Know we’ve had a bunch of threads on listening volume but thought I’d do the opposite, what level is the ambient noise in your listening environment when the music isn’t playing? My listening space is in the basement & is soundproofed, which helps to isolate the room from the noise outside. Nothing fancy, just using the NIOSH app on my iPhone I see ~20db, which jumps up to ~32db when the HVAC is running. This has a big impact on sound, as it masks all those low level details you normally hear. So just curious how others compare?
What weighting are you using with the app?
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35dB in my listening room
I measure using the free Decibel X app A weighted, 35db and 40db when the HVAC is running.
I’m using NIOSH SLM, A weighted
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20 db is extremely low. Do you live in a rural area?
Mine is upper 20s (27-30), using NIOSH SLM, A weighted. When the cars hiss by my window, 35-40.
Yes, rural, out of curiosity I just measured a few more rooms in different area’s & at the moment seeing 22-25db.
With the aircon running, pretty high. Maybe 45-50. Even with it off no lower than 40 because the living room is a fully constructed soundproof room but that requires dedicate air filtration separate from the rest of the house and those units can’t be safely shut off with the door shut or you could asphyxiate. Using a proper SPL meter even with the filters and AC off, the room records 38db. My phone says 20db which shows you how poor a phone is at measuring SPL below a certain level.
Do you have an iPhone? Try using the NIOSH SLM app. It’s specifically calibrated for the iPhone. My understanding is it’s not even available for Android because it can’t be calibrated to work correctly (to much hardware variance). See NIOSH Sound Level Meter App | Noise and Hearing Loss | CDC
The free phone apps are in calibrated and can be quite variable in their accuracy, some giving rather questionable readings. In the absence of a calibrated noise source to check with, I suggest taking readings of various things and compare with one of the many published tables of typical sound levels, and only use an app that consistently reads similar to published data. It is also encouraging when several apps give very similar readings. When I last checked, the best of the free apps I tried with my iPhone was Decibel-X. Niosh read similarly. DB Volume read 5dB higher. It is of course important to set up correctly - for most purposes it is probably best to set A weighting. If everyone does this the data may be reasonably comparable.
Using Decibel-X my listening room with nothing playing is normally around 28-32 dB, 26-30 when no-one else in the house. I live in a rural area, and have triple glazing (which keeps bird noise out!). (Some people have mentioned ventilation systems - there is a whole house heat recovery ventilation system operating permanently, but vents in the room are quite large, ducting is wide bore, and there are attenuators within the ducting to minimise noise transmission in either direction, and it is to all intents and purposes inaudible at the listening position. Occasional short term boost from extraction needs do make it very faintly audible, but infrequently.)
I don’t need to bother. I have actual hardware SPL meter.
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Regardless, I can really enjoy listening with an ambient noise level of 35db even when listening at a low 60-70db range.
I believe that. A good system often transcends ambient level noise (although I can’t tell what you have).
I have the old Radio Shack meter somewhere. I should double check using that.
We calibrate different types of instrumentation where I work, with one of those being sound level meters, so I could bring home a calibrated, expensive sound level meter but I figured this probably wasn’t an option for most, so went with the iPhone instead 
I typically listen centered around the 70-75db range.
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One thing that is missing here is frequency. SPL meters come in simple and spectrum varieties. My device is new enough to not need calibration (if they have sat in a drawer for a decade they probably do need to be sent off for adjustment), but doesn’t provide a frequency spectrum analysis.
So having an ambient noise of 30db versus 45db isn’t really telling us a lot. 30db at 1.5KHz is going to be a lot more noticeable than 45db at 35KHz or 10Hz. Different appliances contribute to a different ambient profile in the house, much of which could be outside of detectable human range… or outside of the frequency range of the microphone on a phone.
My room ambient seems fairly high, but to me is basically silent when air exchanges are off.
AIUI, that’s why there are two different weighting systems. dBA mimics the response of human hearing so would be the most meaningful comparison to make in response to the OP’s query.
I’ve got one of the Radio Shack meters (an identical example of which is currently listed on fleaBay as ‘vintage’ 
) so I might take some measurements with that and then some iPhone apps mentioned above to see how closely they agree.
Mark
Well even between 40Hz to 20KHz there is going to be a large difference in sensitivity according to age and other factors. Human hearing is absolutely not flat response and no two people are the same.
And then there is the quiescent aural base level of the person and whether that is sensitivity based or masking tinnitus or reactive tinnitus.
The point I’m trying to make is that the ambient noise level can be measured but the meaningful part is more subjective.
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My readings on my calibrated SPL Meter are;
- Average; 35.2 dBA
- Peak; 54.8dBA
DG…