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Making Your Room Quiet
el_flynn writes "This may be a cure for those of you with loud computers, or perhaps those who spend lots of time in NOC rooms that generate lots of noise: NewScientist.com mentions about a "Silence Machine" that gets rid of unwanted noise. I want one to quiet down my neighbour's loud dogs. " These are also being tested in cars, to make the car quieter. I've got a pair of the headphones that the article alludes to - they make airplane travel much nicer, and having something like this to cancel machine noise would be excellent.
I tried out a friend's pair of Bose noise cancelling headphones with an iPod in a crouded restaurant the other day.
I was absolutely amazed- I'd tried cheaper noise cancelling technology years ago and not really been able to tell the difference, but this time I was turning the noise cancellation on and off with glee!
I hope they catch on so we can get some volume pricing going:)
I want one to quiet down my neighbour's loud dogs. .22 in place of the quiet machine
I suggest a
That might work, but then the sound of me killing myself because I would have to use a mac might defeat the purpose.
I am a PC consultant / PC Builder / Small time business OEM provider / AMD Fanboy
Anyhoo, a company I do a lot of work for recently gave all agents brand spankin new Dells. While they are the shities P4s available and they are paired up with SDR mem - they are REALLY REALLY quiet. My trick of the trade is to get 1.2 GHz Durons and take the voltage down and underclock them, then they run nice and cool and there are some quiet fans out there and I use a nice sparkle psu that has a quiet fan on it, but I can still hear them in a small office. This P4 however is damn near silent. They have not been in dusty office environment long enough for me to tell you if the fans go over time, etc.
I know the computer lab @ my school (in the chem library at least) has a bunch of the almost same Dells (same hardware, different case) and its whisper quiet in there
You can do quiet cases with full clocked AMD AXPs - look for the screw mountable Zalman HSF @ www.2cooltek.com - it comes with resistors to slow / quiet the fan down. Good airflow / tied down wires help a lot to keep the case quiet. Also, check out the sparkle PSUs -- lots of power, little noise.
PPS - Silent water rigs are popular since only one fan is needed for the radiator and you can get pretty big fans that run nice and quiet
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I find it difficult to sleep at night without the whoosh of the fans from the handful of servers I keep in my room. What kind of geek likes quiet machines?
This is not a Fugazi
try breaking your eardrums, then you cant hear diddly.. and its cheaper than buying these 'quiet' solutions!
:-)
I can say myself, I've been deaf since I was born ( I was born deaf ) so I can say that its the easiest solution since I cant hear diddly so all of my computers are supposedly "quiet" for me! Soundproof padding for my room? Nah! dont need it!
I saw a similar invention used in "Batman Beyond" a while ago... I no longer watch it of course, but yeah the idea is intriguing. What worries me is the possible military uses. By cancelling sound, armies could cause mass confusion by making illusions of silence, deafness, the list goes on. I fear the day when I am sitting at home, and all of a sudden, the fan of my computer goes silent, and the clicking of my keyboard goes quiet. We wouldn't even hear the explosion.
/. is a commercial entity. goto slashdot.com
I have 24 boxes total in my house, 2 of which are mid to high range servers... When everything is on, noise is a huge factor. My room itself has 4 comps, and when they are all on i have to have some music playing to deafen them out. THen again, i don't want to look like a eskimo with devices all around my ear...
I wonder if it would be possible to use this on a larger scale - say, on an airport runway. We have a lot of problems reducing the dB level coming out af a jet engine, and most research is focused on the engine design itself. Is it possible that we could at least reduce the amount of noise at ground level with something like this. I know the article says regular, predictable noise, but that in the future it could be expanded. How much power would this take, I wonder?? It would have tremendous implications for airport development, since one of the major impediments right now is neighbors' complaints about takeoffs.
Would be really nice if the program could run as a background process (depending on cpu usage)with the mic plugged into the mic port on the sound card and the pc speaker as output. Maybe replace the pc speaker with something a little more robust. Would be really great if they could make something small enough to fit inside the computer to make it more quiet.
Now I only wish they would invent something to block out all the flamebait posts(such as this). ;)
It'd be a lot better if they somehow just upped the sound frequency which the cooling fans produced to a higher frequency out of the hearing range of humans. Although I don't think my dog would like that much.
"you sonofabitch i didn't know!"
I would love to have one of these, as I am a very light sleeper.
