Slashdot Mirror
Controlling tha Noise?
Quite a few submitters have asked "How do you make a quiet PC". Well, rather than tackle it from the PC standpoint, how about devices that
can quiet a whole environment? Along these lines, 16977 asks: "I've been considering building an active noise control system for an area about the size of a closet. ANC today doesn't work quite as well as it did in Silence, Please (works best for low frequencies, only covers small areas, etc.), but it is still a fascinating technology. I'm wondering if anyone out there has done similar projects with either the hardware or controlling software of ANC, and what information they have to share." And since I have your attention on this subject, sammy.lost-angel.com asks: "I would like to ask the slashdot community about their recommendations for noise-cancelling headphones. Traveling in planes is very noisy, and with MP3 players becoming more and more common, I would like to hear some experiences with various different noise cancelling headphones paired up with MP3 players. How well do they work in general? What is the best and most cost-effective headphones available?"
Use some foam (the kind used in upholstery works nice) around the edges of fans where they meet the case. You'd be surprised how much of that fan noise is actually due to the vibrations being transmitted to the steel itself.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Slashdot Troll HOWTO
This is version 0.6 of a troll HOWTO, sort of a companion piece to jsm's excellent troll FAQ. As a draft, comments and criticism are always welcome, if not appreciated :)
Section 1 - Trolling techniques
There are techniques used by successful trolls to elicit the maximum amount of responses from unthinking /.ers. This section is dedicated to explaining how to use these in the course of your trolls. Remember though, a great troll can break any or all of these and still be successful...
Because you're posting as an AC, your troll will generally be ignored in favour of posters using their accounts, and so getting in early is essential. A good guideline is to get into the first 20 posts, so that people reading the article will see the troll before it is swamped out. One way of increasing the speed with which you get your troll into play is to prepare them beforehand, and then quickly customise them for the current article. This is easier than it sounds since /. typically repeats stories with small variations and runs lots of similar stories.
Note that this is why Jon Katz stories are pretty worthless as trolling material - by the time you've found the article and prepared a troll there's already 50+ posts on it, most of them flaming Jon Katz anyway :)
Once you've got your troll in, you need people to actually read it. You also want replies - /.ers are more likely to read your troll if it starts a large thread. You also want to remember that some people have set their comment thresholds to values higher than 0 - to get the attention of these you either want to get your post moderated up (see Style, below) or get a reply which gets moderated up to 4 or 5, in which case your troll becomes visible to all.
An alternative to the time-honoured tradition of AC trolling is that of creating a "troll" account. This gives you the advantage of posting at 1 rather than 0, and slashbots are more likely to take you seriously, especially if you at least sound reasonable. If you do this, try to avoid posting stuff where it is obvious you're a troll under the account - post it anoymously instead - some slightly more canny readers actually check your user info before they reply. Not many though :)
The ultimate goal of the troll account is to secure the +1 bonus, which is currently received once you hit 26 points of Karma. To get there, employ the techniques of karma whoring that we see every day on /. and watch the karma roll in. And of course once you get the +1 bonus, the world is your oyster in terms of /. Posts made at a default of 2 hit even those people with the threshold of 2, are more likely to get moderated up even further if they are at all coherent, and people tend to lose their critical thinking abilities in the face of the +1 bonus. Milk it for all it's worth.
To get people reading it a troll needs to be easily readable. Make sure you break it down into easily digestible paragraphs, use HTML tags where appropriate (but always make sure you close them properly) and use whitespace appropriately.
Generally a troll shouldn't be too short, otherwise it'll get lost in the crowd. A workable minimum is a couple of medium paragraphs. Conversely, it shouldn't be too long, or no-one will bother to read it. Keep it to a happy medium.
Whilst spelling is important if you want the troll to be taken "seriously", key spelling mistakes can draw out the spelling zealots, especially if you mis-spell the name of a venerated /. hero, like Linus Torveldes or Richard Strawlman (thanks dmg). Related to this is the use of the wrong word, explaining an acronym as being something it isn't or making a word into an acronym even when it isn't.
The subject line needs to draw attention to your post without making it obvious that it is a troll. A simple statement of the main point of your argument can work here.
