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I did a private party over the weekend, and it ended up getting shut down by the police, for noise violation. Fortunately it was a warning (no fines paid).

Certainly it was not a "loud" party but according to the local laws, so long as it can be heard from 100 feet away after midnight (in residential areas) on weekends it is a violation.

I am wondering about other people's experience with such matters. It seems to me that the local law is a bit strict, as I was at only running at about 95 db near from the speakers. That means that I was running only about 75 db at 100 ft which is audiable but just about normal speakng volume.....

The party went pretty well until it was shut down at 11:30, probably getting shut down had as much to do with the fact that there were over 80 people there as the sound volume....

Still was a good party and I did get in 5 hours of karaoke....

You know of course that those numbers probably don't apply to bass. When you measure SPL, you are not measuring at 50Hz. All frequencies are not created equal.

If you want to run later, you have to kill the lows. Not exactly what the homies want, I am sure, but it is the facts of life.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Well, both sides have an argument up to a point but I would rather suspect a little more weight should be given to those who live in the area to determine what is an acceptable level of noise at the late hour of midnite. Perhaps the party should have started a few hours earlier so that it wouldn't have seemed so loud to them and probably more acceptable to the neighbors. A bit of common sense will go a long ways in some disputes.

In town we do not play after 10PM or 11PM at the latest. All neighbors are alerted or actually invited to the party. In this area it is usually done out on a farm and lasts all night.

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10PM-7AM is the law here in which anything measured over 55db at the complaintants property is in violation.
But anytime of the day one can be cited for noise.

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I did a fairly large/loud party on the 4th of July weekend...started at 4 and ended at 8 - nobody complained. I knew I'd be asking for trouble if I went too long, especially as it was Sunday. I always invite all the neighbors, too. I've always been very conservative about noise issues with neighbors because I know personally I don't want to hear anyone else's music. Usually our tastes don't jive.

I've never been shut down, but the police have come and given a verbal warning. This has happened a total of 3 times in all my years. I just turn it down a bit and all is fine. Now I do know some of the private parties I've done in residential areas I needed to shut down by a certain time. If I'm doing this type of private party I just call the village of that suburb before I agree on an ending time to let them know I can't go past a certain time.

The funny part of it all is it is usually determined by db level over a certain amount of feet in commercial areas with a license to have outside entertainment. Different suburbs have different laws, so I don't know them all. But my point being how do the police even know if you are over the limit? It isn't like they have special equipment to measure db levels. They judge it by if they get a complaint or not. If no one is complaining they don't even bother.

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