That being said, the technology is the same thing as noise cancelling head phones (such as these, these, or these). These headphones simply rock if you have not tried them.
alternatively, you can use more traditional methods to quiet things down, like insulation. Putting some dynamat in your car will really dampen the noise and make it nice.
One thing I have always wanted to try for fun, is get a really sophisticated sound cancellation system with many microphones and many large speakers to broadcast the "anti"sound, and put it in a large area like a park or the mall.
then, don't tell anyone about it and watch the puzzled look on people's faces when they can't hear each other.
maybe it's not possible, but I sure do think it would be funny.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
I wonder if this will stop bass vibrations. I work nights and during the day when I try to sleep I get my neighbor playing his music real loud. I can't hear the music, but the vibrations from the bass keep me up until I get out of bed go over and knock on his door to get him to turn it down. This would help if it could block bass vibrations, but I don't think I want to spend a four digit sum on it.
...in the future surround my radio with something that selectively cancels out what I think is crap. Sort of like how I mute the television when some commercials come on because they're too annoying and there isn't anything else I want to watch, but this would be automatic. (Hehe...no comment on how this device could be used against that Celine Dion CD mentioned in the other article.)
-dan
I remember at the end of the NFL season, John Madden was going on and on about cankles. They'd zoom in on some guy's cankles, and he'd circle 'em. Pretty funny stuff.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Do they have one that will cancel out the sounds of sex from the dorm room next to mine? Something anti-thump, anti-"Ooohh!!" perhaps?
The coolest voice ever.
Perhaps these bright folks can come up with something to fix my tinnitus. I can't even stay in a truly quiet room without going half mad from the ringing in my ears.
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
It used to be I would be sitting playing on my computer and hear a OOOOOOOO!!! in the background. now i can either filter it out or listen for my pleasure.
(/crude immature joke)
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
I work around IBM PC300GL workstations. They may be slow (P3s) but are pretty darn silent. In a general office environment, you cannot tell that they are on except for the lights. Unfortunetly, IBM doesn't seem to sell these dreams anymore.
I work 50% of my day in a computer lab. The room contains ~1000 machines (huge server types), all in a 50x50 [foot] room. The amount of noise is intolerable, and it's _other_ effects are even worse. I have to stand up and get myself straight sometimes, because a thousand fans humming can do strange things. I was just complaining about this to a group of people the other day.
I like white noise, especially noise created by industrial machines and computers, but a lot of people do not. I cannot imagine what it is doing to people who dislike it to begin with (white noise being pumped throughout my company's cubicle farms). I will definately keep a close watch on this... anyone else have any suggestions for this type of environment ? (headphones are not an option)
That episode aired a couple of days ago... I know because I saw it!!
Batman is fighting this super audio researcher guy, and the audio guy turns on the quiet thing. They're fighting in a factory, so batman is constantly being hit by machinery that he normally would have head coming. Bruce Wayne (in batman beyond, bruce is too old to fight and serves as a mentor to a highschool-aged batman, Terry) is outside the building and can't hear the fight.
a long time ago. I rememeber one episode where a villain used all sorts of sound devices, one of which was a noise cancelling device that he used to move about undetected. He would activate the device which would emit anti-noise to the noise that he made while moving, making him move silently. I doubt that the technology is up to this level quite yet, but hey, it might be possible in the future.
I spend a few weeks on the island of Trinidad (near Venezuela) and I swear I could hear every freaking dog on the island at night doing something like this:
[00] Dog 1: Arf!
[01] Dog 2: Woof!*
[02] Dog 1: WOOF!**
[03] Dog 2: Woof!**
[04] Dog 1: WOOF!**
goto 02;
*(Translation: Shut up!!)
**(Translation: No YOU shut up!!)
Multiply this by about a hundred thousand dogs.
To quiet down the dogs, whenever they get loud, throw a pork chop over the fence specially marinated in tobasco sauce. I am not a dog owner but I heard it may work.
This was already done in the Get Smart! T.V. series.
This method only works when you can create the anti-sound near the origination place of the real sound. You really need to kill that sound before it starts to reflect from other materials, get carried by the wind etc.. In practice, no one can do a remote quiet-down on you with this technology (although, I presume, it would be possible in laboratory environment).
