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Britt dials down the decibels Music venue receives B-minus from neighbor BY BILL VARBLE What is the sound of one hand clapping? Guarded praise for Britt's noise-squelching efforts, maybe. "I think it's going fairly well," Jacksonville resident and Britt critic Carol Knapp said Wednesday at nearly the halfway point of the Peter Britt Festivals' 1999 season in Jacksonville. "Some neighbors have said the programs seem quieter." Knapp says she heard complaints from several neighbors about one show, a performance by blues great John Lee Hooker June 24. Britt director Ron McUne acknowledged the Hooker show pushed noise limits. He said a show by Booker T and the M.G.s on June 26 was also at the edge of the envelope. It's the summer of decibel-counting at Britt. The limit is 90 decibels as reported by a new $18,000 monitoring system that can measure sound a thousand times a second and record the results in eye-numbing detail. Watching the results nervously are Jacksonville residents, Britt officials, music lovers and a mediation team. Asked to grade the popular festival on efforts to control the volume this summer, Knapp gave it a B-minus. McUne said the only noise complaint he's had was not about a concert but an idling equipment truck. Those included trouble with cables and other gear in the monitoring system and questions over the location of a microphone that ended up being moved. Britt has been turning over audio printouts from the monitoring equipment to the city of Jacksonville. A meeting with the city, the county (which owns the Britt grounds) the mediation team and Britt's sound consultant, George Relles, is set for Aug. 2. As Britt grew from a quiet little classical event in the 1960s into one of the Northwest's premiere music festivals, complaints about noise and litter increased. Britt presents name blues, jazz, country, folk, classical and other acts to some 60,000 concertgoers each summer. Noise complaints last year reached enough of a crescendo to lead to voluntary restrictions on Britt's part and a mediation team that's looking at concert noise. Bob Strahan, a member of the mediation team, says he was out of town much of the summer and got home only in time for some relatively quiet shows: Cowboy Junkies, Dan Fogelberg, Manhattan Transfer and McCoy Tyner. "We love the jazz concerts," he says. "They say the only thing you hear is the click of the Mercedes doors." Britt critics questioned the location of a microphone that collects sound data which it then corrects to read as if it's in noise hot spots in neighbors' yards. The mike was at the downhill end of the Britt grounds until last week when it was moved up the hillside in an effort to better catch noise coming off the stage as well as isolate it from neighborhood noises not connected with Britt. McUne says Britt's next step in the noise wars could be to install acoustic traps in the form of removable panels attached to the top of the stage. Although most of what audiences hear now comes through a sophisticated sound system, a lot of sound still comes off the stage. "That stage is a big speaker," he says. The stage was designed in the 1960s to throw acoustic sound up at the audience. McUne said most of the readings over 90 have come in encore numbers when audience members are on their feet cheering for more. Knapp said she plans more talks with Britt neighbors. "There's some fine tuning that needs to be done," she said. McUne said he doesn't know what comes next. "We're just going to monitor it and turn the reports in." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA