[HN Gopher] Sound-suppressing silk can create quiet spaces
___________________________________________________________________
Sound-suppressing silk can create quiet spaces
Author : geox
Score : 248 points
Date : 2024-05-07 20:23 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (news.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.mit.edu)
| iamkonstantin wrote:
| I would love to have something like this. Even better if it comes
| in a portable form for the occasional visit to the office.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I'm chuckling imagining a bunch of office-workers walking
| around with anachronistic silk head-veils and wimples.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| And CEOs with $18,000 egg chairs lined with this.
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| Second this, I totally can imagine buying a bead or windows
| curtain made out of material so I won't have to use ear plugs
| every night to stop hearing dog barks.
| oulipo wrote:
| Or for snoring reduction
| shmageggy wrote:
| Judging by the figures in the paper, it appears to attenuate low
| frequencies better than high frequencies, which is perhaps to be
| expected judging by experience with noise-cancelling headphones.
| This could be a game-changing complement to traditional acoustic
| treatment for recording studios and other acoustic spaces, where
| low frequencies are traditionally much harder to treat, requiring
| much larger and more expensive panels.
| whydid wrote:
| I'm a mix/master engineer, and I just skimmed the paper to look
| for attenuation potential of this new material. It looks like
| they only tested above 100 HZ, which is still alright for
| conversation, but not for professional recording studios.
|
| As you can imagine, the low frequency attenuation isn't great.
| But the performance of higher frequency attenuation is pretty
| good. I think this material would work well for meeting rooms,
| and perhaps restaurants. Not for recording studios.
| aldanor wrote:
| Use this silk material as a cover for bass traps? Win-win
| Wohlf wrote:
| Low frequencies travel further, in my house high frequency road
| noise is annoying but tends to come and go quickly but low
| frequency road noise I can often hear from literally miles
| away.
| hinkley wrote:
| "Farther" not just in a straight line but also around corners
| and through structures.
| greenhearth wrote:
| I would buy a carpet made of this to not hear the downstairs
| people.
| rendall wrote:
| Your downstairs neighbors would probably also appreciate it!
| nwellinghoff wrote:
| Can't get to market fast enough. They are absolutely right that
| applying this technology to silencing noise it sorely needed.
| mixedbit wrote:
| I would love if advances in material technologies would allow to
| design a window glass-like material that would let outside air
| in, but would cancel exterior sounds.
| ghusbands wrote:
| I have seen such a thing in an article, though I don't know how
| to find it. It was a window with a square grid of circular
| holes in it - air could flow through, but sound waves were
| dissipated.
| dest wrote:
| This maybe https://www.ntu.edu.sg/eee/news-
| events/news/detail/-noise-ca...
| ghusbands wrote:
| That's active electronic noise cancellation - there have
| been many of those described and very few delivered over
| the past thirty years. Presumably because it's the sort of
| thing that is angle-sensitive and hard to set up and
| maintain.
|
| The thing I saw was just a pane of glass or plastic with
| large round holes in it to attenuate/dissipate sound waves
| while allowing significant airflow.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| That would be nice. The next best thing is probably a regular
| (shut) window with an ERV/HRV somewhere.
| thfuran wrote:
| Isn't that just better all around? Though a regular shut
| window isn't actually all that good at blocking sound.
| squarefoot wrote:
| I'd be curious to know how would it damp lower frequencies that
| travel also by contact. Sound proofing for mid-high frequencies
| is easy if one doesn't aim at studio quality: just use wood and
| foam panels, break facing walls and angles with acoustic
| absorbing objects and cover every window or mirror (read: glass)
| with a thick curtain, add carpets on the floor and panels on the
| ceiling, and you're done. (hint: a $5 foam panel glued on a thin
| OSB board makes a quite effective, still light and cheap
| absorbing panel for mid-high frequencies) However, bass
| frequencies will be only marginally affected by that, and
| depending on what the room is used for, the above treatment might
| turn out as insufficient: probably overkill for recording a
| podcast, still not enough for recording music at higher volumes
| like when miking a band. Treatments for lower frequencies are
| expensive because of the necessity to literally prevent walls,
| floor and ceiling from vibrating, which invariably requires them
| to be weighed down adding concrete layers to further lower down
| their resonance frequency, before adding soundproofing. Sometimes
| the best approach is to build a drywall room into the room, which
| of course is more expensive and space constraining than the
| wood+foam panels solution.
| Tom3849 wrote:
| Active noise cancellation speakers. You can create small quiet
| bubble for your head, where you sleep.
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| You mentioned building drywall room - a neat building technique
| I only learned about recently that's along these lines (but a
| huge space and cost savings) is a "staggered stud" wall.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Carpentry/comments/13j7o4u/staggere...
| johnvanommen wrote:
| The silk sheet from the article is a loudspeaker.
|
| The solution proposed in the article requires a microphone, and
| would have a tough time dealing with multiple sources.
|
| It basically records the room, then plays the room back via the
| silk sheet, but out-of-phase. Because it's out of phase, it
| cancels out.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Another thing textiles can do is block wind:
| https://research.chalmers.se/en/publication/534412
| sheepenumerator wrote:
| This is interesting! As someone who often struggles with noise
| from my environment, I'd love to have something like a mosquito
| net that can be put around my bed to keep the noise out.
| xlii wrote:
| Having sound sensitivity I'll buy this the moment it comes out.
|
| I've lost countless nights of sleep only because neighbors behind
| the walls had normal meet conversations past 12am. I really try
| to not be PITA but it's my wellbeing vs theirs in the end. It's a
| rental apartment so some are sympathetic and some are not.
|
| In case you wonder why not ear plugs could help: they don't work
| because I can hear my blood flow and heart beat and it's even
| worse.
| reportgunner wrote:
| You think this curtain will help ? Article says it vibrates
| when it's working so that will probably disturb you as well.
| thfuran wrote:
| How so?
| Reubachi wrote:
| It's give and take, it will help more than bare hard wall.
