Page 51 - Winter 2011

Christina Carroll, Tim Carroll, and Erik Booth.
key technologies to other companies in the broadcast indus- try. The company is actively involved in standards and prac- tices creation as a member of the ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) and as a sustaining member of SMPTE
(Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers).
The award was accepted by Timothy Carroll, President of Linear Acoustic, who is a member of the Acoustical
Society of America.
BUY-QUIET SYMPOSIUM TO BE HELD IN PARIS
An International INCE Symposium titled “Inducing ‘Buy-Quiet’ Purchasing Attitudes through Simplified Product Noise Ratings” will be held in Paris on July 5-6, 2011. The Symposium is being organized by INCE/Europe in cooperation with the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) in Germany and the Centre d'Information et de Documentation sur le Bruit (CIDB) in France, and in partnership with the International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences (CAETS).
Over the last three decades much progress has been made by acousticians and noise control engineers to deter- mine the noise emissions of products in a standardized man- ner. These include household appliances, machines and equipment, power tools, IT products etc. However, the noise labels or ratings currently used are neither understood by the public nor widely available to them. There is a global lack of understanding by manufacturers, suppliers, and potential users alike. The EU has developed an energy label for prod- ucts that is simple, well understood, and widely available. It has proven to be an effective incentive to encourage the con- sumer to buy more energy-efficient products. This informa- tion has induced major reductions in product energy con- sumption over the last 15 years. In a similar way, providing simple, understandable noise information to the general pub- lic should ultimately increase the availability of low noise products.
The complexity of existing noise ratings along with their relative scarcity has not induced purchasers to develop a “buy-quiet” attitude nor has it stimulated competition need- ed to produce quieter products and thus encourage low noise design. The reasons for this are varied:
• Complexity of the dB scale and frequency depend- ence,
• Confusionbetweensoundpower,soundpressure,and other metrics being used to characterize the noise,
• Statistical quantities and procedures to determine val- ues to declare,
• Complexity of test codes including dependence of noise on operating and installation conditions,
• Information generally presented as informative rather than comparative, product families, and
• Limited information on product noise released by manufacturers and suppliers.
The objectives of the symposium are to:
• Stimulate noise ratings and to provide manufacturers
with the information needed to design low noise prod-
ucts,
• Confirm the need for meaningful product noise rat-
ings,
• Reiterateandlistthebenefitsofprovidinginformation
to consumers and other stakeholders,
• Discuss the lack of a “buy-quiet” attitude for products
and machines used in all activities (at home, during
Acoustical News 47