The Evolution of
Pickleball Sound Labs
Starting in 2015, Bob Unetich began to sound test pickleball paddles and balls for sound levels fat his own pickleball club in Florida, where he took up pickleball in 2013. He quickly found that it was not only the sound level that mattered to those objecting to the sound, but that the “pitch” or more technically the “spectral content”, was as important.
The reality is that humans are most annoyed by sounds in their environment that interfer with their understanding the human voice, which is loaded with sounds in the range of 1,000 to 2,000 cycles per second (Hertz). Pickleball, unlike tennis, typically has a main pitch around 1,100 or 1,200 Hz, making the perceived short duration sound an annoying “pop”, instead of a distant “thud”, like the sound of a tennis ball hitting a tennis racquet.
Out of this work came the idea of building a laboratory where the full set of pickleball sound characteristics could be accurately measured and so Pickleball Sound Labs was born.
