SDE – System Design Exchange
A new standard for reliable noise predictions by d&b audiotechnik, L-Acoustics, and SoundPLAN.
SDE (System Design Exchange) is a manufacturer-agnostic standard for consistent and reliable environmental noise predictions at outdoor events.
The challenge: noise prediction is becoming more critical
Outdoor events continue to grow in number, especially in urban environments. With this comes an increased demand from cities and authorities for reliable noise predictions. For event organizers and system engineers, this creates a recurring set of challenges.
Challenge points:
- More permits for festivals and open airs require noise predictions.
- Each manufacturer uses their own system design tools, data structures, and calculation methods, making predictions difficult to compare.
- Environmental noise software typically assumes non coherent sources, not taking phase relations into account.
- Small changes to the sound system often require restarting the workflow, re-exporting system data, and manually rebuilding configurations.
This slows decision-making, complicates communication with stakeholders, and increases the risk of noise-related issues.
The solution: SDE
SDE incorporates a well-defined, free format and a calculation methodology. Together, these create a consistent basis for environmental noise prediction across systems and manufacturers.
SDE defines a consistent way to describe all elements of a sound system relevant to environmental noise prediction. This includes physical layout and orientation, acoustical data, and directivity behavior of each loudspeaker. The proprietary manufacturer data is encrypted. This enables system design software such as ArrayCalc to export complete and structured data of a planned sound system.
SDE requires environmental noise software to apply the Complex Directivity Point Source method (CDPS) with complex summation to model coherent sources correctly, including their phase. This is necessary to represent constructive and deconstructive interference. Over distance, these effects are weakened by statistical fluctuations of wind and temperature. These decoherence effects depend on frequency and source separation.
Reliable noise predictions
SDE enables all stakeholders, from festival organizers to acoustic consultants, to work with predictions that are consistent, comparable, and based on a shared standard. It lays the groundwork for noise predictions to become a dependable part of the planning process.