Quote:
Originally Posted by skids
John that is a very good description. The dBa rating may have nothing to do with ASTM standards. Heck, claims about dBa may not take into consideration whether it is at full load and how far away from the muffler outlet it is. You almost need to do the DW test, but nothing will be quiet enough for her (mine) so good luck! LOL
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Frequency, direction, distance, load, preventative maintenance, previous abuse/misuse, early shutdown (when the windings are hot), direction the exhaust is pointed, operating in the truck bed with the tailgate open (think metal megaphone), humidity, ambient noise.... Just a few of the things that come to mind when trying to determine how loud a generator might be.
Then there's the way the generator box is built and insulated, what materials are used, how "well it's secured inside that box", the proximity of bearings to openings in the box, (ie: good engineering or poor engineering)… And while most of the physical quality can be related to generator price, that alone is not an indicator of what any generator is going to "sound like when you start it up behind the trailer or in the bed of your truck.....
Honestly, I don't have a tremendous amount of "generator time in campgrounds" but I can attest that on some days my generator seems to blend into the background and other days, it's as annoying as hell, as it intrudes on everything we're trying to escape by being as far from everyone as possible... So, among everything else that must be considered, I suppose we'd need to include "attitude, fatigue, alcohol, population of friends that relax us vs friends that make us tense" No doubt, depending on the situation, even the best generator might be a "pain in the neck" on any given evening.....