Decibels: dB Sound Level Meter 4+

I’ve been using Decibels for years having found the chart recorder extremely useful, however it always read dB a little higher than it really was. The last update corrected that and it now has correct readings. They also added different weighting settings A,C andZ. The basic meter is great and I recommend getting the options as it makes the best meter using chart recorders.

Thank you for your nice review! -david

Every place you check, the approximate dB SPL of various sounds is a bit different. For example, other reviewers claim a quiet room is ~40dB, but various websites online say it’s 30 or even 20dB. My room at night measures 36dB. Similarly, conversation at 1m away is around 40-60dB, so I stood 1m away and spoke quietly, quieter than I would in a normal conversation in a quiet room (and I’m not a loud speaker). The app measured ~70dB. I guess I should just automatically reduce any measurement by ~5-10dB. Good enough if absolute accuracy isn’t a must, I guess. 4 stars, since I don’t have a good decibel meter to compare against.

Thank you for your review. I think part of the confusion are the different weighting schemes that may be used. This app measures raw SPL (no weighting) whereas most people seem to expect an A-weighting (db(A)). A-weighting makes the measurement less sensitive to low frequencies which results in a lower value in many cases. I'm planning to switch to dB(A) in the next version.

Fast - easy interface - Useful when cleaning house, reading, hiking to make sure the ‘noise’ is good noise.

Thanks for your review! I'm happy you like the app.