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Approved 1/11/2016 OC Board of Adjustment – 11/9/15 Page 22 of 48 Matt Hughes: And, for a project like this, is someone of your expertise able to advise the construction of a building like this to 1 minimize the disturbances? 2 3 Noral Stewart: Yes, we do it all the time. 4 5 Karen Barrows: Any other questions? 6 7 Noral Stewart: It’s tough when you’ve got the base, but it can be done. They may not like what you tell them sometimes, but it can 8 be done. 9 10 Barry Katz: I’m trying to figure out, to understand... The Ambien is 30 decibels. 11 12 Noral Stewart: The end range is between 30 and 40. 13 14 Barry Katz: What would that be comparable to, so I have some idea of what that sounds like? 15 16 Noral Stewart: It’s a very quiet, I would call it a very quiet rotation. Most of the time when you’re in buildings like this the air 17 conditioning system are somewhere around 40 dB A. Some places they may be a little louder, some places a little less. 18 19 Barry Katz: Do you have any speculation about what this base sound would be 600 feet away? 20 21 Noral Stewart: It really depends on how the building is built and how loud the band played, or the music is amplified and so forth. It 22 could be very variable. My experience in communities like this, that kind of distance, I have on multiple occasions been able to 23 hear the thump of base at that kind of distance. It depends on, again, the construction of the building and the level the music is 24 being played. 25 26 Barry Katz: Just, for completeness, the wedding season is more or less the spring and the summer, during those times do you 27 think the normal Ambien sound at night, of the night sounds, would have any mitigating effect on the base sounds. 28 29 Noral Stewart: Not really. What happens, one thing that does happen, it’ll be summer and you get on into late spring and into 30 summer and into fall, you get insect noise. And insects can be quite loud, but their sound is up at the very high frequencies. It’s a 31 hissing. That does not cover up base. I’ve got plenty of evidence of that. In fact, I had difficulty measuring sometime so I did a 32 major study when ----- amphitheater in Raleigh, some 25 years ago, I spent many a night out there trying to measure and having to 33 use sophisticated instruments to filter out the insect so I could measure music. 34 35 Barry Katz: I asked you for completeness. All right. 36 37 Karen Barrows: Susan... 38 39 Susan Halkiotis: I want to follow up on Barry’s question and on your explanation about the base and how really depending on the 40 buildings construction it can exacerbate the perception of the base. So what about, I think that there may also be outdoor music, 41 up until 8 pm. And how does the base sound when we’re not talking about being inside a building but, being outside. 42 43 Noral Stewart: Outdoors, if it was the same kind of broadband music, you would hear, you would be getting more of the higher 44 frequency sound. Now, even outdoors the conditions that are present such as the atmospheric and ground attenuation and trees 45 and all of that, tend to have more effect on the higher frequency sound than on the base. So, as you get some distance away you 46 start hearing the base and the rest of it’s been knocked down. I would tend to expect that music played outdoors, live music or 47 amplified music played outdoors, would still be heard as music. Not just the base, at 500 or 600 feet. Maybe even further. And 48 especially in a situation like this where you’ve got a quiet background. I’ve been in situations where the music we were able to 49 measure 45 or 50 dB A but, the background was so quiet you could still hear it clearly. So, the important thing I heard, I hope it’s a 50 commitment, that outdoor music would be primarily a wedding ceremony, and not a big concert or something. Because I was very 51 concerned when I saw just an 8 o’clock deadline, you could have any kind of music outdoors, that was pretty much a concern to 52 me. 53 54