If we want to think of possible military uses; this could be used for a kind of stealth technology. You could "case-mod" a military vehicle with a giant version of this anti-sound machine and make it virtually silent. Ofcourse, it would be pretty vulnerable and at the same time expensive and would only work when the environment is on your side. Thus, I don't think the military would ever implement this in their real designs. The expenses would be considerably bigger than the profits, simple.
__
Zarathustra.fi
Modern man has no goal, no aim, no ideals.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How many early Monday morning lectures did I pray for something like this? Every teenager who reads about this is getting a read on their parent's voice(s).
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
I remember hearing of this technology/idea about ten years ago on a technology show called "Beyond 2000" (anyone else remember that show?)
The suggested uses for the noise cancelling device was actually to place the device on the actual noise-making machine, not to create a device that "cleans" the area of noise, like the device mentioned in the article or like the noise cancelling headphones.
The idea was to create things like noiseless lawn mowers and noiseless vacuum cleaners. I always wondered why I never saw these devices.
This unit seems useful in that it can block out certain types of noise, but considering these people expect to charge over $1400 US for this, I can see why there never was a noiseless lawn mower...
How about this idea: have an extra soundcard installed in your machine, hook it up to a small mic and speaker, and put the mic and speaker inside the PC casing.
Input from the mic would be fed to some app that could analyze the sound coming in, generate the appropriate cancellation frequencies and output via the speaker. Tada - quiet PC!
Of course you wouldn't want the mic to be on continuously - there would be feedback when the mic accepts signals from the speakers. But we could possibly run a cron job that turns on the mic while shutting the soundcard output, and perform the analysis once every minute/5 minutes/whatever your fancy. This would be a good way to make use of your spare cycles.
Howzat?
The Wknd Sessions - Malaysian and South East Asia independent music
is what happens at the finges of this "shadow of silence". Does it start to break down such that the anti-noise and the noise become in phase again, and you get an area of double-the-noise?
This is a lot more complicated than headphones. Headphones are relatively one-dimensional (one microphone, one speaker, one eardrum per circuit) - the only thing you have to worry about is not generating feedback.
This seems to be a more complicated 3-dimensional solution, and it'll have much more complicated problems. Does this cancel noise effectively in corners? Will a computer monitor cast a non-noise-canceled shadow? Is there a limit to the noise source (can it be all around you, or must it be generated in one specific place?)
questions... looking forward to the answers!
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Build this.
Cost? About $10 - $20 depending on how much you have lying around. Best thing? It lets you use any headphones you like instead of being stuck with the inferior quality of many noise cancelling headphones.
I've done it and it compares well to most sub $100 noise cancelling headphones.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I'm gonna need some backup on this one....I've been scouring the news sites, and can't find anything about this...what radio station did you hear it on? They have a website?
Apparently the inventor from the article is Selwyn Wright. Coincedentally, there's *another* Selwyn wright in the U.K., described in this article.
It would be hilarious if these two were the same person, since this other guy is described as a thug "who has been the subject of almost daily calls to police over the past five years..."
"It was penguin lust...at its worst." --someone
... that have a loud discotheque in our neighbourhood? Open the window, and you can't sleep because of the noise; close the window, and you can't sleep because of the heat.
So, there is a noise source producing sound energy and I have a so-called noise cancelling machine producing out-of-phase sound energy.
The end result is no sound, therefore energy has been destroyed.
This violates all the fundamental rules of nature.
I urge you not to build this thing
0xB
Perhaps someone with a bit more knowledge about this stuff can enlighten us all. How do I choose which sounds I want it block? It's all well and good for my computer to be ultra quiet but I don't want the scream of the platter as my hdd crashes and burns blocked out. It seems like it would take some pretty spiffy AI to figure out what are blockable sounds and what aren't. (this is more directed towards the 'advanced version' due out in a year or so)
...we obey the laws of thermodynamics.
You could build a system that cancels for a small target area from a distance, but it's going to produce twice the sound in other places.
I had a monstor Supermicro 750A case with associated fans, plus two double-sized fans on each Celeron processor. The result was a fairly loud and steady buzz. The first few nights sleeping in the same room was difficult. The next year and a half or so, it was impossible to sleep if they weren't running (it just sounded unearthly quiet). I've got a (quiter) Antec case now with (smaller, quieter) fans on P3 chips. I've adjusted, but it's still wierd sleeping without my server running.
What is your Slash Rating?
Nice technology, I wonder if it would help me with those annoying voices in my head :)
I want one to quiet down my neighbour's loud dogs.
