How to Measure Surrounding Noise Using Android Smartphone

City life is filled with all kinds of noise pollution – car drivers honking their horns, people screaming at each other, deafening music, nauseatingly loud parties, and so much more. There are places in a big city where you have to plug your ears to protect them from the loud noise. But how do you know if the noise or sound in a place has crossed the safe limits? Typically, you would use a special device called a sound level meter to find out about the noise, but if you have an Android smartphone then you can use it to measure the surrounding noise easily through the use of a free app called Noise Meter.

Noise Meter uses the microphone built inside your smartphone to measure the noise level around you and displays it in form of bar chart or a graph. This chart or graph is continuously updated every half second so that you always know the current noise level. The noise is measure in decibels and it displays not only the current noise level but also its average value, peak value, minimum value and the maximum value. You can also change the color of the bar chart and the graph if you want.

Noise Meter

You can keep tapping on the screen to change the meter style from many different types – large number, bar chart, graph, spectrum analysis, old style gauge meter, and more. From the settings of the Noise Meter app, you can choose an input source type – microphone at the bottom, microphone at the top, microphone behind, voice recognition, voice communication and more. There are a tons of filters that you can use to refine how the noise is calculated. In general, if the noise meter app is displaying the noise below 40 dB then you can relax – anything above 50dB is not good for your ears for long duration.

Noise Meter

Noise Meter is a great app for measuring the noise level in your surrounding area. You can avoid noisy places and protect your ears by measuring the exact level of noise anywhere you go.

You can get the Noise Meter app for Android from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pjw.noisemeter.