Tool for Calculating an Overall Sound Level Based on a Spectrum

How do you calculate an overall sound level from a spectrum?

With the exception of pure sound, which is made up of a single frequency (for example, the sound emitted by your telephone before dialing), noise is made up of a superposition of multiple frequencies.

The sound spectrum is used to characterize noise more precisely. By analyzing a spectrum, it is possible to obtain the noise’s “identity card”. This makes it possible to propose solutions adapted to each spectrum.

The tool below calculates the overall level of a sound spectrum by logarithmically summing each octave band. The overall level is expressed both unweighted (dB Lin) and with A-weighting (dB(A)).