Eating to the sound

SOUND AND DESIGN: Sound has great influence on us human beings. The food we eat must sound right, the car we drive in must sound right. When the fridge door closes, the sound must be right. Brüel & Kjær specialises in measuring equipment to get the sound right.

Cornflakes tipped into the plate, milk added, the first spoonful into your mouth, and your head is filled with the wonderfully crispy, crunchy sound which epitomises breakfast.

The crunchy sound is a crucial factor in people’s choice of cornflakes. That Kellogg’s Cornflakes has become the world’s biggest cereal brand may very well be due to the fact that they are made with the crunchy sound as one of the key production parameters. The sound is so important that it determines the sellby date. Not because the corn flakes have lost their crispiness, but because the crunchy sound changes after a certain time.

Lars Barkler with the entire design process of 2250. From the various individual components which had to be packed into the analyzer, and different solution models, to the finished analyzer. It lost in weight and size and won in form and content.

In its continuous tests of crunchy sounds, Kellogg’s uses measuring equipment from Denmark’s Brüel & Kjær, the world’s largest and leading manufacturer of equipment which measures sound and vibration. The equipment is used by industry and environmental authorities all over the world.

Accurate measurement
“Sound is one of the most important influencing factors on humans,” says Vice President Lars Barkler who heads Technology and Marketing at Brüel & Kjær. “Sound has many facets. It can be too loud, too low, too deep, too piercing or simply wrong. To achieve the right sound level in the right situation it is necessary to make measurements. This is where we come in with equipment which is the most accurate in the world according to our customers. It has to be too, because the accuracy of measurement can have major consequences, both legally and in a human sense.” It is especially in the environmental area that sound measurement can have crucial consequences. Once a motorway or a large factory has been built, the sound measurements on which they are based have to be right. If the measurements subsequently turn out to be inaccurate, it can lead to enormous compensation payments and protracted court cases.

     “If you look at the development of air traffic and airports, it is the sound and noise level which are the decisive factors,” says Kalle Hvidt Nielsen, President of Brüel & Kjær. “That is one of the reasons why huge sums of money are invested in getting the sound level right.”

The right ’wrooom’
Among Brüel & Kjær’s biggest customers are car manufacturers, which spend enormous

amounts on either removing or creating sound. The company’s know-how in building acoustic laboratories to measure sound and vibration around new car models is legendary. Three dimensional sound pictures can be produced which accurately show connections between for example engine vibration in one place and undesired sound effects in a completely different place in the car.

     “It is science and technology at a very high level,” says Business Development Director Thomas Kønigsfeldt. “And an area which is taken very seriously by the industry. When a motorcycle enthusiast invests a pile of money in a Harley-Davidson, it must have exactly the Harley sound which helps create the experience of riding one. So naturally Harley-Davidson has our measurement equipment installed as an integral part of its production line. No Harley-Davidson leaves the assembly line before it has been acoustically tested to produce a very accurate ’wrooom’.

RED DOT the supreme analyzer In 2005, Brüel & Kjær received the Red Dot design award for its latest hand-held analyzer type 2250. The Red Dot is the world’s most sought-after acknowledgment in the design area. The analyzer is the result of several years’ development and represents a high point both regarding design and technology. “We set the objective to develop a hand-held analyzer which would be our smallest so far and at the same time capable of doing more,” says Lars Barkler. “Actually we had an analyzer which could do it all. When we asked our customers about their needs, we found that our 10 year old analyzer had it all and was the best on the market. So it was quite a challenge to make a perfect analyzer even better.” The 2250 analyzer is much used in the work environment. The measurement technician will in many cases have to measure the noise level in all kinds of weather and often in areas which are difficult to access. One of the development parameters was therefore to make it so small that it could be operated with one hand, and be resistant to all kinds of weather. It also had to be able to provide all the answers in one measurement take so that the technician would not have to go forwards and backwards several times. “2250 is based on Windows and can be extended with different software modules,” says Barkler. “The combination of the software, a hardware and design which build on consummate ergonomics, and a user interface which is user friendly, reliable and well thought through – that is likely to be the combination which gained the Red Dot award. Plus its success with our customers. 2250 has been something of a quantum leap.”