By Aidan Hubbard, Sales Director
The most important part of my job is to make sure people understand IEC 61672 and to make sure that people fully understand the benefits of having instrumentation with this standard applied. Some instrumentation suppliers will claim to comply to IEC 61672 but they don’t have it…. You either do or you don’t.
As a project manager or acoustic consultant looking to purchase new equipment for your team you could end up buying kit that costs exactly the same as kit that has been through very strict type approval processes that ultimately make them a better and more trusted system. If I had £3500 to spend on a new sound level meter or noise monitoring terminal…. I know EXACTLY what I would be looking for, IEC 61672-3. Make it the first thing you ask your instrumentation supplier.
Sound level meters that claim to meet IEC 61672 standards must meet ALL parts of 61672, not just some parts. For example, you can’t say “a microphone meets relevant parts of 61672”. 61672 is a sound level meter standard, not a microphone standard, so it’s all or nothing.
If you take a microphone from supplier A, put it on a meter from supplier B, and use a calibrator from supplier C, then that combination must be tested to all parts of 61672, and documented, otherwise you cannot claim compliance, or get it calibrated to part 3 of the standard. Calibration is vital to make sure that your data is valid and accurate. If you are going to spend money on monitoring, you want to do it correctly. Otherwise, it could cost you much more than the equipment.
A question you should ask: Does your sound level meter have a full manual to allow for UKAS or traceable calibrations? This is important as the manual sets the boundaries and corrections for the frequency, level, detector and acoustical response for the calibration tests.
At Svantek we are not asking you to spend any more money on this equipment, we are simply saying spend the same money but get the right kit. Check out our SV 307A and SV 971A which comply to all these standards.
To read more around this topic, Technical Director John Shelton, discusses what the speed of change has meant for current standards. Read more here.
