The Cost of Ambient Noise Sensing

by Ron Birkla, Director at AV-ation

In any airport or train station, the ambient noise level can vary dramatically from very low to very high based on the number of people in the space. Therefore, the volume of paging and announcements must be flexible, and automatically raise or lower to compensate, or passengers won’t get the critical information they need.

The way this is typically done is by mounting “Ambient Noise Sensing Microphones” in strategic areas that will sense the audio level in an area of the building, then raise and lower the messaging automatically.

But, if you had to guess how much each of these microphones cost an airport, what would you expect to budget? $500? $1,000? $2,000? It may shock you to learn that, even while the microphone itself only costs about $150, by the time the lift rentals are paid for, the conduit is installed, the wire is pulled, and the audio input it needs to attach to are all paid for, that single microphone can easily cost an airport as much as $15,000! Meanwhile, all those things are potential points of failure.

AV-ation has a better way!

Through our innovative Unified AV approach based on QSYS, we can use readily available airport data to automatically raise and lower volume throughout the entire airport as needed. With fewer parts to buy and install, it is far easier to integrate, more reliable, can be retrofitted to any airport, and only costs about $250 per zone versus $15,000!

Contact AV-ation to learn more.