.45 caliber machine which performs this job adequately...been around for years.
You know, they make a
- 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?"
I would have to agree with other posters who've noted the white noise benefits that the fans provide. I have the biggest, baddest office in the building, but it's located directly over the heat exchangers in the building. As a result, I have nice, smooth, background noise, which helps to drown out external noise, which provides a strong sense of privacy for me.
What I don't like is when my laptop fan keeps going on and off; that interrupts the stream of my little white noise festival.
Actually, I sleep with a regular box fan running all night, too. I suppose if you work around computers all the time, you become adjusted to the noise and find total silence somewhat eerie.
--- There is a man in a smiling bag.
Flents makes a disposable ear plug. You can get a pack for about 5 bucks. To work best you really have to stuff them back into your ear. You will find a "sweet spot" in your ear canal where they really really block out everything. I mean dead silence. I've used these when I've had to sleep during the day. Combined with a real dark room, you will sleep very deeply. Some of the best sleep I've ever had can be attributed to Flents disposable ear plugs.
Big deal, noise doesn't bother me. It's the heat that causes a problem.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
You mention that they are being tested in a car. Personally my car runs rather quietly, so it's not a problem. Sure, it would be nice to have it even quieter, but it occured to me that it might be quite a frequency range someone would want to block out (wind through cracks, outside noise, etc.) I would find it very odd for people who are screaming about the use of cellphones in cars to support something that can block noise and lower a drivers alertness to that enviroment around him. IT's a nice idea, perhaps it would be a good idea in a bus or something like that. I know that it's designed for 'just certain frequencies' but one has to wonder if it couldn't malfunction, or somehow something else could be in a close enough frequency range that it would get blocked too by accident? Still a nice idea though...
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
The noise cancellation used in those headphones and such is actually quite simple. All you need is a well placed microphone and a phase-shift network and/or inverting amplifier. I remember seeing things like this shown on TLC or discovery or something and they (as usual) acted like it was some super amazing feat of science. All you need to build it is a set of headphones, 2 mics (1 for each ear), and about $2 worth of components.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
For example, cancel out your neighbor's bass, but not the conversation you're having with someone in the same room.
-
I remember seeing a long time ago on the TV a system similar fitted to an exhaust on a pokey 4 cylinder Audi. The car was practically silent, and people had a lot of trouble stalling the car when pulling away from a standstill, because you had no real feedback on engine RPM.
:-)
Best bit was that after the car was 'silent', they simply put some nice beefy speakers in the car, linked it to engine RPM and load, and added a bit of computer wizardy. Suddenly the Audi sounded a whole lot more like a Ferrari, or at the flick of a switch , a F1 car (with 12,000 rpm 'wired' to about 4500 real engine rpm), they even had (heh) a jet turbine, but it was a bit crappy, cause turbines don't quite spool up like 4 cylinder cars do
The presenter was having a ball, caning this little car around town - from the camera's position in the car it was pretty realistic.
Pretty much the 'killer app' for noise-cancelling tech in my opinion.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Anyone else read the Clarke short story (can't remember the name for the life of me) where someone did this?
Unfortunatly, he didn't *cancle* the noise so much as store it in the baterty of the device. (The story was a bit short on the technical details, I admit....) This resulted in a rather large explosion, following a humorous scene where a horrible and mean opera singer was silenced with rightous justice.
Very humorous.
My concern: will my computer explode if I use this device? I mean, Clarke did predict a host of other high-tech gadgets now in use!! How do we know this isn't another one? I'm just worried that - *BOOOM* ---My computer has exploded.
-Trillian
Be wary of the "poor man's bitchslap". Moderators don't like to be taunted (or rather, they really like it, but also like to react...), and so they will just track down every single of your post, and mod each one down one point. That way, it'll take only ten of them (rather than fifty) to reduce your karma to a steaming pile of shit.
Oh, and metamod won't avenge you either, if the moderators are smart enough to use Overrated rather than Troll or Flamebait.
I would imagine that you hold down a button and all of the sound it hears during that time it works to cancel out but then if you talk it knows that's not what you wanted to cancel out... like synchronizing a wireless mouse with the base station by holding the down a button to get it in sync...
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
Give Noise a try. It's free and it works pretty well for me.
A little tip: I think you'll find that pink noise works best if it's being generated from a source that sits between you and the noise you're trying to block out.
