CHARACTERISTICS OF CONCERT SOUND

Grozier systems are employed in situations where citizens complain about excessive music sound from a nearby concert venue.  Complaints almost always are associated with high energy music groups; there are usually no complaints about classical music concerts.

If we focus on this high energy music, there is surprising commonality in temporal characteristics.  This conclusion is based on the data collection over the last thirteen years by Grozier systems at major amphitheater locations.  This observation allows us to simplify sound level management issues.

Beach Boys vs. Chicago

Data from these groups has been selected for presentation here because of the apparent dissimilarity of music styles and energy.  However as we shall see, the only significant difference as far as time averaged acoustical measurement parameters, is the sound power pumped out. 

The data presented here is from a Grozier system. The groups are at the same venue. The microphone location is the same. The dBA sound data is from the last hour of the concerts, invariably the loudest. Shown are 3600 data points from each concert

In the third figure, histograms of both concerts are plotted.  Here it can be seen that the median of the distribution is shifted to a higher decibel level yet distribution shapes are quite similar.