|
| Heavy curtains are the cheapest/easiest way to "sound deaden"
| a normal room. Their fabric surface area is greater than the
| bare wall, and the weight helps isolate vibration. Thinner
| ones will be less effective. Never effective as foam, and no
| method is as effective as actual mechanical isolation (IE a
| room suspended in a room)
| taraparo wrote:
| Try Mack's silicon earplugs. they are not to be placed inside
| the ear canal but only to cover the entrance from the outside.
| so no unpleasant pressure, no heart beating etc. using them for
| years.
| amlib wrote:
| The best solution for these cases of mild inconvenient noise is
| to mask it with more noise, ideally a fan or a pink/brown noise
| generator, or even sounds of rain or a waterfall.
|
| You want the noise to be indistinct enough that your mind won't
| focus on it. So avoid a bad fan that has a whiny pitch, that
| will drive you crazy.
| drginducedlyric wrote:
| Just be happy you don't live below someone who stomps around
| their apartment all day and night. The deep thud of heel strike
| vibrates your body and because it's very fast attack/low
| frequency noise, it's very hard to block the sound itself. Ear
| plugs do nothing. It's like living inside of a drum.
| driverdan wrote:
| Have you looked into the current solutions? MLV sound barriers
| such as curtains, for example, can help with this.
| oulipo wrote:
| This could be great to remove snoring noise for couples, instant
| seller haha
| johnvanommen wrote:
| It's kinda surprising that nobody has made a product for that,
| because it COULD be done with a plain ol' loudspeaker playing
| out of phase.
|
| Basically:
|
| 1) put a mic above one person's head, in the headboard or
| somewhere near there
|
| 2) record the room
|
| 3) play the room back from the same location, but out of phase
|
| voila! Snoring cancellation.
|
| One unfortunate side effect is that it might be quite loud for
| other people in the home! Because the cancellation will only
| work well at a single point in space; get a few feet away and
| it will sound like TWO people snoring. (The snorer, and the
| loudspeaker.)
| jstummbillig wrote:
| I really, really hope the space of acoustic room treatment is
| incredibly inefficient and somebody can 10x a solution at some
| point. There is a lot of good that could be done by establishing
| acoustic treatment and managing noise (transmission) as a
| requirement for any type of indoor and outdoor construction.
| logtempo wrote:
| the problem in buildings is the building transmitting
| vibrations. That's why it's hard to find a solution afterward.
| ben_w wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| Anecdotal example: I'm currently living above a cafe, with an
| entire floor (with an office in it) between us and them.
|
| When they drag the tables and chairs around, we can hear it
| easily, because it sets up a vibration through the structure
| of the building. Took us a long time to realise where the
| noise came from -- it _sounds like_ it comes from above, but
| the flat above us has been unoccupied on some of the
| occasions we heard the noise, and we were only able to
| confirm the real origin by me being outside the cafe watching
| them while my partner was inside, and with the two of us on a
| call so we could directly observe that what the cafe staff
| were doing correlated with the noises he was hearing.
| prox wrote:
| Is this a "we didn't consider it" problem, or a "it's part of
| how we build these days" problem?
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Both, increasingly the later, in a mix of cost (and who
| shoulders it and when), regulation and in how far we design
| around our shortcomings.
|
| For example, a window is a very obvious thing. Obvious
| things, we value. A balcony. A garden. These things either
| exist in some capacity or they do not, and it's easily to
| mentally check them.
|
| Acoustic treatment is more akin to differences in heat
| insulation. You notice it, when it's a problem, at best. Or
| it's a problem that you pay for all the time, but you don't
| even know how much. If buyers/renters don't value something
| directly, even if it impacts the negatively, the incentives
| on the builders end to spent on it are understandably low.
| It requires regulation to be done properly (which a lot of
| countries have understood and, hence, regulated).
| hinkley wrote:
| It got real expensive here to build multifamily housing in
| part because you have to put acoustic separation in shared
| walls now. That and a tight construction market are putting
| the brakes on what would otherwise be unwise levels of
| growth. And therefore unlikely to change except by accident.
| atoav wrote:
| As someone who teaches an introductory course on acoustics and
| the nature of sound I have to say that I can't see how that
| would work.
|
| The main problem is that acoustics are affected by everything
| within a room because sound from humans and most loudspeakers
| spreads in a somewhat special fashion. So your acoustics
| problem is usually:
|
| 1. Sound goes everywhere and it is not directed just to the
| places where ears are. This way the sound waves of me speaking
| also hits the ceiling in a million places and these reflected
| signals come at you with varying time delay and mix with the
| direct signal of my voice. If the surfaces of the room are
| hard, you will have those sounds bouncing around till they
| loose energy.
|
| 2. On top of that every room has particular frequencies that it
| resonates with to create resonances that make that specific
| frequency ring longer or the room seems to suck the energy out
| of that frequency. These are called the mosal frequencies of
| the room.
|
| One remedy to 1 is to make big chunks room surfaces absorptive
| or to put more stuff into the room that scatters the souns
| waves earlier. So: carpets, special ceilings, curtains,
| acoustic panels or foam at the walls, etc. Tirns out human
| flesh is also quite good ar this, so packing the room with
| people also helps.
|
| Another way to deal with 1 (if you can't touch the
| architecture) is to emit souns in a very directed manner only
| to where ears are. Nut that means microphones, a mixer, 5kEUR
| per piece beamforming loudspeakers + personal with enough
| acoustic knowledge to place them in the right spot and steer
| the beam in the right way etc.
|
| The room mode thing is almost luxury to treat by that point,
| but it typically involves changing the room geometry, and
| building buying specially tuned absorbers that are tuned and
| measured within the room. Depending on how low you want to go
| with the frequency of your acoustic treatment these absorbers
| become big fast and can take a third of the space in a room.
