Building a dB meter.

[dmc14 10+ year member]

Hello today I was wanting to see how loud my guitar amp was and looked at dB meter prices and was wowed by the price, I was wondering if it was possible to make a simple dB meter.

For example hooking up a good mic to a half wave rectifier(full wave if you want to get fancy) and a sensitive ammeter. Then you could benchmark the amps it reads with known levels of sound. For example if 50dB was 2mA and 60dB was 8mA and so on. Would this work or is it just to easy and simple to be practical? Thanks for input.

Crude mspaint schematic lol

View attachment 26527067

Click to read more...

 

[slim2fattycake 10+ year member]

go to radioshack and get you a sound meter. its like 20-30 bucks. only good up to like 80-90dB but you shouldn't have that much pressure.

 

[AlterEgo99 5,000+ posts]

This would be better were it posted in the correct section. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/uhoh.gif.c07307dd22ee7e63e22fc8e9c614d1fd.gif

 

[thegreatestpenn 5,000+ posts]

Partsexpress sells a nice dbmeter for like 20-30 dollars and it reads up to 130db. Great option fr u. Supposedly better than the one I got from radio shack that reads up to 120db (I use it for sq judging)

 

[dmc14 10+ year member]

Ok im seeing some arent as expensive as I thought. But does anyone know if this design would be practical?

This would be better were it posted in the correct section. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/uhoh.gif.c07307dd22ee7e63e22fc8e9c614d1fd.gif

sorry I really had no idea where to put this. I know there is a general discussion for car audio and a home audio area but this is more on the electronics side and didnt see an area for that.