Another tip: pink noise are also good at keeping your noise masked. If you want to have a conversation with your girlfriend and don't want your roommate listening in, turn on some pink noise.
One thing that I am unsure about is whether or not the sound waves actually make it to your ears but we just don't hear them anymore (if that makes sense).
That is if a person stood behind an anti-noise device (in the quiet zone), would it still be possible for them to have hearing problems from the volume of air moving in and out of the ears? Or do the sound waves never get past the anti-noise waves?
In wich case I might still be married.
>
Honey..I care, I do.. tell me how your day was...
:-)
wait, let me just turn this on. Ok..
go ahead and talk now.
used something like this at a politician's speech
Alas, probably not. We'll have to stick with the traditional solutions.
Modern artillery already uses anti-sound generators (basically *really* powerful speakers placed in front of the cannon) to dampen the sound of the cannon firing. Works fine.
It feels as if I am so used to the machines (5 or 6 on any given day) that if I were to quiet them down, I would feel like I was missing somthing.
I guess you get used to what you have to live with.
amtron amtronx@yahoo.com
If Apple can make a silent machine, why can't other manufacturers?
Because other manufacturers are not using PowerPC CPUs. One of the PowerPC's advantages over Intel/AMD is power consumption / heat generation.
Another factor is that Apple has absolute control over the interior of those silent Macs (later model iMacs and Cubes). The location of heat sources, careful selection of components to meet design parameters, unobstructed cool air intake, unobstructed convection paths to remove hot air, and most important of all: they don't let the end user screw around with it (adding RAM is about it).
Life is much simpler when you don't let the average clone shop "technicians" or do-it-yourself'ers pick a bad case and powersupply, block a hot component's airflow with a rats nest of cables and crap, and try to compensate for their poor work by adding a few more fans.
As for Apple's tower configurations that more closely resemble PC's, they are very noisy.
Yes, i totally agree with that... even though one downside is dust building up on your devices and boxes ;)
Here's a challenge, implement it in one line of Perl :) //whatever
Record -> invert -> playback
mmmmm,
for() { read("/dev/mic", buf); buf = buf * (-1); write("/dev/dsp", bug);}
Yes, I have google'd & freshmeat'ed...
I wonder when this trick will be possible with light rays instead of audio waves :)
This (noise-cancelling) technology transformed flying in general aviation aircraft a few years ago. An unpressurized single-engine aircraft can be very noisy, with a big fan a few feet in front of the pilot's face pulling the 'plane along. Sound insulation material is heavy, which you don't want in today's load-challenged GA aircraft. I use cheap ($300) automatic noise reduction (ANR) headsets when flying, and the difference is amazing when you turn them on. This technology works much better at low frequencies than high, and the tiring low-frequency rumble of a big piston engine just goes away.
Dear God I could have used something like this in college. I could have studied and/or slept. I suppose a shotgun would have worked too, but I didn't want to spend all my money on ammo.
---
For your protection, a copy of this message is being sent via RFC 1149.
I'd rather have a panic room, how do I make one of those?
If I recall correctly, ANR involves adding sound waves together to cancel each other out (as the waves are out of phase by half). This can't be a perfect implementation as there are many frequencies of sounds that are emitted from a computer at different times.
Would it not be better for case manufacturers to manufacutre boxes that are sealed (sound proof). No air vents. Plus a tiny air compressor (air conditioning) inside that keeps the temperature, humidity at desireable levels. It would also remove what little dust is present too.
Current levels of technology could implement this easily and cheapily. Prevention is better than cure. This is a simple solution, not a bandage fix.
"I would like to change the world, but Microsoft will never give away any source code!"
I work for a company, Silence International, that is developing a similar technology, called the "Silent Zone". It cancels random low-frequency noise. A version aimed at engineers driving diesel locomotives is planned to go into production this autumn.
More information can be found here: http://www.silence.no"
I wonder if schools would take up this technology. I'm sure we've all had the loud classrooms, from constant heaters in the hallway and other ventilation, and who knows what else. Such noises often drive me crazy. I'd love schools to add this about 5 years ago :-)
-DrkShadow
Senior, graduating in June.
now wives around the world can "cancel out" the snoring of their hubby.
maa.... do i have the coolest gadget for you!
really cool thought:
a minature hearing aid type device, which you can selectively "lock on" voices you want, and cancel out everything else, including other voices.
awe yeah... wicked. just think, you could be at a deafening rock concert. first, you could "attenuate" the sound to a tollerable level. then, when your buddy a 100 feet a way shouts out to you, it can mute the concert, and let you hear only them. wicked!
zaoink! - pinky & the brain brain brain brain brain
But I wanted good performance for a machine I was converting to a dedicated fileserver for my home office (finally a machine I could leave running Linux all the time, without having to reboot, running Samba, Netatalk and NFS for all my machines). So I decided to try the Atlas 10k III.
