Bowling Green, KY Noise from Specific Sources: Low-Frequency Bass Limits (2026)

Sec. 9-3.03(b) of the Bowling Green Code of Ordinances forecloses the defense that a vehicle stereo was 'just bass' and therefore not really music or speech. The section states that measurement standards for the fifty-foot plainly-audible threshold are by human auditory senses based upon direct line of sight, that words or phrases need not be discernible, and that bass reverberations are included. That means an officer who can hear only a low-frequency thump, without making out lyrics or a melody, from fifty feet or more away from a vehicle on a street, alley, parking lot, park or driveway can still cite the operator.

Sec. 9-3.02 defines 'PLAINLY AUDIBLE' to mean any human voice, music or other sound produced by a sound amplification system upon or from within the vehicle that clearly can be heard at a distance of fifty feet or more, and defines 'SOUND AMPLIFICATION SYSTEM' broadly to include any radio, tape player, compact disc player, MP3 player, iPod or loudspeaker used to amplify the human voice, music or any other sound. Reading the two sections together, a subwoofer-heavy stereo producing only bass reverberation, with no discernible words, is treated the same as a system playing clearly audible lyrics, closing off what would otherwise be an easy evidentiary loophole for low-frequency systems.