StyleOnce you realise that most moderators don't bother to read past the first paragraph or two, you can use this fact to craft trolls that can be moderated up as "Insightful" (note that I mean this in the /. sense rather than the real-world sense). Start off fairly reasonable, making statements that are /. friendly and not being too controversial. As the troll goes on, make it more and more controversial, building it up for the coup de grace in the final paragraph.
As we all know, a post with links is considered "informative" by the /. crowd. Moderators love it, and they rarely check the links, so be sure to include as many as possible. And make them wrong - a link to the Perl website should instead point to the Python website instead, and vice versa. The other alternative to incorrect links is "useful" links to places like www.linux.org and i.e. places /.ers could never have found on their own :)
The ideal troll requires no feeding - it runs on its own, generating flamewars between clueless /.ers for your amusement. But often a troll requires some help and so you should consider feeding it. Feeding is best reserved for people making either completely clueless responses, people making responses with holes in, or those wonderful people who write a 2000-word point-by-point rebuttal of your troll.
Always keep in mind the kind of things advocated on /. so that you can play on and against them. This is why anti-Linux, creationist, gun-loving, pro-corporation trolls work well - the vast majority of /.ers hold the opposite viewpoints. And if a few people agree with you, so much the better - it merely validates your viewpoint in the eyes of readers.
Be arrogant. You, as a troll, know that you're right. No other explanation could exist. The wronger the "fact", the more assertively you should state it. Make it clear that you are better than everyone else - you know the truth and they are just too stupid to realise it. Use plenty of sarcasm, and use "quotes" to show it to people too dumb to realise.
Being offensive in your initial troll can be counter-productive - it causes moderators to mark you down as flamebait in general. But if you're feeding, then you can get away with calling /.ers all kinds of things. Make broad generalisations about /. readers - call them "long-haired Linux zealots", "socialist open-source bigots" or whatever. Stereotyping is encouraged - people always want to think that they're an individual, and will point this out to you given half a chance.
Great for articles with a political or social bent, this kind of troll expresses complete indifference to the topic at hand, wondering who on Earth cares about it. An alternative method is to say that the topic only concerns a certain group of people - criminals, idiots, hackers (always use this instead of crackers) or whatever group you want to offend.
Appear to take the same stance as the people you're trying to troll - claim you're as much a fan of Linux as the next man, but... This way you can make all kinds of claims in the sure knowledge that you actually know what you're talking about. A great phrase to use here is "In my experience". Remember to act like all the things you're pointing out are unfortunate but true.
Always accuse /.ers of being elitist. This is an easy thing to do seeing as a lot of them are. Claim that is their grandmother couldn't use it, then they are just into it to feel better than Joe Sixpack rather than "doing it for the average user". This is always great for working into anti-Linux trolls - attack command-line tools and poorly designed desktops.
The opposite of the above. Claim that technology or whatever is only for the elite of society and that any attempt to open it up for everyone is wrong, an attack on intellectualism and possibly even dangerous. If people were meant to understand these things then they would, and it's their fault if they're too stupid to learn.
Never be afraid to contradict yourself, even in the space of a single sentence. The phrases "I am a top programmer who codes in VB" or "I am a supporter of open source who uses NT at work and 95 at home" will be sure to get a response from some weenie smugly pointing out the contradiction. Confuse the issue more by engaging in contradiction when you are feeding - this will confuse /.ers who will then make even more stupid replies, leaving them even more wide open for response.
Clues
If you're feeling brave, give the reader clues that this is an obvious troll. The classic example here is dmg's stock phrase "I am often accused of trolling (whatever that is)", but also feel free to use phrases like "I have not read the article, and I don't know much about XYZ but I feel I must comment". If anyone responds to a troll with these kinds of clues in it, feel free to bask in the glow of knee-jerk /. responses.
If you're unlucky someone will accuse you of being a troll (surely not!) and try and ruin it for you. If you don't want it all to end there, then be sure to counter it by accusing them of being small-minded and petty, saying that it's easier for them to say it's a troll than to accept that people have different opinions. Be sure to say this in the subject line, especially if their subject was the infamous "YHBT. YHL. HAND."
