The Noise Nuisance Recorder provides a quick, easy and cost-effective means of establishing whether a complainant has a credible complaint. Local authorities and housing associations just simply can’t provide a field officer to personally witness every alleged noise nuisance complaint. Investigations consistently find that a substantial proportion of complaints received by local authorities and housing associations are not justifiable. Many of our customers refer to this as 'sorting the wheat from the chaff'. As the Nuisance Recorder is really only a first step in determining whether a potential nuisance exists, some of our customers now save £500 by using a Class 2 meter (the Rion NL-22) instead of the Class 1 Rion NL-32.
The ANV Measurement Systems Compact Nuisance Recorder is based on the Rion NL-32 (Class 1) or Rion NL-22 (Class 2) sound level meter. The meter continuously stores overall level data (in terms of all the standard noise indices) and audio is recorded to the instrument’s compact flash card (with a 1 second pre-trigger) when the complainant presses either the Start button on the wired handset or button on the wireless remote. Longer pre-trigger times could, of course, be used to covertly catch complainants in the act of intimidation but this can raise concerns regarding the complainants’ right to privacy.
Ultimately an officer will generally have to personally witness the problem to make a professional judgement whether it is a nuisance. However, if a complex case would benefit from a more detailed analysis of the data (collection of octave and third octave bands in-situ and calibrated, instrumentation quality wav files which can be used for post-processing) then the Rion NA-28-based Noise Nuisance Analyser is the tool for the job.
Once the measurement exercise is completed, the data is simply transferred to computer using a compact flash card – just like a digital camera. The Rion software can then be used to quickly evaluate the results. Audio file icons are shown on the noise data graphs. Clicking upon the audio file icons launches playback. It really is a very quick and easy way of reviewing the data.
The key attributes of the Rion/ANV Measurement Systems Nuisance Recorders and Analysers are:
- Ease of use;
- Reliability;
- Handset with large buttons which illuminate to show when audio is being recorded;
- Wireless remote control – especially useful for infirm or disabled complainants;
- Outer 'Pilot's Case' for discreet deployment
- Data is stored as comma delimited text files, you can read it with ExcelTM (you can always get the data off Rion instruments without specialist download leads or software)
- Training in the use of the instruments is provided free of charge and the ANV Measurement Systems team pride themselves on the helpfulness and flexibility of their support.