jdow wrote:
I have a nasty turn of mind sometimes, Jon. I got to thinking about
traceable to NIST. If the instrument used was ever compared to an
instrument with documentation for its tractability to NIST then the
instrument used is also traceable to NIST with suitable comments
about the accuracy of the tractability. Traceable to within 10dB is
indeed still traceable and usable in court if the lawyer does not
let himself be bullied about it.
(And if the fellow needs better than 10dB of accuracy to prove the
noisemaker is out of tolerable limits then he's in trouble to prove
his whole case to begin with.)
I'm not sure all that would be necessary to make a case. If you set the
sound up so you could just discern the sound of normal traffic passing
but were blown away when the perp revved his engines, you could probably
make the point. You would want to make sure there was no automatic gain
control turned on. In most cases the law prohibits exceeding annoyance
levels, which aren't traceable to NIST anyway. Yet.
John
