I'm about done bickering about the proposed sound rules here as the trend seems to be "either everyone is for restrictions or against restrictions....as long they don't affect them."
I think it's absolutely unreasonable to take a engine that is quiet enough to keep the Californians happy, make it into a pseudo-race car powerplant, and make it quieter. That's been my point this whole time, not that it's hard, that it's unreasonable. I was fine with the 110dbA limit because that's right around GT cars and GP2 bikes, some real world connection there. So, I'd be fine with a 115 dBC limit. Let's do that to square some things up. It's a bit of a farce to base what the restrictions should be based on a fully exposed ear without hearing protection. Why is no one wearing hearing protection? That's silly.
In most race series, ear protection requirements are a given, you show up as a spectator expecting to shell out a few dollars for earplugs for the family or bring your own. It's part of the experience. Things that are loud are exciting. Dynamite? Exciting. Gerbils. Not so exciting. Race cars that shake the grandstands as they blister by burning gallons of nitromethane? Exiting.
In many parts of the world, sound is a major problem. The cities are loud, traffic noise seems non-stop, street bikes and modified cars tend to annoy fellow citizens, babies cry on a plane. But on race tracks, some people just can't get enough of it:
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2014/07/0...d-boost-noise/
If people want to quiet the vehicles down so that we no longer need to protect our ears properly during vehicle running and it's "a legit engineering exercise", I would welcome all of those proponents to come join the Clean Snowmobile Challenge. 100 db isn't that hard, it's just annoying in FSAE. In Snowmobile, with a WOT pass by, try to keep it under 75 dbA, that'll make you competitive and give a large area to learn from where subjective sound quality is also rated. Leave the sound competition to those concerned about sound on the trails and on the road, in all other cases tracks have their own noise limits which are different from road cars for a reason. My team's stock diesel truck pulling up in the paddock shouldn't be the loudest thing out there. I would also ask you to not similarly modify shop standards such that they are improved and no longer need safety glasses.
Is it useless to compare to a road car? Maybe. But comparing to what are considered real world customer standards? Absolutely a parallel. If I were designing a road car, I'd expect to have some restrictions similar to current or future road cars. If I were building a vehicle to be autocrossed on the weekend I'd hope the results are somewhat within their expectations. If I were building a duck, I'll be damned it should quack like a duck...not some hippy duck that only quacks at 70dBC because it's been decided that the duck building competition is not about building ducks because real ducks quack too much anyway.
I don't want to downplay that work and calculations that contributors have put towards these rules because I recognize serious thought has been put into this, especially by Tobias. I'm just saying it's been misplaced and/or overstretched a little.
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