There are more than 800 outdoor festivals in the US every year and not surprisingly, very few of them are out in the desert away from residential areas. For production companies applying for permits, a crucial part of the plan is an accurate prediction of noise levels and for the sound team a model to keep both the audience and the neighbors happy. A partnership between L-Acoustics, d&b audiotechnik, and SoundPLAN has produced a neutral standard for noise prediction across multiple sound systems.
Live Design talked to Yann-Gaël Gicquel, director of product management, spatial systems at L-Acoustics about the new standard.
Live Design: What makes predicting noise outcomes so difficult?
Yann-Gaël Gicquel: Predicting how sound from a large-scale live event will behave in the real world is genuinely complex. A professional system isn't a single point source, it's an array of many individually driven transducers, and the way those sources interact depends on phase relationships, calibration offsets, and decoherence factors that vary with distance and geometry. Modeling that accurately, and then layering in a real landscape with buildings, terrain, and vegetation, requires a high level of acoustic precision. Add multiple stages with loudspeakers from different manufacturers, and the calculation becomes exponentially harder. Until now, there was no agreed methodology for prediction. SDE establishes that methodology for the first time, making it possible to produce noise contour models that promoters, consultants, and local authorities can all stand behind.
LD: Is there a cost and does it require proprietary software?
YGG: The SDE file format itself is a neutral, open standard. On the design side, SDE files are exported from system design tools like L-Acoustics Soundvision, then imported into SoundPLAN for the actual propagation modeling. The goal is that SDE becomes an industry-wide format, and we've been deliberate in designing it to be accessible to other manufacturers and other noise prediction platforms in the future. For L-Acoustics users, SDE export is integrated into Soundvision and works in conjunction with the broader noise control capabilities in our ecosystem, including cardioid presets for systems like the K1-SB (with our latest 100NC preset) and native cardioid systems such as the L Series. The workflow is supported through our Environmental System Design service and through application engineers and consultants trained and certified in the methodology. This end-to-end approach, from system design and loudspeaker selection through to noise propagation modelling, is what makes SDE practically actionable, not just a file format.
LD: Talk us through the complex acoustic calculation -- can the sound team input venue size, distances from residential areas, surrounding buildings/trees, and get an indication of noise levels?
YGG: That's exactly right. An SDE workflow begins in the system design software where the engineer has already defined speaker positions, aiming, and output levels. That design is exported as an SDE file and brought into SoundPLAN, where the real-world topography is layered in: venue boundaries, residential distances, terrain, buildings, and vegetation. The software then models how sound propagates across that landscape, accounting for reflection, diffraction, and absorption. The result is a noise contour map showing predicted levels at any point in the surrounding area.
The standard doesn't prescribe noise limits; those are set by local regulations and permitting authorities, but it gives everyone at the table—promoters, consultants, and local authorities—a credible, shared basis for those conversations.
LD: What information about the venue and equipment will the sound team need to use SDE?
YGG: The starting point is a complete system design in tools like Soundvision: speaker models, positions, rigging geometry, aiming angles, and drive levels. The environmental consultant then needs the site geography: ideally a terrain model or GIS data covering the venue footprint and its surroundings, the locations of noise-sensitive receptors such as residential areas, hotels, or hospitals, and any significant reflective or absorptive surfaces like buildings, barriers, and tree lines. The richer that data, the more accurate the propagation model. SDE bridges those two worlds. It carries the acoustic description of the system in a standardized format the noise software can interpret correctly, without the consultant needing to reverse-engineer each manufacturer's proprietary format.
LD: How is SDE integrated into the workflow?
YGG: SDE is primarily a pre-production planning tool, used in the design and permitting phase well before the event. A system engineer completes their design in Soundvision and exports the SDE noise propagation model. That gives promoters and production teams a defensible noise prediction they can present to local authorities, inform drive level limits, and use to make decisions about speaker placement or system configuration, all before a single cabinet is flown.
That said, there's no reason the same workflow can't be used iteratively: if a design changes during advance production, the model is updated accordingly.
It shifts noise management from a reactive problem at soundcheck to a planned element of the production design process.
LD: What barriers were removed or software advances allowed you to introduce this standard now?
YGG: A few things converged. Environmental noise modeling software like SoundPLAN has become significantly more sophisticated in handling complex, directional sources, but until now it lacked a reliable way to ingest the acoustic characteristics of a professional live sound system with the fidelity those systems require. At the same time, system design software has matured to the point where the output data is rich enough to support this kind of export.
The missing piece was the standard itself: an agreed methodology for how coherent source interactions, calibration, and decoherence are described and transferred between platforms. It took genuine collaboration between manufacturers who are competitors in the market to agree on a neutral format, and that's not a small thing. The shared motivation was that inconsistent noise predictions were creating problems for the entire industry: permitting delays, community relations challenges, reputational risk for events, and a common standard benefits everyone.
The strength of SDE is that both audio manufacturers and noise management software experts brought their unique expertise together to build it.
LD: L-Acoustics and d&b audiotechnik are European companies — can US sound departments benefit from this?
YGG: Absolutely. SDE is designed as a global standard, not a regional one. L-Acoustics and d&b audiotechnik both operate worldwide, and the noise management challenges of balancing the scale of live events with community impact being addressed by SDE are just as present in the US as anywhere. American cities and municipalities are increasingly sophisticated about noise ordinances, and major festivals and touring productions everywhere face the same permitting questions. For US productions working with L-Acoustics systems, the same full ecosystem applies: Soundvision-based SDE export, native noise control tools including cardioid presets and the L Series, and support through our Environmental System Design service and certified application engineers and consultants.
The challenges that SDE addresses don’t stop at any border.