Given that /. has its community of regular trolls (hi guys!), it's only polite to publish your troll on one of the so-called "hidden" forums for all to see and admire. This way, you get to bask in the praise of other trolls, they get to contribute to your's if they want to, and you get an easy way to find the troll later on when you want to check on its progress :)
As for when to post it, that's a matter of opinion really. You can either post it straight away or leave it will after people start biting. Remember that the troll forum is also frequented by non-trolls, and sometimes you may get a self-declared "troll-buster" try and expose you. But remember, /.ers always post before thinking, and often it doesn't matter at all.
There is no real current forum at the moment thanks to various spammers hitting the sids, but try trolltalk, the original troll sid started by 80md and osm way back in the day. Generally all postings are done there as an AC, with your name at the end of the post. Include a link to the troll somewhere in the text, which ideally will be directly to the post and its replies - click on the #XX link in the thread to get there.
Sometimes you just get bored with a troll, or people start posting genuinely thoughtful stuff in reply (it does happen). When this happens it might be time to own up to the troll with a helpful "YHBT. YHL. HAND." post. Sometimes people will carry on a discussion of the issue, and if you're really lucky (and it was a great troll) they will completely fail to believe you and carry on arguing. If that happens, pat yourself on the back for writing a great troll :)
Finally, when all else fails and your troll gets moderated down to (-1, Troll) within ten seconds of you posting it, the only honourable thing to do is to accuse the moderators of smoking the cheap $3 crack (again) and give up :(
Section 2 - Types of troll
Probably the most popular kind of troll, the Maniac holds an opinion on something, and won't budge from that opinion no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented. If challenged, the Maniac will simply get more and more agitated and abusive, deriding his opponents as "idiots", "wrong-thinking", "dangerous" and "subversive". Generally the Maniac takes a position that opposes the prevalent /. beliefs, but a similar effect can be achieved by taking a typical /. viewpoint and pushing it to ridiculous extremes.
Maniacs can be crafted for practically every article /. posts, although some are more obvious targets than others. Civil liberty articles, especially on things like censorship, DMCA, UCITA that really get /.ers riled up, are usually extremely fruitful grounds for a well-crafted maniac. The other obvious type of article is anything which could possibly involve religion, especially evolution :)
Here are some fruitful avenues to explore:
Always popular, the right-wing maniac (RWM) is a God-fearing, gun-toting, flag-waving American, and proud of it. They don't care about the rest of the world, unless it's to "prove" that America is better than everything else, and they cannot stand liberal whining over civil rights. They hate the moral decay of America and want it to revert into a nation of heterosexual, Christian whites like it was meant to be. Woe betide anyone that dares to suggest otherwise.
There are two ways to approach this kind of maniac. The harder to pull off is the militant atheist, but this is quite common amongst /. posters and you would have to be very offensive to get this to work. Of course with religion trolls, the argument can go on for ever once it's started... The more common approach is the Christian fundamentalist. They are ignorant, intolerant and bigoted in the extreme. For them the Bible is the inerrant word of God revealed to man - it contains no flaws and no contradictions. Thus they are strict Creationists - mentions of evolution or cosmology will set them off on vitriolic rants. Flaming denunciations of anyone daring to contradict the "Word of God" are the way to go, and any kind of proof can always be ignored by appealing to "secular humanist brainwashing". And let's not forget, the USA is the greatest nation on Earth because it has the righteous power of Jesus Christ behind it.
Pick a philosophy, any philosophy. This troll is a troll with a cause - they have found some kind of ideological truth, and are out to expose every other philosophy as a sham. Whether it be libertarianism, objectivism, communism or capitalism, this troll will point out the obvious "flaws" in any other philosophies, whilst spouting dogma about their own. And the best thing is - you don't even need to know that much about what you're spouting - making doctrinaire mistakes will get both sides of the argument flaming you, adding to the fun.
