Are you in city limits? If so, the rules about limits and permitting depend on the city. Note that some cities don’t even have noise ordinances, or have noise ordinances that are very vague and/or are not enforceable. If you tell me what city you’re I can try to interpret any noise ordinance you may have as best as I can.

The way I understand it, if you live outside city limits in any county other than Harris, there will be no noise ordinance protecting you. The Texas Penal Code has a somewhat ambiguous limit of ’85 decibels,’ and that is only applicable after the offending party has been warned. The Texas Penal Code is all but useless as a numerical criterion.

If the event center does not have a liquor license, then, as far as I know, they are not obligated to follow the TABC’s rules concerning noise. Even if they were, the TABC rule on noise is somewhat vague, so it’s hard to guess which way they would rule in any given situation. I’ve heard there’s a TABC hearing on the Nutty Brown issue coming up, so that may establish some form of precedence.

I hear a lot of complaints about noise from people who live in unincorporated areas. The lack of county noise ordinances in Texas is puzzling. Perhaps in the near future enough citizens will be able to join together to overturn the ban on county noise ordinances.

would this type of building venue require a permit for outdoor music? if so, would they be limited to 70dba you mentiion above? please direct me to the appropriate state org with the legal answer.

this event center believes they aren’t under the tabc rules and regs because the alcohol is served through an outside vendor. with all the numerous parties they host, they could be using a different bartender each time. who would keep track of possible violations and who would be responsible? can this setup be true?

i appreciate your efforts.

thanks,
kimly

85 dBA is quite high for music, especially if there is some distance between their speakers and their property line. As you are well aware, music has a lot of low frequency content which is heavily weighted against in A-weighting, so it’s possible for a club to be almost as loud as they want with their bass without risk of exceeding the ordinance. Some communities, like San Antonio, have protections against this in the form of provisions for tonality and/or limits for individual octave bands. Austin has no such protections.

The Nutty Brown is an unusual case because the high frequencies are also very loud, causing A-weighted levels to be very high. An indoor club with bass that permeates the neighborhood is a much more common situation.

Unless the club has a stout building shell, low frequency sound will escape from the building and travel somewhat freely. This is why you can hear the bass so clearly. High mass and thick walls are needed to effectively control this type of sound. Unless the club makes modifications to its sound system to reduce levels in the low frequencies, the only solutions are expensive ones; either the club or your home needs to be modified with better walls, doors, and windows.

The best solution is a compromise by the club on how they adjust their sound system. It could be possible for them to make adjustments to their low end that make a big difference in the neighborhood but are barely noticeable in the club. Perhaps they would be amenable to having a professional sound system designer review their system and make some adjustments.

Welcome to Austin Noise. I’m happy that you found us and have joined the conversation.

Concerning the warning posted on the TABC website, perhaps I misunderstood. I am referring to Complaint No. 808648, with initial allegation received 6/24/2009. The allegation is listed as “Place or Manner – Excess Noise” with a written warning issued 7/25/2009. If my understanding is incorrect, please accept my apologies. I should have done more due diligence before using such a strong term as “I know.” The reality is I do not know that the excessive noise was due to music.

I accept that that may be a false statement if my understanding of the complaint is incorrect, but I fail see how that qualifies as an “abundance” of false statements. If there are other false statements on this page, I ask that you please point them out to me. If that is the only potential false statement, then it is unfair for you to use the term “abundance of falsehoods.” Please also consider that my statement about the warning from the TABC website was included in the comments section, and not the actual report. The comments section is for discussion and opinions, the report contains the facts. Your history with the TABC has no bearing whatsoever on the validity of the data I collected, or on the validity of my analysis.

Concerning not contacting you before conducting my measurements, you raise a valid concern that deserves to be addressed. I considered contacting you first, but in my professional experience I have learned that it is sometimes difficult to observe something without affecting that which you are observing. It’s not a personal or professional reflection on you in any way, only a result of my own experience. It is not hard to conceive that venues that know they’re being measured will sometimes behave differently and, I assure you, it has happened. Also, please consider that for my measurements to be valid, it was not necessary to contact you or your employees. It was necessary to contact homeowners so that I had the ability to place my sound level meter at a point of impact. If it was possible for me to conduct my study without anyone’s help, that would have been my preference.

I don’t see how not contacting you prior to the measurement casts any doubt on the validity of my data or my intentions. If my intention was to share some objective data with the community to facilitate more meaningful conversation on the subject, what improvement would have been made by speaking with you or a member of your staff? This is not an editorial piece covering the legal and community aspects with quotations from parties of both sides, this is a technical study. I did not exclude any data that I took, nor did I share any portion of this report with anyone before publishing it. As I am only doing this for myself, I have no client to satisfy nor any goals to meet other than those I set for myself.

