Sound Power Level

Contents - Index

Sound Power Level

Determines the sound power level of a piece of machinery or equipment. Multiple microphones are used and the time averaged sound pressure level at each microphone position are computed. The average SPL of all microphones are integrated and converted to sound power based on the surface area of the test (see ISO-3744/3746 for details). The sound power level is corrected to account for background and environmental noise.

The Sound Power is expressed in dB and is A weighted.

Setup:
Connect each microphones to an analog input channel and calibrate to units of SPL.
Set the same FFT size for all microphone channels.
Define a Composite channel and select the "Average Multiple Channels" measurement type and check the input microphone channels to be included in the average.
Enable any plots to be shown.
Click the <Utilities><Sound Power Level> menu to open the sound power utility.

Run the analyzer. Be sure to use Infinite averaging.
The Sound Power will be calculated and displayed.

This utility will work in all Modes including post processing.

Options:
Click the Options button on the utility to set the test surface area and correction factors.

Notes: The measurement utility will automatically apply A weighting regardless of the value in the scaling dialog box.