|
| In my experience the main problem is that people building rooms
| treat acoustics as some afterthought, something expensive that
| you need to avoid to save money. In fact the planing stage is
| the _cheapest_ place to improve acoustics. You could for
| example not decide to make a conference room with pure concrete
| walls /ceiling and a tiled floor, because any person should be
| able ro imagine the acoustics of that room.
|
| I had to work in a newly gallery space that had worse acoustics
| than a church. When I asked the architect about the acoustics
| and why the delay times don't fit the purpose, the architect
| said for money reasons they ordered "a better looking car
| deck". The acoustic treatment of that space will cost way more
| than if they just hadn't decided on a barren ceiling and pure
| concrete walls.
|
| The same points go for insulation between rooms. There is no
| magic here, just physics. If you want insulation you have to
| put mass between rooms and decouple/dampen their interactions.
| You either do that from the start by building things correctly
| or you do that afterwards by building another floating room in
| your existing room. In both cases you have to inspect
| painstakingly for acoustic bridges, sometimes a single nail
| touching the outer wall in the wrong way already bridges enough
| sound to make it noticable.
|
| We know how to build good sounding and well insulated spaces.
| People just don't want to pay for it. We know how to reproduce
| speech in acoustically horrible places, people just don't want
| to pay for it. Acoustics is perceived as an abstract, high-
| brow, fancy classical-music-topic. That is, until people
| perceive how straining bad acoustics can be, then they want
| sudden magic solutions.
| rapjr9 wrote:
| Perhaps two sheets of material, one that acts as a high
| resolution two dimensional microphone array, the other that
| acts as a high resolution two dimensional speaker array with
| the microphone array a fixed distance from the speaker array.
| The microphone array detects sounds, the distance between
| sheets equals the processing delay as it relates to the speed
| of sound, and the speaker array cancels the wavefronts. Maybe
| two layers of microphone arrays would be needed to estimate
| the angle of arrival of the sound pressure fronts. That
| wouldn't help the problem of sound that travels through
| walls, ceiling and floor to the other half of the room (or to
| a different room). You'd need sound cancelers in front of or
| behind every room surface in every direction, and bass
| traveling through a floor seems difficult to stop since it
| would require a lot of energy. Still, a vibration isolated
| bed with these magic sound canceling sheets surrounding it
| might be fairly effective. Letting the sound of smoke alarms,
| air raid sirens, police sirens, etc. through in emergencies
| could be an issue. Sounds expensive using today's technology
| though, one sheet might require a fair amount of computer
| processing for say a 10,000 x 10,000 array of microphones and
| the same size speaker array. Starting with proper sound
| isolating construction might be cheaper. Though if mass
| produced the cost may eventually go down a lot. It doesn't
| necessarily have to solve all sound problems, just the ones
| some people find annoying. Perfect silence is in fact fairly
| spooky and freaks some people out (if you've ever been in an
| anechoic chamber).
| JamesSwift wrote:
| The massive additional cost to construction is likely what
| holds it back. If you've ever looked into soundproofing, its a
| deep rabbit hole that basically boils down to you have to
| physically isolate all the physical materials that could
| transmit noise. So basically you have an inner-room built inset
| from an outer-room shell with noise dampening attachments at
| all the points they meet.
| ineedaj0b wrote:
| the cheapest way when I worked construction was doubling the
| drywall. Put up two sheets instead of one on all walls.
| Typical insulation in the walls was fine but double sheeting
| led to a significant reduction.
| dissuade wrote:
| Cars. Cars are the problem.
|
| Don't make buildings cost more. Stop the noise.
|
| At the very least, you take a muffler off your Harley, you get
| your Harley taken away.
|
| Jail.
|
| Consequences for antisocial behavior.
|
| Taking the most expensive fiber in the world and then adding
| gizmos to it is the wrong way
| balfirevic wrote:
| I don't care about cars (I'm sure they are a problem for
| many, but not in my particular street). I do care that I
| can't sing and play instruments late at night.
| alexose wrote:
| > At the very least, you take a muffler off your Harley, you
| get your Harley taken away.
|
| This is one problem that I think is eminently solvable.
| Virtually _nobody_ wants these vehicles in their community.
|
| The reason the problem persists is because they disappear out
| of sight and without evidence before anyone can do anything
| about it. Just as soon as they annoy everyone, they're gone.
|
| (And let's be honest, the police aren't particularly
| incentivized to pull these people over, given that they're
| almost by definition selfish assholes who are difficult to
| deal with.)
|
| One solution I've been daydreaming of is a device that could
| cheaply and reliably capture video of passing vehicles
| (detailed enough to read license plates) and assign a
| loudness rating. The loudest vehicles could be shared to a
| database, and the data made freely available to whatever
| agencies are responsible for issuing tickets.
|
| I suspect that with a large enough body of a evidence, the
| existing laws become much easier to enforce.
| dissuade wrote:
| the police are the same people or at least the same kind of
| antisocial
| konschubert wrote:
| I bet you that they wanted to do the nose cancelling method and
| then discovered they applying a static voltage worked much
| better.
|
| I am still bit sure how well it really works.
| thfuran wrote:
| I don't think applying a static voltage would do much. But as
| to how well it works,
|
| > In vibration-mediated suppression mode, the fabric could
| reduce sound transmission up to 75 percent.
|
| So about 6 dB reduction.
| konschubert wrote:
| Thanks For pointing out that number. I didn't see that
| somehow.
|
| I was referring to this:
|
| > In the other, more surprising technique, the fabric is held
| still to suppress vibrations that are key to the transmission
| of sound. This prevents noise from being transmitted through
| the fabric and quiets the volume beyond. This second approach
| allows for noise reduction in much larger spaces like rooms
| or cars.
| thfuran wrote:
| Yeah, but I don't think that can be achieved by applying a
| static voltage. I think it'd operate pretty similarly to
| regular nose cancelling where it requires a dynamic signal,
| but the goal to is keep the fabric stationary rather than
| to produce a vibration that negates some incident sound at
| some position. Although maybe that really is as easy as
| hooking the piezo fibers up to a low-impedance constant
| voltage source?