Please note that the opinions I gathered from homeowners during the measurement do not constitute the substance of my report. At most, they help to understand the conditions under which my data was gathered. The substance of my report is the data and its comparison to criteria and I feel I have made a good effort to be clear on that. I have also attempted to be very clear that the criteria I selected are not binding, but simply criteria that are meaningful to the situation.

If you would like to have a chance to represent the Nutty Brown on this website, I would be happy to have a conversation with you and share your point of view in another article. And, like I mentioned in the article, I am very happy to share my data with you or anyone else in its raw form so that you may analyze it independently and arrive at your own conclusions.

At the risk of creating a tangent, I don’t see how my professional opinion of the Austin Noise Ordinance casts doubt on my impartiality. If you read the other articles on this site, you will see that I go only where the data and my experience in environmental acoustics takes me. Today I posted a criticism of an addition to the ordinance that I feel favors homeowners unfairly. In the near future I will be posting an article reporting another measurement I did last Friday (coincidentally) that takes the side of the venue. In my work I am pro-venue as often as I am pro-homeowner. You need not take my word that I strive for objectivity, you only need to look at the body of my work.

This statement is false.

The warning you refer to was not issued for any noise based complaint or violation. I know because I signed the warning and was present the night in question. The warning was for a “disturbance of the peace” based on a single rowdy customer that we had difficulty getting under control. There has never been a single noise based warning or citation filed against Nutty Brown by the TABC, Hays County Sheriff’s Office or any other regulatory body.

Your claims of impartiality and objectivity are consistently betrayed by the abundance of false statements (see above) and editorialized comments like “Even the Austin Noise Ordinance, which is heavily skewed to favor the noise source”. Furthermore, the fact that you were in contact with several neighbors while never one single time attempting to speak to me or any of my sound engineers at Nutty Brown on the night in question should be all any reasonable person need know about the “impartiality” of your intent and endeavor.

What will or won’t weigh in on the TABC’s decision is unknown to me. I have not sent my data to the TABC, nor suggested anyone do so. I took it only for my own website, to provide something objective for people to talk about in this discussion. I do know that the TABC issued the Nutty Brown a warning on noise earlier this year (as published on the TABC website), so perhaps they will be taking a more objective look at the situation this time around. I really don’t know.

I understand that Randy Rogers is a popular show with high attendance, but I don’t see why the volume of the mains would be set any lower with a smaller crowd. My measurements are not the only ones that have been conducted. I have seen data collected from other measurements and it agrees with mine. I believe that the sound guys at the Nutty Brown attempt to maintain property line levels of 85 dBA, but all of the data that I have seen indicates that they are unsuccessful in doing so.

My suspicion is that the problem is due to an error in the configuration of the speaker towers. It should be possible to have a very loud concert without driving sound levels into the 80s a quarter mile away. Due to the unusually long carry of high frequency sound from the venue (lyrics can be heard and understood a great distance away), it seems like a tremendous amount of sound energy may be heading directly over the crowd and into the community. Sound level measurements at the ground level property line would miss this, as high frequency sound is very directional.

Perhaps the solution is a simple re-alignment of the towers. I don’t know. But I am fairly certain that the situation can be resolved without the Nutty Brown shutting down or discontinuing live music. I would expect the TABC to look for this type of resolution, rather than pulling their liquor license altogether.

We have written our county officials, shared the link for your web site with them and asked them to review your report and the data that you collected last Friday night, especially after 9:30 p.m. We agree that an objective measurement substantiates our claims that the noise from the cafe’ is very loud and disruptive to families in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Thanks again!

Nutty Brown hosts large shows on 20 to 25 nights a year. (6% of the year). The Randy Rogers Band is one of the biggest shows each time so the argument above to get readings at a large show is a joke. The owners and sound guys at Nutty are very picky about not going over 85 decibels at the property line even though they are not required to. The owners live in the area and want to be part of a growing community.

The venue and restaurant also employ many area teens and others. Many people make a living because Nutty Brown is there and provides job opportunities.

Most of these neighborhood residents that complain have been jumping on this bandwagon because it is the “cool” thing to do and I would hazard to bet most of them never even thought about the music bothering them until someone else brought it up.

I can;t wait for one of these complainers to ask the venue for help with a benefit only to be told they can’t help because they are not allowed to have music anymore.

Leave Nutty Brown and the rest of these venues alone. Music is a wonderful thing and brings more good than bad to a neighborhood.