Every existing noise measurement tool was designed to satisfy regulations. WardScope® Mic Edition was designed to find what regulations miss — ground-borne harmonic transmission, unfiltered, unweighted, on your own phone.
WardScope® Mic Edition was not built from an engineering specification. It was built from 50 years of field experience — from standing next to a vibrating fence post 5km from a wind turbine, knowing exactly what was happening, and having no instrument that could prove it. From measuring dairy sheds where pumps tested at 75dB produced 120dB when installed. From tracing three independent transmission paths from a bridge to a water treatment plant with instruments that were never designed to find any of them. The difference is not features. The difference is purpose.
Every smartphone microphone is optimised for one purpose — the human voice. It captures the telephone voice band (300Hz–3400Hz) and applies a battery of digital filters to ensure voice clarity. Every one of those filters actively destroys the signal that ground-borne harmonic investigation requires.
| Filter Applied to Phone Mic | Purpose | What It Destroys |
|---|---|---|
| High-pass filter (~100Hz cutoff) | Remove low frequency rumble | Ground-borne harmonics below 100Hz |
| A-weighting | Match human hearing curve | All energy below 200Hz — the harmonic range |
| Automatic Gain Control (AGC) | Normalise voice level | Amplitude relationships between harmonics |
| Noise suppression | Remove non-voice background | Harmonic signal classified as unwanted noise |
| Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC) | Remove repeating patterns | Harmonic series identified as echo — removed |
| Beamforming | Focus on voice direction | Contact surface signal rejected as off-axis |
| Voice Activity Detection (VAD) | Mute mic between speech | Harmonic signal muted as silence |
| Wind noise filter | Remove low frequency variation | Infrasound harmonics classified as wind noise |
Any microphone connected via USB-C or headphone jack bypasses the phone's internal MEMS microphone and all associated voice processing entirely. The signal path goes directly to the WardScope® spectrum engine — unfiltered, unweighted, unprocessed. Any microphone is accepted. Any signal is captured.
20Hz to 20kHz — no A-weighting, no regulatory bias, no high-pass filter. What is present is shown. What is absent is shown as absent.
Contact mic, omnidirectional, directional — any microphone via USB-C or headphone jack. Bypass all phone voice processing entirely.
Every measurement is geotagged. Creates a traceable transmission path map from source to receiver — admissible evidence.
Visual evidence linked to each measurement. Proves the contact mic was correctly placed on the surface. Auditable.
Acoustic evidence captured alongside spectral data. Confirms the source was operating at time of measurement.
Observations recorded at point of measurement. No memory loss. No reconstruction after the fact.
Store and compare spectra across multiple measurement points. Air reading, contact reading, directional reading — all saved to the same slot.
Field data exported to WardScope® PC Analyzer for laboratory-grade FFT analysis up to 8192 points.
The instruments used by the noise consulting industry were designed for airborne noise compliance. They solve that problem well. But they are the wrong tool for ground-borne harmonic investigation — and none of them do what WardScope® Mic Edition does.
| Instrument | Price | Unfiltered | Contact Mic | GPS | Photos | Audio | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NTi XL2 Acoustic Analyzer | $2,600–$5,138 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Emerson AMS 2140 | $22,000–$24,000 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| SKF Microlog CMXA 80 | $8,000–$15,000 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Fluke 810 Vibration Tester | $3,000–$5,000 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| SVANTEK SV 803 | $5,000–$10,000 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| WardScope® Mic Edition | App $19.99 — Kit TBA | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
These are not inferior products. They are excellent instruments solving the problem they were designed to solve. The noise consulting industry built vinyl records and CDs. WardScope® Mic Edition is the smartphone.
Every noise consultant produces numbers. A number is a summary — selected, processed, weighted, filtered by the person taking the measurement. It cannot be independently verified. It can only be challenged by producing more numbers.
WardScope® does not produce numbers. It produces the actual signal — the raw recording, with GPS coordinates, timestamp, photo of the surface, and audio of the conditions. Any acoustician, engineer, or court-appointed expert anywhere in the world can open that file and examine exactly what was recorded. Numbers are summaries. Summaries are not evidence. Recordings are evidence.
Take four independent measurements at the same location — air reading, contact reading, directional reading — all saved to the same memory slot with GPS, timestamp, photo, and audio. The four readings either agree or they contradict each other. A null result — "we found nothing" — is fully auditable. The raw signal file is available for independent examination by any expert.
The vibration isolation manufacturer's sales rep visits a client site. In one visit: install WardScope® Mic Edition on the client's own phone, hand them a branded contact mic kit — free, theirs to keep — walk the plant together. The client finds the harmonic sources themselves on their own phone. They show their manager. The manager approves the isolation solution.
The client discovered the problem with their own hands. That discovery is more convincing to any manager than any consultant's report — because it cannot be dismissed as a sales pitch.
Branded kits, white label licensing, wholesale pricing:
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