| AltruisticGapHN wrote:
| A quieter world would be life changing. It's incredible how low
| tech we are in regard to sound.
| piva00 wrote:
| From my own experience, it is life changing.
|
| I grew up in Sao Paulo, Brazil, an extremely noisy city mostly
| due to traffic: old vehicles, motorbikes with open exhausts,
| cars honking, noisy trucks passing by residential
| neighbourhoods, an airport inside the city (with take-off and
| landing ramps over major residential neighbourhoods, including
| one I lived at), etc.
|
| Moved to Sweden more than a decade ago and lived in very quiet
| places here, nowadays right in front of a forest with a couple
| of lakes nearby, and I simply cannot spend more than a few
| weeks back in Sao Paulo after getting used to the quietness. I
| feel much, much more stressed just existing there, even inside
| apartments on the 20th floor, even on the "quieter" parts of
| the city, it's a physical feeling that I do not shake off until
| I'm back home in Sweden.
|
| One can get "used" to noisy environments but the difference it
| is to live in quieter areas is really hard to describe, I don't
| think I can tolerate living in noisy environments after seeing
| how life is on the other end of the spectrum...
| soneca wrote:
| I live in Sao Paulo and I noticed that contrast when I
| visited the central area of Kopenhagen. It was impressive and
| delightful how quiet that neighborhood (without cars) is.
|
| Of course I still can tolerate the noise, since I still live
| here. I am used to it and, most of the times, I don't
| consciously care. But I do appreciate and miss the quietness.
| throwaway13337 wrote:
| I had a similar experience when I moved to a very rural house
| for a couple of years. It was extremely comfortable.
|
| Whenever I got back to the city, I felt overwhelmed.
|
| I ended up living in the city and getting used to the noise
| again. I made the conscious decision to do so because I felt
| like I limited myself a lot in the places that were
| acceptable.
|
| Comfort is it's own prison.
|
| I wonder, though, if there is some kind of gain I miss out on
| by getting used to discomfort.
| pja wrote:
| The introduction of electric vehicles has made Spanish cities
| much quieter. The youth can hurtle around on their electric
| bikes / scooters in the wee hours without waking everyone up
| for miles around!
| onemoresoop wrote:
| In NY electric bikes haven't made much of a dent in sound
| pollution, there are still fat slobs on their Harley's
| disturbing blocks and blocks of residents either at night
| or during the day. Hoping I can drape this silk over my
| ears or something...
| nox101 wrote:
| Interesting? I don't generally find forest to be quiet. The
| cricket noises, shuffling leaves, etc keep me up. Of course
| city noises keep me up to but suburbs are often quiet
| flawsofar wrote:
| suburbs are the worst.
|
| Natural noises have a rhythm that doesn't stress us out and
| wake us. Methodical.
|
| A busy road can mostly start to blend into white noise.
| Unless it's absolute sociopaths honking in residential
| neighborhoods.
|
| Suburbs though have leaf blowers that your asshole neighbor
| uses 2 hours before it's legal to use it.
|
| That noise is inconsistent, and it is the worst sound. Some
| people just suck though.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> Natural noises have a rhythm that doesn't stress us
| out and wake us.
|
| Florida. Key West. Protected bird species. The parking
| lot roosters. Nothing methodical about them.
| piva00 wrote:
| I don't enjoy absolute silence at all, quietness for me is
| low intensity natural background noise. Shuffling of
| leaves, birds, crickets, wind through trees' canopy, a
| stream of water, all of that is very much soothing (and
| wanted) noise for me.
|
| I've been around a few suburbs in the USA and they aren't
| quiet to my ears, they sound dead for a lack of a better
| word. Dead with the odd noise from a car's engine and tyres
| (usually a pickup truck), lawn mower, leaf blower rushing
| through it.
|
| Absolute silence is not even natural, it gives me the
| creeps when I'm in a deafening silent ambient.
| nayuki wrote:
| Suburbs are bad in terms of noise. The biggest sources of
| noise I heard were (gas-powered) lawnmowers, the weekly
| garbage trucks, snow plows, car traffic, and air
| conditioners.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| For me it's leaf blowers. For years there was a lawn crew
| that would run a leafblower outside during a regular
| conference call I had and I would have to stop what I was
| saying while the guy went by a quarter mile away from me.
| balder1991 wrote:
| I also grew up in a Brazilian capital and during vacations
| I'd go to my grandma's place in a farm about 2km away from a
| small city in the countryside.
|
| Even to this day, one of my best memory of that place is the
| quietness I could experience by sitting at wheeling chair in
| the front of the house and the only sound you'd hear would be
| the wind, birds and sometimes chickens nearby.
|
| Nowadays it isn't the same sadly, because the city grew
| enough turn the road at the front much more busy. Now there's
| a motorbike or truck passing by every 2 minutes, which spoils
| the whole experience.
| faceplanted wrote:
| You seem to think the issue is noise, but have you considered
| noise might just be the most noticeable symptom of general
| city living? i.e. having much less personal space, nature,
| privacy, and free time to spend in them?
| geodel wrote:
| Ok, so what are those place where one have lot of personal
| space, nature , privacy and free time but very noisy all
| the time.
| piva00 wrote:
| I had a great time living in cities, and still miss it.
| It's not an objective choice, depends absolutely on your
| preferences and lifestyle if city living is worth it or
| not.
|
| Having less personal space, privacy, nature, etc. are
| trade-offs for what a city provides if you are into city
| life. I don't live far away from the city centre but have
| nature around, depending where you live on Earth it's not
| mutually exclusive to have access to both.
|
| So the issue is noise, the rest are trade-offs one can make
| but I'd venture to say that almost absolutely no one would
| choose "noisy environment" as a preference for their
| lifestyle.