The one I ordered was a Quantum, but I guess they got bought out by Maxtor, or something, anyway Quantum is still around but only sells tape drives now.
I read somewhere that the 10k III's were quieter than previous 10,000 RPM drives so I was pretty hopeful.
My first drive didn't work. I tried it at first in my mac on an adaptec 29160, but the 29160 didn't detect it. I thought it wasn't spinning up because I couldn't hear it.
Maxtor sent me an advance RMA (secured by a credit card) and I got the new drive today. I have 30 days to return the broken drive or else they'll charge my card.
The web page above says they are Ultra320 but the drive I have is labeled Ultra160. No matter, really, I don't think one drive can sustain a 320 MB/sec transfer rate - these high transfer rates are most useful for RAIDs.
I was distressed when I put the new drive in my PC on an adaptec 39160, because I couldn't hear it at all! There is another drive in the box, an old 2 GB IDE drive with Windows 2000, and the old drive completely covers up any sound coming out of the 10kIII.
I was really upset until I went into the Adaptec SCSI utility to test and format the drive, which checked out fine.
I'm really impressed. My wife wants me to get these for all our machines.
I'm installing just the bare essentials of Debian potato on it as I write these, and then I'm going to use debian's go-woody script to update it to woody.
Enterprise server admins might be skeptical of running beta software on a fileserver, but I've been running unstable (sid) on my Mac for months with few problems. My only concern is which kernel is the best, I want to run a 2.4 kernel on it and I'm not sure which I should use.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
This would be great, if it were affordable.. I could pass one out to every person in my neighborhood, hey! no more bitching!
This would be great for recording audio direct into the computer, if you could cancel out the fan noise but still keep the full frequency range of what you're recording. Sounds unlikely though. It'd mean I can take my machine out of the closet though!
Hmm, now that I think of it, anyone have any ideas about a way to temorarily shut off the fan? I've got a Mac G4 tower. Maybe there's a way to get to it software wise, but I'd guess I'd probably have to wind up doing a hardware mod--make a switch to turn on/off the power to the fan (this would be so I could shut off the fan, record a few minutes of audio, then turn it back on). Or is it a bad idea to shut off the fan for even a few minutes?
I'd just about go into conniptions if this techology could be used to restore old blues recordings and get rid of the scratchiness. Some have so much scratch and hiss they're almost unlistenable, like some Skip James or Blind Lemon Jefferson tracks. You have to really listen to hear the nuances of what they're playing. But if they could take out the scratches and leave all the sound... Oooh, baby.
c-hack.com |
Eliminating bass can be much simpler than that with just an amplifier, speakers, and a... signal generator: position the speakers against the dorm wall where the source originates. Set the amplifier for test purposes at medium volume. Slowly calibrate the signal generator to achieve resonance of the walls. This is determined when picture frames rattle off the walls. Once this point is determined, maximize amplifier output. The resonant energy building within the walls will then be transparently delivered to the client in what can be described as a non-maskable interrupt.
What can be described after that is guaranteed to be silence. Except for breakage of items in the host's bookshelves, etc... Slight profanity may be also side effect. Use with caution and deny any knowledge when questioned.
This is really nice. I have actually been thinking a LOT about this recently.
:)
In the past my 'server' has just been a Micron PC with SCSI and 512M... The nice thing about this has been that it is cheap and quiet.
I can always hear it in the background but it does put me to sleep and the white noise keeps the sound of the busy SF streets from waking me up.
The problem is that chicks don't dig it. When I have a girl spend the night they always complain that they can't sleep. If they are REALLY hot sometimes I will just shutoff the machine
Then I got a *really* good deal on a 5U server. The only problem is that it is LOUD AS HELL! Then I had to swap my room/office situation around.
This made me think... I think the white noise is TOTALLY not worth it. I have started to notice s slight ringing in my ears when I am in total silence. I am just concerned that it might be this constant white noise causing the problem.
