SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Residents across parts of San Diego spent the weekend hearing the thump of bass from the NiteHarts Music Festival at Snapdragon Stadium — including some who lived miles from the venue.
The festival generated complaints and questions from nearby residents who said the noise carried into their homes. San Diego Police said they had received multiple complaints over the weekend regarding the noise through their non-emergency line, which they forwarded to SDSU's police department.
But the reason many people could hear the music from several miles away was not that festival organizers exceeded permitted sound levels, according to an expert I spoke with by phone. Richard Alan Salz, the managing director of On-Site Acoustic Testing said that the weather in San Diego may have made sound waves, especially those of lower frequencies like bass, travel much further than normal. He also explained that cloud cover can cause the sound to refract, making it travel further.
Those conditions paired with wind and humidity could have made the sound waves bend and end up in neighborhoods that don't typically experience the noise.
One resident reported hearing the music from about four miles away while sitting at home nearly four miles away.
Oak View Group, which manages the venue, said they worked on mitigating the noise, but that the storm made things difficult. The company said it takes a number of steps to manage noise from events. It also said Tropical Storm Rachel affected the way sound traveled during the festival and that it is looking for ways to further reduce impacts on surrounding neighborhoods in the future
We take the sound concerns raised by community members during the Niteharts Festival seriously and are committed to being a good neighbor. We recognize the importance of this matter and have taken steps throughout the weekend to respond to community concerns and reduce sound impacts on surrounding neighborhoods.
Proactive planning and community engagement are central to our approach. Ahead of the festival, we held weekly production meetings to coordinate sound management, distributed a neighbor newsletter with set times, and hired a dedicated Community Liaison to respond to resident concerns and relay feedback directly to festival production. Sound levels have also been monitored onsite at the mixing position and around the venue perimeter consistently throughout the weekend.
Snapdragon Stadium adheres to a 95-decibel (dB) sound limit measured at the front-of-house mixing position, with all recorded readings during Niteharts remaining at or below that threshold. Active sound monitoring remains part of each event.
Under the Environmental Impact Report (EIR), event curfews are 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and midnight Friday and Saturday. Since opening the stadium, we have proactively implemented earlier event end times of 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
As this is the third year of the festival at the site, this weekend's atmospheric weather conditions created by Tropical Storm Rachel played a significant role in the unusual way sound carried into surrounding neighborhoods, as this was not experienced during earlier sound checks or previous years of the festival.
Following concerns raised Friday evening, we worked with festival production to implement additional sound mitigation measures, including reducing low-frequency output, adding dedicated subwoofer limiters, and applying system-wide sound limits. For the final day, we further lowered sound levels, shortened sound check by two and a half hours, and adjusted speaker output to help reduce sound spill into surrounding neighborhoods. Sound levels were monitored throughout the day, and last night’s performance ended at 10 p.m.
Moving forward, we will evaluate sound data, the effectiveness of these adjustments, and community feedback to identify improvements for future outdoor festivals.
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