| globular-toast wrote:
| 99% of noise is cars and motorbikes. The correct approach is
| not to invent some high-tech workaround but to go after the
| source of the problem. Otherwise it's like spending time micro-
| optimising a program that solves the wrong problem.
|
| We don't even need to do anything radical like getting rid of
| cars. They can be quiet. Just ban loud vehicles. Force the use
| of quiet tyres on the road. Do not allow modifications that
| remove silencers etc. to be used on the road. Race tracks
| already implement a SPL test for cars at the exhaust. It would
| be dead easy to implement this for road cars. Already you've
| probably eliminated the need for anything high-tech for most
| people.
|
| Then, for the next level, we need to keep driving cars out of
| our living spaces. Considering the bicycle exists, there is no
| need for people to transport their bodies from the outside of
| town to the inside at an average speed of less than 15mph[0].
| It's insane.
|
| [0] https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-
| do...
| GrinningFool wrote:
| > 99% of noise is cars and motorbikes
|
| If you live in the city, sure. But 99% of the noise I deal
| with is family members going about their lives. Would love a
| solution to help prevent sound transfer indoors, so that I
| can focus (and sleep) better.
| KingMob wrote:
| Tell your family to stop motorbiking to the bathroom in the
| middle of the night. Bam, problem solved.
| jaggederest wrote:
| Already exists, same as is used for any other
| soundproofing. Rockwool insulation, resilient channels and
| a second layer of drywall, mass loaded vinyl, acoustic
| panels and tapestries (can hide some more mass loaded vinyl
| in there too), acoustic adhesive, scored screws to kill
| floor squeaks. They're all quite expensive but hey! Very
| DIY accessible.
|
| For exterior noise the biggest bang for the buck is
| replacing windows. I had some soundproof windows put onto
| my previous house and you could close the door on a parade
| going by and not even know it was happening.
| smeej wrote:
| Curtains add a flexibility to the use of space that walls
| do not. If I only have overnight guests very
| occasionally, I don't want to wall in part of my living
| room to accommodate them, but I'd love to be able to hang
| a curtain from some removable hooks that would give them
| some real noise privacy.
| jusssi wrote:
| Go countryside, they said, it'll be quiet.
|
| Except for: tractors, harvesters, mopeds, quadbikes,
| chainsaws, circular saws, nailguns, lawnmowers,
| leafblowers, snowblowers, diesel generators, motorboats,
| skijets, snowmobiles.
| ku1ik wrote:
| This.
|
| I moved to a countryside 2 years ago, escaping from city
| noise. Now, I'm going back (although to the outer, more
| quiet side of the city) because I'm going mad -
| lawnmowers, dogs, tractors, diesel generators, dogs,
| dogs, lawnmowers, dogs, ...
| est wrote:
| > 99% of noise is cars and motorbikes
|
| EVs are incredibly quiet. (but yes they still honk)
| dns_snek wrote:
| Only at very low speeds, past 30km/h (18mph) the noise from
| the tyres starts to approach or surpass the noise from the
| engine so they're nearly equivalent.
| rplnt wrote:
| Yes, but then there are few idiots with modified cars (or
| most motorbikes in general) that are orders of magnitudes
| louder and can be heard from kilometers away.
| harywilke wrote:
| There are efforts to attack the car tyre noise problem by
| grinding groves into the surface of the road. it's called
| "Next Generation Concrete Surface" I remember hearing
| about it on the "Twenty Thousand Hertz" podcast [0] [0]
| https://www.20k.org/episodes/sonicutopia
| PeterStuer wrote:
| We had grooved concrete here some decades ago. Luckily
| they got rid of those as the noise was _much_ worse than
| normal surfaces.
| adrianN wrote:
| EVs are now required to make a noise at low speeds and at
| high speeds tires dominate. The best option is fewer cars,
| the second best option is lower speed limits (with
| enforcement!).
| infecto wrote:
| The majority of noise is not from the ICE itself but from
| the noise of the tires on the pavement. EVs have the same
| issues as all other vehicles.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| We live on a semi-main road. Normal engines aren't really
| noticeable or annoying. Nearly all of the road noise is
| generated by tires with a fraction coming from large truck
| engines and vehicles with broken exhausts.
|
| Tires are shockingly loud.
| photonbeam wrote:
| Smooth roads really help with this, but no one seems to
| care
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Smooth roads come with grip problems - especially in the
| rain.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Very true. One of the remarkable things about Dutch cities is
| how quiet they are. Sometimes I step outside and just hear
| nothing and it's almost unsettling. Never experienced that in
| cities at home in Ireland were cars dominante, even in cities
| less than half the size.
| financypants wrote:
| In Switzerland I believe they have a noise ordinance on
| Sundays - no loud noises, incl. especially things like lawn
| mowers allowed on Sundays.
| balder1991 wrote:
| Unfortunately that's a social problem that one person can't
| solve alone. Here in Brazil it seems to be a common problem
| that individuals looking for attention will modify their
| motorbikes to be extremely loud and I've never seen this kind
| of thing getting much outrage from other people. They treat
| it as normal and police seem to have more pressing things to
| worry about.
| konschubert wrote:
| In Paris they added automatically ticketing noise/detecting
| cameras.
|
| It's a matter of people wanting it.
| smeej wrote:
| Just because there are bigger problems, it doesn't mean there
| isn't demand to solve smaller ones.
|
| For example, most of the churches where I live have a big
| meeting room underneath their main worship space. This room
| has curtains to divide it into smaller spaces for a dozen or
| more different meetings, including Sunday school, where a
| dozen (often noisy) children might be in each room.
|
| Having curtains that genuinely reduce the noise between the
| areas would make a huge difference! It would reduce the
| demand to build new buildings with separate walled rooms that
| wouldn't be used most of the time.
|
| Adding flexibility of use to larger spaces with a variety of
| demands is a problem worth solving, even if it's not as big
| of a problem as motor vehicle noise in large cities.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| Where I am right now 99% of the noise is coming from animals.
