Are Your Neighbors Too Loud?

Have you ever wondered if your annoyingly loud neighbors are making enough noise to damage your hearing? To find out, you are going to need a decibel meter. I recommend an app that is appropriately named Too Loud?. It is a handy, easy to use, decibel meter.

The “Too Loud?” app is compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. It requires iOS 4.0 or later. I don’t use an iPhone, (because I’m just not much of a phone person), but my husband does. He was kind enough to download this app onto his iPhone for me to use. It helps that the app is absolutely free.

My motivation for seeking out a decibel meter is entirely because I am getting sick of the sheer volume of sound that I am faced with on a daily and nightly basis while I am at home. My husband and I live in a Mobile Home Park, which means that the homes of our neighbors are located much closer than would be typically expected if we were living in actual houses.

One particular group of neighbors has two small children that have daily meltdowns that involve a lot of high pitched screaming. The same neighbors tend to have loud parties that last until four in the morning, (and that happen during the week, not on a weekend).

Right now, the Mobile Home Park is in the midst of some construction work that we were told would last one weekend. It has now been going on for three weeks. I have been woken up by the crashing sounds of a man throwing large pieces of concrete into a metal dumpster. Obviously, I am extremely frustrated by these events.

I wondered if all this noise was actually loud enough to damage my hearing. The “Too Loud?” app makes that very easy to tell. It shows you the current amount of decibels that you are hearing, the average number of decibels that the app has noted this usage, and the highest number of decibels that you have been exposed to this time around. The app doesn’t record these amounts for you. The data given is all from one usage of the app.

The typical volume of speech is at around 60 decibels. Hearing damage occurs at much higher decibels, and with a longer exposure time than the few minutes that my neighbors were being incredibly annoying. So far, my neighbors have hit about 64 decibels at the highest. At least they aren’t damaging my hearing with their rudeness!