This is an old favourite and crops up in many forms, covering the gamut from OS maniacs (Linux zealots, MS-apologists or embittered BSD fanatics), language maniacs (Pascal vs. C, C vs. C++, C++ vs. Java, Perl vs. Python, VB vs. everything), application maniacs(GIMP vs. Photoshop, Netscape vs. IE, vi vs. emacs) and also includes people who complain about how technology should only be for the 31337 hackers.Guns
Americans love their guns, and will always fight passionately for their Constitutionally guarenteed rights to bear arms and shoot people. Even the slightest hint of criticism of this will bring down the wrath of a thousand and one enraged gun-owners on you, so it's always a great point to work into a troll :)
The Expert is someone who is "savvy" in their particular field, and is perfectly willing to give their opinion on any topic even vauguely related to their field. The Expert is most likely to be from a field which /.ers as a rule despise - the classic example is dumb marketing guy, but try consultants, lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, executives, journalists (just think Jon Katz). With this kind of troll sweeping statements with little content are the norm, along wire dire portents of future catastrophe and dark hints of "insider knowledge".
Some possible angles to exploit:
The expert knows the computing industry from the inside - as a long-term pro, they can dispense knowledge knowing that they can "speak for the industry". Their smug self-satisfaction is bound to annoy, as is any suggestion that things aren't the way that /.ers would like it - saying "Linux requires the rock-solid guarantee of a trusted company like Microsoft" or "Apache cannot be trusted for mission-critical enterprise platforms" is guaranteed to get you denials explaining exactly why you're wrong, in excruciating detail.
With their tech-savvy (or law-savvy or whatever) experience, the expert is obviously the best person to point out what's wrong with things or to give out useful "factual" information. In fact this probably works best with lawyer trolls - for all that /.ers protest "IANAL", they certainly seem to think they could be, and any mistakes you make will send them rushing to prove themselves by correcting you.
Not really a "troll" in the strict Jargon File sense of the word, but they certainly should be included here :) This category includes parodies, offtopic weirdness any all kinds of amusing stuff. Not really my area of expertise, this stuff is mainly done by gnarphlager and opensourceman. Thanks to gnarphlager for this section.
Offtopic trolls, like any other, come in almost as many colours as an iMac, but generally not as cute. But then again, a good offtopic "troll" can affect more people than a repulsive little gumdrop on your desk, because you need to have someone SEE your desk before they can react. Simple? Moreso than even my overblown prose could indicate. Some basic examples:
Write a story. Keep expanding it. It doesn't matter what article you post it under, so long as it's high up. If you want people to recognize you, pick a couple themes or symbols, and carry them on throughout the story. Other alternatives include back linking or including the entire story, but adding more each time. Be funny if you want. Or if you don't feel like being funny, just be really weird. Someone will react.
This has nothing to do with anything. Be it a stream of consciousness rant, or a description of the corner of your desk. Another favorite is a monologue, read as if spoken from any one given entity to another. The more outlandish, the better (a pair of socks talking to a mousepad, for example). If you really wanted to be artsy, work in an actual metaphor or legitimate meaning behind it, but it's not necessary.
Start out with a comment about the article. Have a definite opinion of it. Then, after a little while, disintegrate into randomness. All roads eventually can eventually lead to cheese (yum), Natalie Portman, cannibalism, toasters, squirrels, futons, you name it. All it takes is a little bit of creativity. Oh, and feel free to use other trolls' motifs. Open source and all that ;-)
General tips:
Section 3 - Useful trolling links
The following links contain background information useful for trolls needing quick quotes and "expert" opinions to include.