| The birds are non stop dawn til dusk and there is currently a
| dog barking...
| queuebert wrote:
| Same here. Loudest noise is one of my servers, but after
| that is birds and cicadas. I wish I could make the birds
| shut the hell up, but that sounds like the start of a
| horror movie.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > 99% of noise is cars and motorbikes.
|
| I live atm in a place not too far from an airport: I see
| planes at a distance several times a day, big ones.
|
| I cannot hear them: triple-glazed windows everywhere in the
| apartment. It works.
|
| I hate noise: since forever I assemble (or have the shop
| assemble for me) PCs that are extremely quiet. Otherwise I
| will hear it. AMD 7700X CPU in "eco" mode (in the BIOS) and
| Noctua cooler/fan, Be Quiet! PSU, Be Quiet! tower. No GPU
| besides the CPU's iGPU (so it's fanless). I cannot _hear_
| that thing.
|
| Then I love music. I'll hear that one loose bolt that did
| detach and is now vibrating in the system ceiling when I
| listen to music.
|
| Noisy fridge, fans (there's one in one of the toilet), this
| or that device humming: there are many source of noise
| _inside_ your place that can be really annoying when your
| place is quiet.
|
| Besides the triple-glazed windows, the (small) building is
| well built: no common walls with neighbors on the same floor
| (it's the stairs and elevator that do separate the
| apartments). Only 8 apartments. Very smart architecture.
| Ultra quiet.
|
| > The correct approach is not to invent some high-tech
| workaround but to go after the source of the problem.
|
| You've never tried a place with properly installed triple-
| glazed windows: you'll be surprised. I'm not saying cars
| shouldn't be less noisy but making your living place quieter
| ain't that complicated: (quality and properly installed)
| triple-glazed windows and call it a day.
| xavxav wrote:
| These are all valid points, I also very annoyed at noisy
| home appliances (fridges...), but I'm always shocked by how
| loud it is as soon as you step outside. I remember during
| the first lockdown I would take walks out in Paris and it
| was so quiet and peaceful; the sheer quantity of decibels
| originating from motorized vehicles is insane.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I also like fresh air, though.
| axelthegerman wrote:
| Happy for you, most houses I visited in Canada are so
| poorly insulated (noise and temperatures) that it's
| laughable and triple glased windows would just move the
| problem from windows to walls.
|
| Asked a home building company if they build with concrete
| (not that you couldn't insulate a wood construction though)
| and they scoffed saying it would take 15 years to recoup
| the costs through energy savings... Which doesn't sound
| that long to me, it's a house not a car
| paulsutter wrote:
| > Force the use of quiet tyres on the road
|
| Could you expand on this? Above 20-30mph tire noise is the
| dominant noise from vehicles [1] and I haven't yet found a
| reference that shows significant reduction by choice of tires
|
| Personally I think we need to put cars underground - without
| tunnels we'll be in traffic hell forever[2]. And imagine the
| quiet.
|
| [1] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/pavement/sustainability/articles
| /ti...
|
| [2] Elon Musk
| globular-toast wrote:
| When you buy tyres they actually come with a dB rating, at
| least in the EU. See: https://www.protyre.co.uk/car-help-
| advice/tyre-selection/wha...
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > 99% of noise is cars and motorbikes.
|
| It depends on where you live. My apartment building is older,
| built before acoustic norms came into effect. I can hear my
| neighbor two floors up wake up in the middle of the night to
| take a pee.
|
| I have 0 issues with traffic or other city noise, even though
| I like having my windows open and live in Paris, one of the
| densest cities in the world.
| tsss wrote:
| Cars aren't the sort of noise that I primarily care about.
| Neighbors with their god-awful dogs and children that scream
| and hit the walls 24/7 are far worse.
| nayuki wrote:
| > 99% of noise is cars and motorbikes
|
| See Not Just Bikes' "Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| As I read your comment I became aware of just how loud a simple
| standing fan I have currently behind me is, even on the lowest
| of settings. Fan design feels comically lacking in this regard.
| I am sure it could be much quieter even when faster.
|
| Dyson fans are meant to be quieter, but for a premium.
| blueaquilae wrote:
| I suspect this can explain a lot of the IQ loss since it become
| difficult to build concentration.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| What IQ loss? IQ scores have consistently increased over time
| simonsarris wrote:
| I'm afraid your knowledge is a bit out of date. Even Flynn
| has given talks about the "reverse Flynn effect" in the
| past three decades. IQ scores have been going down.
|
| Recently: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii
| /S016028962...
| pixl97 wrote:
| My suspicion on this is not the noise from the device, or
| even the devices themselves are the problem... It's that
| we sit on our ass all day watching/listening to them.
| Brain health is correlated to exercise and movement.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| If we're talking about concentration, social media/devices
| likely play a _much_ larger part.
| mrtesthah wrote:
| Insofar as traffic is concerned, any drop in IQ would be more
| likely related to PM2.5 pollution levels than noise:
|
| https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/air-
| pol...
| goda90 wrote:
| A quieter world is one where the outdoors is quieter because we
| stop producing so much noise in the first place. This would
| benefit us and wildlife, which are very negatively impacted by
| not just our classic pollution but our noise and light
| pollution too.
| 2trill2spill wrote:
| Agreed, its one of the many reasons I cant wait for the shift
| from ICE vehicles to EVs, they are just so much quieter.
| nixass wrote:
| If you're nearby any moderately busy road it's not the
| engine what makes noise but the tires and then air going
| around the car. Engine/exhaust noise is a problem but easy
| to solve
| pixl97 wrote:
| Yep, there are plenty of ICE vehicles that are quite. A
| large number of cars/small trucks that are loud are
| designed that way because the roaring engine noise sells
| the car.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| I believe it bas to do more with vehicular speed than
| business. At low speeds, engine noise dominates; on a
| freeway, it's the tyres.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Engine/exhaust noise is a problem but easy to solve
|
| It's easy from a technical standpoint but practically
| impossible from a human one. The vast majority of people
| simply don't notice or care that some large percentage of
| vehicles are intentionally modified to be louder than the
| legal maximum. Police won't enforce it, and most citizens
| barely register the noise as present, much less a
| problem.
