First of all: I'm desperate!
I don't even know if this is the right place to ask, but I need some help.
In short words: I'm from Brazil and I run a Bar at my city. I need some help and tips on what to do to cancel some noise that is disturbing my neighboors. The bar has an external area of about 8x10, surrounded by 4 meter walls. It is mostly a commercial area, but there is a building almost a block away from the bar that keeps complaining about the noise. They complain about people chattering, and not about the music. I've been researching some solutions, but I want to know from people who really understand sound propagation if there is a solution to this problem, I imagine something like this:
i.minus.com/jbuiiX6ZFzXB3C.jpg (could not insert image due to low post count)
The brown thing is like a shell of some material that would isolate the sound.
Would it work? Can someone help me with this issue? Thank you in advance.
Is it safe assume that the speakers are aimed outward, from the building? If so, you will have a hard time stopping the sound from going past your establishment. The best way to contain the sound is to aim it
toward the building, especially if the weather allows opening many doors and windows or if you have large partitions that are opened during good weather. The next thing to do is use as many speakers as you can afford to install, placed so the coverage is as even as possible. This lets you achieve high SPL without having to crank a small number of speakers to the point that they offend others. If you're trying to reach more than 95dB between the speakers and this distance is more than a few feet, you'll have a hard time keeping it in. If the speakers are aimed downward, most of the energy will be absorbed and/or diffused before it goes outside of the area. This energy loss, coupled with the distance to the other building, should reduce the SPL at that location greatly. The one requirement for using a lot of speakers is that they must be wired in a way that presents a proper load to the amplifiers. AN easy way to do this kind of system is with 70V speakers and amplifiers- the transformers allow setting the amount of energy received by each speaker and you don't need to worry about using heavy gauge speaker wire. Also, if you create 'zones' for the speakers, like one for the outer ring around the building and then one for the bar, one for the restaurant, etc, you can use a level control for each and manage the overall SPL.
dbx Zone Pro makes main units that connect to the sources and this can operate several zones, using their keypads.