- General purpose links
- ddi.digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html - How to deal with USENET trolls - learn your enemy
:) - www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.htm
l - A List Of Fallacious Arguments - Learn them and use them liberally - www.altairiv.demon.co.uk/troll/trollfaq.html - USENET troll HOWTO
- www.baiting.org - Baiting.org
- www.fieldingtravel.com/df/index.htm - Fielding's DangerFinder - A guide to what and where's dangerous
- Religious links
- www.godhatesamerica.com/ - God Hates America
- www.chalcedon.edu/creed.html - The Creed of Christian Reconstruction
- www.demonbuster.com - How to cast out your demons and do spiritual warfare
- riceinfo.rice.edu/armadillo/Sciacademy/riggins/th
i ngs.htm - Things Creationists hate - www.icr.org/ - Institute for Creation Research
- www.xenu.net - Operation Clambake - The fight against Scientology on the net
- www.hom.net/~angels/ - Citizens for the Ten Commandments
- www.bju.edu/rcnbc.html - The difference between Catholics and Christians
- www.geocities.com/prazske00/biblequotes.html - Bible quotes by category
- Political/economy links
- www.aynrand.org - The Ayn Rand Institute
- www.reason.com - Libertarian site
- www.freerepublic.com - Right-wing stuff
- www.jbs.org - Excellent site for all kinds of right-wingery
- www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html - Web economy bullshit generator
- Crackpot science links
- www.fixedearth.com - The Earth Is Not Moving
- www.jir.com/index.htm - The Journal of Irreproducible Results
spiralx@spazmail.com Copyright © 2000 James SkinnerCould you clarify whether you are trying to make the inside of the "closet" quiet, or trying to prevent noise
from escaping the closet. They are two very different problems. The solution for preventing noise from
escaping the closet is so straight forward that I can't imagine why you'd need to ask here. ( look into
recording booth construction ). Why you would want to solve the second problem makes no sense at all.
Headwise has a DIY noise-canceling headphone project. That's probably the most cost effective way to get a pair.
fnord
Controlling tha Noise
... if so-called editors let this past then there is no hope left for them.
Did you mean 'the'?
A three letter word in the title is spelt incorrectly
(EOE!)
In my experience, they do provide a noticable drop in background noise on a plane. But I didn't find it enough.
Quiet-ish noise is better than loud noise - but don't spend $80 (I think that's what I spent) expecting silence.
---
Oregon
Granted, this is a bit out of the price range most people are willing to pay, and are overkill if you just want headphones, but the Lightspeed 25K ANR aviation headset is fantastic.
I tried it once in my cubicle (inside a large IBM mainframe style machine room with a couple of rackfulls of machines and 4 large air conditioners) and it almost completely silenced the ambient noise.
Keep in mind, these headsets are around 20-28dD passive, plus another 23-30 dB active noice cancellation, but they are designed around the frequencies put out by 4 cylinder piston airplane engines at around 2400 RPM.
I believe Bose X headsets are similar. I don't know if their non-aviation headsets are anywhere near as good those.
BTW, The 25K's typically go for around $450-$500.
"like to hear some experiences with various different noise cancelling headphones paired up with MP3 players" Every MP3 player comes with built in Noise Cancelling functionality. All you do is NOT download any boy-band/metal-wannabe crap onto the device. Et Voila! No noise. I am one of the lucky people who has to endure South West Trains service from Woking to Waterloo, and I can often be found wedged into the first class corridor with hundreds of other people. PUBLIC SAFETY MESSAGE : If you see a 6'4" 21 stone bloke squashed into the corridor and he doesn't look happy, remember : I'm listening to "Ich Will" by Rammstein and I carry a 21" ASP baton in a belt clip. DO NOT ask me to "budge up a little".
Electronics Now (more recently named Poptronics) published a cover article on this very subject. It's in the September '97 issue. I'm quite certain you could find it at any library that carries magazines - our local public library doesn't destroy magazines until they're 5 years old, so you might be in luck if your public library has a similar policy.
The project is a very simple one. Microphones are mounted (with epoxy?) on the outside of the headphones, and their cable runs down along with the headphone cable. The control box has a phase adjustment knob that allows you to adjust for the distance between the microphone and speaker elements for maximum effectiveness.
I haven't built the project myself, but if you have enough of an interest in electronics, you can build it yourself quite easily with parts from the local Radio Shack.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
because you can never place the noise cancelation generator at the exact same place as the noise source, you will always end up with places where the noise caceling device makes the noise twice as loud. Two rocks droped in a pond create waves. some times the waves are equil amplitude and frequency but opposite polarity and cancel eachother. Other times the waves are equil frequency and aplitude but their polarity is the same. The interfearance pattern created is the basis of active noise cancelation. But since you can never get the pattern to line up perfectly, the effectiveness of noise cancelation for general white noise is horrible.