|
| Banning ICE vehicles altogether may very well be the only
| thing that actually gets the problem solved, since that
| actually has _more_ momentum behind it than enforcement
| of existing noise regulations does.
| ldoughty wrote:
| I'm not sure "large percentage" is a statement I'd agree
| with, my searching skills are failing me, do you have any
| kind of source for that? I'd be shocked if it was over
| 5%...
| cassianoleal wrote:
| I live near a medium-busy street. I haven't seen actual
| numbers but it wouldn't surprise me if at peak hours
| there are over 100 cars passing per minute.
|
| If 5% of those are overly loud, that's an average of a
| very loud noise every 3 seconds, and most of them will
| take somewhere between 5 and 10 seconds to come and
| finally go away. If you don't think that's large, we have
| very different noise thresholds.
| lolinder wrote:
| I guess "large" is subjective. 1-5% is the ballpark I
| have in my head based on experience, which qualifies as
| "large" to me when I get passed by thousands of cars a
| day.
|
| The hard numbers I'm aware of are about motorcycles,
| which have _much_ higher rates of illegal modifications
| than other vehicles. This source documents a bunch of
| other sources, with estimates ranging from 40-70%:
|
| https://noisefree.org/sources-of-noise/motorcycles/
| mrtesthah wrote:
| Quiet asphalt is a thing:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8
| llsf wrote:
| I found this to be true for cars and maybe trucks, but
| not for motorbikes. Some extreme motorbikes rattle all
| parked cars and trigger alarms.
|
| When Harley-Davidson and other moppet/scooters would be
| all electric, that would be quitter.
| lukan wrote:
| "When Harley-Davidson and other moppet/scooters would be
| all electric, that would be quitter."
|
| Not that easy, the electric Harley is intentionally
| louder than the combustion version - because people want
| them loud.
|
| (I am not a fan of banning in general, but banning noise
| is fine by me)
| Alupis wrote:
| > If you're nearby any moderately busy road it's not the
| engine what makes noise but the tires and then air going
| around the car.
|
| You cannot even hear modern ICE cars running unless you
| are really close to them. My neighbor's garage door
| opener is louder than his ICE car...
|
| Road noise is tires/air like you mentioned. Not a real
| way to deal with that.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Yes and no at the same time. Tire noise is significant
| which is also a function of vehicle weight, speed, and tire
| design. You tend not to notice the tire noise as most of
| our interaction with cars is in places like parking lots
| where engine noise is much more pronounced.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Depends what we are talking about. In Europe, uber EV
| moped drivers are sooooo much nicer than the regular
| ones. Most of our interaction with cars are on side
| walks, along moving cars.
| tayo42 wrote:
| There is still honking, car alarms, and bass
| ineedaj0b wrote:
| You might be forgetting about how loud birds can be. At least
| twice a week I'll wake up to birds chirping until at least
| 7am.
|
| They are extremely loud, second only to no muffler cars and
| sport bikes blasting through deserted back roads.
|
| If you live in the woods with trees, they'll sound as loud as
| the ocean. If you live near the ocean, well that's always
| loud.
|
| The biggest offenders are:
|
| 1. cars/trucks 2. birds 3. airplanes 4. ac units 5. ocean 6.
| wind with trees
|
| You'd never know trees sound like the ocean if you aren't
| around trees. Trains are loud but intermittent. And trains
| don't run very often anymore where I am.
| lupire wrote:
| DDT helps with the birds.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| So does a pellet gun.
|
| GP is very right. To this day, I know that if I don't go
| to sleep until ~03:30, I might just as well stay up -
| when the birds wake and start making noise, I won't be
| able to sleep at all. Cars, trams, trains, I can tune
| out. There's something about bird chirps that makes them
| impossible for my brain to ignore. It's worse than loud
| snoring.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| earplugs
| hinkley wrote:
| Cicadas. Jesus Christ.
| spinach wrote:
| What about lawn mowers/leaf blowers/snow blowers? And dogs.
| rtkwe wrote:
| We know quite a bit about how to block and mitigate sound the
| issue is it's transmitted through the air which we want to move
| around for other reasons so it's tough to block one without
| making stuffy areas.
| rolandog wrote:
| > The sound-suppressing silk builds off the group's prior work to
| create fabric microphones.
|
| >In that research, they sewed a single strand of piezoelectric
| fiber into fabric. Piezoelectric materials produce an electrical
| signal when squeezed or bent. When a nearby noise causes the
| fabric to vibrate, the piezoelectric fiber converts those
| vibrations into an electrical signal, which can capture the
| sound.
|
| Well, that is ... disconcerting. A slightly funny and dystopian
| future comes to mind of world leaders having to get naked to
| ensure they're not being spied on by the possibly nation-state-
| hacked ad-tracker-subsidized clothes.
| olleromam91 wrote:
| Cool research. The assessed conditions are very tightly
| controlled, and I wish they better described the sensing
| mechanism used for the feedback in the "vibration mediated
| suppression" method. but the new material approach is promising
| however, as it's much less intrusive than other approaches.
| Jailbird wrote:
| My first thought was that airplanes need noise canceling for the
| engine sounds. There's a real difference in a long flight with
| and without noise canceling headphones. Effective (better?) noise
| cancelation for the whole cabin would be impactful.
| johnvanommen wrote:
| It's difficult if not impossible to do active noise
| cancellation for multiple people simultaneously.
| sheepscreek wrote:
| What a time to be alive! Excited at the prospect of quieter cars,
| better noise cancelling headphones, quieter airplanes...
|
| My only wish is for a fabric that doesn't involve poor silkworms.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Question for research: Do these sound absorbing properties also
| exist in plant leafs?
