Loud noise is in most cases undesirable in industry – especially with regard to immission control and occupational safety. In the case of machines and systems, they can also be a harbinger of a defect. But only if you know the source of the sound, you can develop countermeasures that effectively reduce the noise.

In other industries – e.g. the automotive industry – on the other hand, it is often about the exact opposite: Here, a special noise characteristic can be a quality feature that is intentionally produced. For example, the sound of a car may be a key purchase criterion. This is continuously fine-tuned to create the optimal sound experience.

Whether the aim is to reduce noise, to detect a possibly defective component or to specifically tune a sound, the first thing to do is to find out how the noise is generated and how or where it is emitted.

In over 40 years, Wölfel has acquired a wealth of experience in the areas of machine acoustics and technical noise control, which, combined with the possibilities of modern measurement technology and analytical methods, allows us to find almost any sound source. We support you in all acoustic questions – from the pure location of the sound source to the support of the development process to the development of noise reduction measures.

We do not see sound source location as a separate service, but as a component in the process of finding a solution. Thanks to our broad service portfolio with engineers from a wide variety of specialist areas, we are happy to support you beyond finding the sound source through investigations using FEM models, the design of active and passive mass dampers to suppress the noise excitation or the development of passive noise reduction measures.

The accessibility of the examination area, the frequency range or the noise characteristics are generally not an obstacle to the location of the sound source. We have a wide variety of measurement technology for almost all areas of application:

• Acoustic cameras with a wide variety of array diameters (from 30 centimeters to 5 meters) and a frequency range from 80 Hz to 10 kHz
• Classic multi-channel measuring systems
• Intensity measurement technology
• Classic hand-held sound level measurement technology
• More than 30 accelerometers and hydrophones