Better to dampen the source as well as possible. Liberal use of sorbothane is extremley efective in reducing noise in a computer. shock mount every fan, the motorboard, power supply, cd drive and hard drive on sorbothane risers. Use nylon screws through the sorbothane spacers with sorbothane washers. Line the inside of your case with anechoic (egg crate) foam. Bigger fans turning at lower rpm are preferable. Centrifugal fans tend to be quieter when moving a given amount of air than radial (standard) fans. 36x is about the fastest CD drive you can get that will not induce horible vibrations in addition to their noise component. fan filters made of nylon stockings reduce fan noise considerably while standard chrome fan grills actually add to the noise a fan creates.
My computer is relativly quiet (56db 12 inches from the air intake) while still moving air at 700 cfm through the case for cooling. I used 48 volt centrifugal furnace fans on sorbothane shock mounts to acomplish this.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
...a guide to karma whoring?
"I would like to hear some experiences with various different noise cancelling headphones paired up with MP3 players."
Just dont start singing out loud!
You kick back with your noise cancelling headphones on with your eyes closed, or maybe reading a book. In the next Isle a guy starts setting fire to his shoes, while just infront of you 5 blokes get a couple of knives out.
Remember to keep some awareness of what is going on around you - turbulence warning etc.
I've used Sony's MDR-NC20 model headphones with no problems for almost 2 years now. They make computer labs on campus much much quieter, and allow you to listen to music at a quieter volume. They do the same in airplanes, although I've only been up with them twice. Even if only to quiet the noise (without music), they're still valuable.
The biggest source of noise in my new machine is the heatsink fan. I would love to merely quiet that one fan, but I can't think of any sane ideas to do so. Anybody had success getting those suckers to be less noisy?
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
I got my brother some AIWA headphones at Fry's for about $50, he's used them on several plane flights and says that he can no longer hear the engines, but can still hear the flight attendants when they ask what beverage he'd like.
Don't know if you're trying to get rid of all sound, but they do a pretty good job of reducing backgroud noise. He's sworn he's never going back to non-noise cancelling headphones.
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
I have a set of these headphones... they work very well. They do exactly as your brother describes; cancel out engine noise but still allow you to hear other things. They will always accompany me on a flight; after using these you just can't go back to regular headphones.
However, I had to return mine (to Best Buy) twice because the first two pairs had problems with noise reduction only working one side.
sudo eat my shorts
I travel almost constantly and have tried Bose and Sony noise cancelling headphones. I recomend the Bose. They are quite a bit more money but in my opinion are well worth it. I don't leave home without them.
2. Expensive aviation-type ANR headphones (someone posted links) are better than the low cost ones but you still shouldn't expect any miracles. There's no substitute for an actual quiet environment.
3. For quieting down your closet, check the products and info pages at soundproofing.org. Despite its .org domain it appears to be a regular
commercial outfit, and the website design is not so great, but the stuff there looks
pretty good.
It's almost always easiest to control noise as CLOSE to the source as possible - aka, prefent the noise from being created in the first place, or else muffle it right away
As for the headphones, I have a pair of Sennheiser HD-451s that work great - makes flying reasonable, and they sound good too
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Not to come across as a jerk, but for noise canceling headphones, I know that they work by creating an equal but opposite soundwave to essentualy cancle out the original noise. Why not look at using small ear-bud type headphones and (dispite looking like a freak) put on a pair of earmuffs like you use at a gun range. Some of the better ones (like Peletor) drop the noise by almost 30 db, which is 1/8 the original sound.
As for the sound proof closet, bad sceens from movied pop into my mind, but There are a few options, but all of them make it harder to keep the room cool if you have a half dozen computers in it. I know most THX certified movie theaters have a quick solution durring building them. Instead of one layer of sheet rock/drywall per each side of the stud, they use three per side. Gets spendy, but you when isolating 120 db from one theater and the ones next door, it works. Non smooth walls help too, like carpet, here again look at a movie theater wall. Heavy/thick drapes could also be installed or hung. I just thought of possibly building a cover box out of say two or three layers of sheet rock, adding a ventalation system to it, and putting it over the loud machine(s) in question. Imagine a cardbord box that is just put over the top of the computer, only it's two layers of sheet rock, 2x4's and a door with a hindge. Think of the old printer alcoves that were for the old dot matrix printers. They were lined with foam fingers to absorb the noise.
