About Us

Acoustic Research Laboratories Pty Ltd was formed in 1990 to develop, service and maintain a long term structural vibration and environmental noise monitoring system for use during the construction of the Governor Macquarie and Governor Phillip towers in the CBD of Sydney. The two year monitoring plan was implemented principally as the means to protect the structural integrity of a series of fragile heritage listed buildings which were situated around the construction site. During the construction program, which involved extensive rock excavation and the complete demolition of an existing 43 storey building on the site, multiple channels of continuous vibration and noise data were recorded and telemetered on a regular basis to the offices of the structural vibration consultant and the developer's project manager. Alarm conditions were developed from the relevant Australian and International Standards, and an effective system of alarms was implemented. In essence, when an alarm condition occurred, an appropriate signal was instantly sent to the project manager and the consultant by telephone modem, and to the building supervisor by radio pager. Visible alarms on site were also activated.

In order to effectively manage such a large scale monitoring program and to handle the very large amounts of data which were produced, a range of techniques had to be developed to automate the reporting requirements. The timely production of reports was carried out on a monthly basis for the two year duration of the contract.

The success of this initial project, and in particular the novel way in which it was tackled led to the further development of stand alone monitoring instruments for noise, vibration and other environmental parameters. These instruments conform to the relevant Australian Standards, and their sales, hire and associated services form the basis of the Company's operation.

In 1992, ARL's EL-015 noise logger was released. There are now hundreds of ARL loggers currently in operation around Australia. Many of these units have been specifically customised to users requirements. For example, one company has two monitors which are permanently connected via 4-20mA protocol to their plant control room. These units also interface via RS-485 to the plant environmental database which is resident on a VAX computer system.

In 1993, ARL began exporting products to New Zealand. This coincided with the release of our highly successful EL-215 Environmental Noise Logger. Growth of the Company has been steadily increasing with sales.

In 1996, ARL became the Australian distributor for Rion instruments. This further expanded our product range and complimented our existing services we provided. We proceeded to write software for the interfacing of Rion products to PC, examples of this can be found on the software download page of this web site.

ARL is a highly focussed engineering development, sales and service organisation. Our products are designed and developed in-house up to the initial production stages. The bulk production activities are then subcontracted, and the finished products are returned in-house for final testing and calibration. The development and production of small quantity customised systems are generally carried out in-house.

In 1999, ARL became a NATA accredited calibration facility for noise and vibration instrumentation. A major section of our client base is made up of consulting engineers. As a result, our main service activities are based around providing monitoring services and advice on methods of reliably monitoring and handling data from medium to long-term installations.

The Sound Thinking Group is based in New South Wales with representatives in all states.

We presently export software, products and services to North America, New Zealand, Europe, Asia and the South Pacific.