Loudest College Basketball Arena

[Good News]

As much as I hate to say it, Allen Fieldhouse probably has the best potential for that. The arena isn't very big sizewise (probably comparable to ours) but seats about 5-6K more. The reason AFH seats 16,300 is because the fans are crammed in like sardines.

I'm not particularly impressed with AFH. I have been there twice. First one was against Colorado about ten years ago, and the crowd practically slept through the game. The other was a Big Monday game against MT's Aggies, which KU jumped out big early, so the crowd coasted for most of the game. Yes, the building goes nuts for KSU, Missouri, or other big games...but give us the same opponents in CKA, and our atmosphere would be even more epically legendary than it already is. Because it is expected that KU will win (for the most part), that wine-and-cheese crowd doesn't have the hunger that our crowd has.

How about one of our talented engineering students or graduates weighs in on the question, since to me it seems like it's a question of - holding building materials/reverberation constant, of course - a question of audience per cubic foot of space?

I've attended a countless number of games in the Roundhouse from various locations, including the baseline as a ballboy. The 54-49 victory over KU had my ears still ringing the next day. No doubt in my mind that that one was louder than 107 Db.

Only time I've ever been in AFH was for basketball camp, and I remember mentally noting how much higher the ceiling was than the Roundhouse. That would mean a much larger marginal cubic footage per marginal attendee in the top row.

Long story short - assuming the buildings were made out of the same thing and sound waves reverberated the same way, which place has more attendees per cubic foot?

[ShockerPhi]

Yeah I understand it wont be near official. Just for fun. What would be really fun is if we could get together $7500 for an official Guinness Book World Record attempt! That's about what it would cost to get that guy to come to Koch.

I actually tried downloading one for the Creighton game this past year. I don't know if the one I had sucked really bad, or they all suck. Because before the game even started it was flat-lining at 65 dB and wouldn't go any higher than that, even when we got noticeably louder for introductions and such. So don't get too excited. Lol

[ShockerPhi]

Speaking as a current World Record holder (I was at that Chiefs game on Sunday :excitement:) I would like to see how loud Koch Arena can truly get. I think they at least should put in some Decibel meters in the arena to show on the scoreboard to encourage us to get louder like they did at Arrowhead.

As for some of you saying that some basketball arenas coming in around 125 dB, I really don't believe that. 137.5 is ridiculously loud and I don't see basketball arenas coming anywhere close to that. However, I do see us being able to beat 106 dB, which is allegedly the current record.

[Dave Stalwart]

If you want to measure how loud CKA can get, give the ball to Towel instead of McD for the game winner

[Kung Wu]

It's worth emphasizing that decibels are a logarithmic unit. The difference between 125dB and 135dB is actually very large.

Example: The loudest scream ever recorded by a single individual is 127dB at 8ft away. We're talking about one person there, but the loudest person ever recorded and only a distance of 8ft. (source: http://www.makeitlouder.com/Decibel%20Level%20Chart.txt)

If that person were standing court side, say 60 ft from the recording device, they alone would register 107dB. (calculator: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu...c/isprob2.html)

But here's the point ... if you took two of those people capable of yelling at 107dB and had them side by side screaming, they would only register at 110dB due to the logarithmic nature of the decibel. (calculator: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/ad...ibel-d_63.html)

It would take about 1,000 world record holding screamers to hit 137dB if they were all standing about 60 ft from the mic.

An average 20 to 40 year old female can scream at about 113.8dB at 3 ft. Using the same calculators those people would register about 94.5dB at 60 ft. And it would take about 17,800 of those ladies screaming their heads off _at 60 ft from the mic_. Obviously you can't pack that many people from the sideline.

Now this is all open air stuff, and I have no clue how the structure of a building would help/hamper the effort.

[_kai_]

Yeah I understand it wont be near official. Just for fun. What would be really fun is if we could get together $7500 for an official Guinness Book World Record attempt! That's about what it would cost to get that guy to come to Koch.

That's right around the price to be a half time game sponsor. Just FYI to all the business owners on the forum.

[wu_shizzle]

A difference of 3dB is is a 2x increase in the signal amplitude.