Also, there are a lot of low noise computer fans now available, and ways that you can silence the hardware, by adding weight to a noise producer like a hard drive. If you bold on a chunck of aluminum to a hard drive, you can change the vibration frequency on it, changing the pitch you hear, and possibly force it to an extreme you cannot hear.
Who wants Pork Chops?
I've owned all three headphones, and currently use the Bose. Here are my impressions:
Aiwa (I don't remember the mode), ~$50:
- OK sound quality
- OK noise reduction
- Not-so-good comfort
Sennheiser HDC-451, ~$150:
- Good sound quality
- Good noise reduction
- Not-so-good comfort
Bose QuietComfort, $300:
- Excellent sound quality
- Good noise reduction
- Excellent comfort
The problem I had with the Aiwas and the Senns is that the earpieces sit against your ear lobes like regular open-air headphones, and after a while it becomes uncomfortable. They have thin earpads that don't offer much padding - I assume to keep noise from leaking through. The Bose set has earcups that surround your ears and sit against your head, and have a soft padding material on them. I've worn these on 5-hour flights and they don't bother me at all. The Bose also have the best sound quality, though the noise reduction doesn't seem to be any better than the Senns.
You might also want to look into Etymotic ER-4 or ER-6 headphones. These are little earbuds that seal out ambient noise (Etymotic advertises 20-25 dB passive noise reduction on the ER-4s). The ER-4s are spendy ($250-300) but the ER-6s are cheaper ($125-150). I tried a similar thing from Koss called "The Plug" but they sucked. They used a foam earplug-type material surrounding the driver on each side. The foam wasn't dense enough to seal well and it didn't hold its shape. Complete waste of time & money IMHO.
Try this. Line the room with hundreds (thousands?) of styrofoam cones, so that the walls look something like this:
>
>
>
>
(that is just one wall, stupid lameness filter)
The cones will absorb all sorts of wavelenths, and make the room really quiet. I've been in rooms like this before, and there is almost zero reverb no matter how loudly you yell or how much noise you make.
The middle mind speaks!
I'm getting really sick of the notion on slashdot that everything can be both cheap and perform spectacularly.
Here's a template for all you ask-slashdotters out there:
A Clueless Slashdroid asks: "I've recently become interested in performing Action X. So far, the best way I've found to do this is to purchase Product Y. I know Product Y costs $Z, but I'd like to know if there is some other product W out there that performs Action X as well as (or better than!) Product Y for cost $Z/3 or less. Is there a cheaper, do-it-yourself Method M that will perform just as well as either of these products? Can I do any of this with duct tape, bailing wire, and Open-Source Software ?
Any help would be appreciated, as I am too lame to do my own research!
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Whenever ambient noise starts getting on my nerves I put on The Who's Live at Leeds and listen to it at a naturalistic 130 db. By the time it's over, the background noise has faded almost to inaudibility. Just a bit of a ringing sensation, and that's about it. Like, you can hardly even hear the landlord pounding on the door.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Good point. I wish I had the time to sit down and actually learn how to do it. *grumbles about college taking so much time*
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
subject says it all
pleez subscirbe me to youq newqloster!
I wouldn't count on it.
Nobody ever looked stupid for choosing Linux.
2.4.15.
If by traveling in planes, you mean flying in prop planes, helicopters, anything where you are plugging into the plane systems, etc, then what you want is a set of David Clarks. Industry standard since sometime around World War II, watch a movie or TV show. If the pilot is wearing a light green headset, they are david clarks. I occaisonaly wear mine here in the server room at work, when the noise gets to me, and the room just goes silent. The only problem is it looks a bit odd. This reminds me--does anyone out there have a good set of plans to convert military style aviation headsets to general aviation? (I know about the adaptor that is available, it costs more than these headsets do).
Note: General aviation headsets will work with standard stereo and computer equipment, and can be had at relativly low costs, and the sound that comes out is unbelievable in quality, compared to any thing else that I personally have experienced
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
Both are statements assumed true by most /.ers, but neither statement really is. What's the problem?
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
Your statement is true only for two point sources and infinite space. If you have many speakers enclosed in a room, you can do a lot better. The real limit here is causality and predictability, not sources.