| prepend wrote:
| Would this work with fabrics so we have clothes that give us
| quiet zones around us?
| smolder wrote:
| Reading the comments here seems to indicate to me people don't
| know a lot about the subject areas surrounding noise like
| acoustics and building construction, but I think that just
| reflects society more broadly.
|
| The amount of investment in mitigating noise pollution is pretty
| underwhelming, partly because it's expensive, I think, but
| largely from ignorance. I tried to get a former general manager
| to acoustically treat a big obnoxiously echoey open floor space
| and their solution was to ignore everything I said and buy some
| annoying white noise generators, which misunderstands the problem
| we had with the space. Tons of apartment buildings cheap out on
| isolation in a really tragic way, where the difference to quality
| of life could be big with only minor adjustments to plans. The
| most tragic from my experience: when some builder decided to skip
| putting a real wall between neighboring apartments' bedrooms.
| Instead there were closets constructed from a single 3/4" layer.
| That "wall" couldn't stop a snore.
| llsf wrote:
| The particularly frustrating part is that is usually way
| cheaper to put sound barriers during construction, than
| retrofitting later on.
|
| We have been discussing this with my neighbors. We are both
| committed to eventually pull the trigger to retrofit, but the
| initial estimate is $70K and one apartment being under heavy
| construction for months...
| hinkley wrote:
| Maybe you should arrange to do it at the same time and get
| temporary rentals somewhere else.
|
| Presumably you're doing a shared wall, but having the plumber
| or electrician out for two jobs is probably cheaper than
| having them out twice, right? Especially since there will be
| similarities in the levels of stupid they find in the walls.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| It'd be great if there were better ways for consumers to
| understand what they're getting.
|
| A semi recent house hunting trip involved trying to shout
| between rooms, going outside and banging on pots and pans. Very
| informal ways of trying to guess.
|
| It's be wonderful if there were some standard ways to assess,
| that builders could advertise. Figuring out how to make a
| rating that is both not crazy expensive to assess, and also
| meaningful enough that consumers place some level of trust in
| it isnt easy.
|
| But wow, it feels like there has to be visibility into what we
| get to drive change. And right now there's just so few ways to
| know what you're getting.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| N=1 but in my personal experience most people don't care about
| loud sound levels anymore. Neither when they produce it nor
| when they are experiencing it. I blame two things: a) they are
| already deaf anyway b) I am getting grumpier and have always
| been more sensible to noise than others.
| simoncion wrote:
| > ...most people don't care about loud sound levels anymore.
|
| It's probably less this and more (at least in the US) that
| it's very, very, very hard to find "multi-family" housing
| that's not soul-crushingly substandard [0], so at some point
| you just give up and try to do a reasonably good job of
| balancing "living your damn life" with "not making so much
| noise as to be enormously obnoxious too often".
|
| [0] It might be true that very few USians have ever lived in
| a place with actually adequate acoustic insulation... so very
| few folks even would think to look for it.
| neves wrote:
| I use earplugs :-)
| hinkley wrote:
| You ever eat while wearing earplugs?
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| To me it is always a crazy feeling to visit some old school
| restaurant or bar with heavy drapes/carpets/textiles covering
| the flat surfaces. They have a feeling of almost being
| haunted/enchanted, but the exact reason isn't necessarily
| obvious. The sound of people talking around you takes on a
| peculiar quality and feels simultaneously warm and more distant
| than it actually is.
| hinkley wrote:
| I miss the big overstuffed booths. I don't like the person
| behind me wiggling, but I didn't realize how much sound they
| ate until they were gone.
|
| Where are you finding these old school restaurants? We need
| to make lists.
| stevage wrote:
| I once paid someone on airtasker to research me ten cafes
| in Melbourne that have carpet. They only found one, and I
| already knew it. It has since closed.
| hinkley wrote:
| Restaurants opted for ease of cleaning about 40 years ago and
| that changeover happened fast enough that some adults here
| probably never really experienced a restaurant situations where
| you could have a conversation without raising your voice.
|
| Long ago when Red Robin still had good food, I didn't want to
| go there because it was loud as all fuck in their restaurants.
| Now every restaurant is exactly the same.
|
| Wearing earplugs while chewing is a very strange experience.
| paulbgd wrote:
| I'm looking up photos of restaurants 40+ years ago and
| struggling to find any obvious acoustic differences in their
| designs (I do notice carpet seems more prominent?) Do you
| have any examples of what they used to do better?
| hinkley wrote:
| Booths, designs, and acoustic tile ceilings off the top of
| my head.
|
| They went with easy to clean floors and took out the
| acoustic tiles leaving the ceilings and air handling
| systems bare and echoic.
|
| In fancy buildings you also had a lot of decorative wood
| and molding breaking up the sound. And those embossed tin
| tiles, covered with a few layers of paint.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Obviously it varies widely by restaurant and location, but
| in general I'd agree with the statement that restaurants
| are a bit louder than they used to be. I'm talking about
| table service restaurants, rather than fast food. I think
| the reason is probably that real estate is more expensive
| now, so restaurants are trying to pack people closer
| together. Architectural styles are different as well, with
| spaces being more open, ceilings higher, and more hard
| surfaces (how many new restaurants have carpet?). There may
| be differences in people's behavior too, but I can't say
| that for sure.
|
| For a while during covid, a place I would go to on occasion
| had full-height plexiglass dividers between each booth. It
| made such a huge difference in noise, I was sad when they
| got rid of them.
| Alupis wrote:
| Red Robin isn't exactly the type of restaurant I would think
| of when I want a quiet table - it is half a sport's bar after
| all.
|
| If you go to a nicer restaurant, you will get a quiet table.
| It's the type of restaurant that matters - not so much
| acoustic design.
| class3shock wrote:
| If you came looking for actual numbers the closest they come is
| saying "in vibration-mediated suppression mode it could reduce
| sound transmission up to 75%".
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Awesome. I'll buy the curtains or piezo electric fiber windows
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