurate anywhere in between. I have an iPod touch 4.1 so if you have that then I would avoid this app because it will just... not work.