Conventional bottom freezer: Our top four picks earned excellent marks for quietness including three models from Kenmore that range in price from $950 to $1,510, and the LG LDC24370ST, $1,650.Three-door bottom freezer: 13 of our top picks earned excellent scores for noise including the LG LFX32945ST, $3,000, and the Kenmore 7160, $1,700, a CR Best Buy.Four door bottom freezer: Two of four top picks were excellent including the Samsung Chef Collection RF34H9960S4, $5,400, and the Samsung T9000 RF32FMQDBSR, $3,500.Here are the quietest of each configuration. The quietest models tended to be bottom-freezer and side-by-side models. But in our refrigerator tests, some were noisy enough to put a chill on the conversation. If you’re having trouble hearing someone standing next to you, consider wearing ear protection or moving away from the loud noise.Normally, you don't think of a refrigerator as being noisy as it purrs along day-after-day. It’s rare to have an innate sense for the hearing loss threshold, so as a rule of thumb, you can consider a sound that drowns out a conversation to be potentially damaging. Prolonged exposure may be distracting or irritating, but there’s little chance of permanent physical damage. Sounds between 55 and 85 decibels fall in the “potentially disturbing or annoying” range. With 85 dBA being the tolerance threshold, it’s unlikely that a 65-dB noise will cause any hearing loss, no matter the exposure time. For instance, you can safely listen to 88-dBA noises for up to 4 hours, 91-dBA noises for 2 hours, and sounds at 94-dBA for only 1 hour before hearing loss begins to set in. Generally, the tolerance time shortens by half with every 3-decibel increase beyond 85 dBA. Humans generally begin to suffer hearing loss at 85 dBA over 8 hours of exposure, but noises over 120 dBA can cause immediate damage. More intense sounds take less time to cause permanent hearing damage. Loud noises damage the delicate hair cells that transmit sound through the ear and, in extreme cases, could even rupture the eardrum.Īs exposure to loud sounds lengthens, the damage and subsequent hearing loss continue to increase. Repeated and prolonged exposure to loud sounds can cause permanent noise-induced hearing loss. If a person talking to you at 65 dB stands 3 feet in front of you, you’ll hear them at 59 dB when you stand 6 feet away and 53 dB when you’re 12 feet apart. According to the inverse square law of acoustics, sound levels drop by 6 decibels with every doubling of the distance from a source. Image Credit: Petra, Pixabayĭistance is essential when gauging the sound intensity of a source because noises become less intense as you move away. We’ll perceive a buzzing mosquito at 20 dB as being twice as loud as 10-dB breathing, while a 30-dB whisper is four times the noise level, and rainfall at 50 dB is 16 times louder. The difference between 10 dB and 20 dB is similar to the change from 30 dB to 40 dB. ![]() The perceived volume also follows a logarithmic rule. A 65-decibel conversation between two people may be 10 times more intense than a 55-decibel dishwasher, but we’ll only perceive it as twice as loud. When the sound pressure (decibels) increases tenfold, we perceive it as only two times louder. The concept of the sound intensity change might be confusing if a conversation doesn’t seem like it’s ten times louder than a running appliance. At 65 decibels, a typical chat is ten times louder than a 55-decibel dishwasher and 100 times louder than a 45-decibel refrigerator. For instance, 10 dB is ten times louder than 0 dB, 20 dB is 100 times noisier, and 30 dB is 1,000 times louder. Every 10-decibel difference in intensity equals a ten-fold change. Perceived sound is crucial because it doesn’t reflect the sound intensity as we measure it in decibels.ĭecibel levels are logarithmic. From a sound perception standpoint, 65 decibels is about twice as loud as a modern dishwasher. It’s similar to a business office or the noise inside a running car. A conversation about 3 feet apart between two people registers at roughly 65 decibels.
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