I was having a discussion with a good friend about their job recently and they said they were an acoustic consultant. So what does one of those do I asked?
Apparently an acoustic consultant finds out where industrial noises and so on emanate from and then, just like a noise consultant, makes recommendations about how to reduce noise levels. The process is associated with vibration too which makes sense because noise and vibration are similar and in fact it takes vibration of some sort to make a noise.
In big industrial locations noise can be a massive problem, both for workers and for people living close by. In fact environmental noise impact assessments are a big part of the job of an acoustic engineer these days.
A Noise Consultant can also get involved in some interesting forensic audio work which involves taking a recording of an event and filtering out specific frequencies or background noise in order to pick our such things as voices.
As an acoustic engineer, my friend tends to do consulting work for construction projects but he also works alongside other engineers as part of a project team for large scale industrial developments. That’s at the Big Noise end of his job. At the small noise end, he also works in classrooms and auditoriums to help design and engineer the acoustic signature so that everyone in them, pupils or concert-goers can enjoy the best sound quality.