One delivery, thousands of homes within earshot.
Every delivery sweeps an audible noise corridor across the streets below it. The further the destination sits from the depot, the more homes fall inside that corridor — a longer line drawn over denser residential ground.
Each delivery flies the corridor twice — outbound and return — so every building inside the band experiences two distinct overflight events.
Ballintemple
Bessboro
You hear it before you see it. Because the sound spreads outward in every direction, it reaches far beyond the homes directly under the line — on the order of 100–300 m to either side, depending on how quiet things are. Most people register a delivery by ear first: it announces itself well before it is overhead, and is still audible after it has passed.
Hear it for yourself.
Decibels only tell half the story. Manna says the drones are no louder than everyday background noise — so here is what they actually sound like passing over a home, and a way to judge that sound against others at the very same volume.
assets/drone-cruise.mp3.assets/drone-delivery.mp3.“No louder than a lawnmower.” Often true on paper — but the character of a sound decides how much it grates. A drone’s pitch, tonal whine and the way it moves overhead make it carry and intrude in a way a steady background hum does not, even at the same measured loudness.
Clips are residents’ own recordings, used with permission. Your device volume is not calibrated, so these convey the character of the sound rather than a measured level — the decibel figures come from the Trinity College Dublin study (Nash & Kennedy, 2024). A short text description accompanies each clip for anyone using a screen reader.
Breakdown by destination
~1.2 km
~2.0 km
~2.6 km
~3.0 km
Bar lengths are scaled to a common maximum so destinations can be compared directly. The closest destination affects the fewest homes; the furthest, the most.
Each band shows ground-level noise from a single overflight, as a multiple of the suburban Cork ambient baseline (42 dBA).
Where a home sits relative to the flight line changes both how loud a pass is and what it sounds like. Trinity College Dublin’s measurements found the overall level is highest directly beneath the drone, and the sound carries further forward and back along the flight path than out to the sides — the airframe partly shields the sideways direction.
The character shifts with angle too. Directly underneath, low frequencies dominate — a deep thump. Off to the side, more of the high-frequency, tonal content comes through: the whinier, more modulated sound people most often describe as annoying.
A single dBA figure captures none of this. The readings above measure loudness — not character, and not direction.