So I might buy this thing... see if it improves the situation..
knock on wood
I find a shotgun quietens the neighbours dogs better than anything.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
I read a similar story, where a company applied this to a vacuum cleaner - every time it sucked up something that made a noise, the vacuum cleaner enhanced that sound, so that it sounded like you were sucking up a bowl of macaronis or something... It made the cleaner think "wow, this is really efficient - it's much more fun to clean the house when you can really hear that it is getting cleaner".
Hmmm this thing also work on a noisy mother in law?
The only unwanted noise in my office is the incessant babble from my cow-orkers.
No, hang on a minute. Cancelling out people? I should be on alt.mafia.requests
You're missing the point. Yes, we know how to cancel noise. As you say, a noisy crowd will still be noisy.
The point is using the knowledge that we gained 30 years ago to finally *make something useful*.
Vaporware condensed, as it were.
We have a clue about genetically altering pigs to create human compatible hearts, too. Does that mean that since we thought of it 5 years ago, we shouldn't explore the possibilities of such treatment?
I'm sure this was on Tomorrows World in the UK years ago.
Does anyone ever consider that I might *want* noise? The dorms I live in are so damn loud that I'll do anything to bring the ambient noise above the human- and stereo-created noise threshold.
Right now I've got a non-functional AC unit and dual in-window fans going primarily for this purpose alone. The frige is right next to my bed and since I don't have any money for food, I sometimes leave the door propped open just so the compressor runs and lulls me to sleep. I'm also considering buying a monster box fan to put next to my bed so my frige doesn't have to work so hard. (Or if I actually want to put anything in it.)
And don't get me started on my computer. I think my neighbor can tell when I shut this thing off.
For the curious, I have tried those anti-noise machines and noise-cancelling headphones, but they don't take care of 99% of the problem for me: bass. Until I started working nights, I'd usually be up until the wee hours of the morning because some dipshit wants to have a Jurassic Park marathon with his dipshit buddies. Let me tell you how fun that is when I had to get up a 6AM for work every day.
And yes, I have also tried earplugs, but again, they don't block out the bass... the sound has such a low frequency that it travels through your skull rather than through your ear canal.
I've noticed that when a lot of dust clogs in the CPU fan, it makes a really loud, painful noise. You can tell that it's upset. Making a device that blocks out such sound could lead to the user being oblivious to the problem, leading to damage of your boxen. And what if you've just done something inside the box and a cable is brushing against a fan? You wouldn't hear it and the result could be having to buy a new cable (for the sake of example). All boils down to mon£y, as usual :)
:)
On the other hand, it's a great idea!
You were expecting a sig?
You will only have small quiet areas unless you purchase many of these sound-damping speakers.
NOT an alternative for just booting that AMD and getting a Pentium...
Me.
it's either that or having to listen to my neighbours having sex every sunday morning....
my blog
Everyone goes quiet when I walk into a room already, why would I need one of these?
Trev - used to be interesting. Honest.
A couple years ago I did some research on active noise reduction (using destructive interference to cancel out noise). My aim was to build a prototype noise reduction system for air ducts.
I found that I could get upwards of 85% attenuation simply from signal inversion (as opposed to realtime fast Fourier transform computations), mostly around 300 Hz or so.
However, this technology definitely does not work well for much higher frequencies, since as frequency increases the wavelength decreases, making it more difficult to keep the inverted waveform in phase with the noise. Also, there are many difficulties with feedback, since the sampling microphone mustn't inadvertently amplify the cancelling signal.
In my research, the duct I was experimenting on approximated a purely 1-dimensional waveguide system; in a 3-dimensional space (a NOC filled with deafeningly l33t boxen, for instance), the acoustic characteristics of the environment are generally much too complex to compute for noise reduction for more than a very small region. That's why this technology is most applicable in headphones, car cabins, etc, since their acoustic characteristics are well documented and relatively static.
The point of all my rambling here is to show that this technology is by no means easy to implement! It still has a way to go before it becomes a truly mature technology, in my opinion.
I have seen this tecnology around in magazines for ages and there are lotsa gadgets using this since long time back. The concept of canceling sounds out with out of phase soundwaves is old as the amp. Balanced cables used in concerts and studios use this technology. The biggest problem has been when the room is too big and reflecting soundwaves start to echo out of phase with the noise and in phase with the noise killer. (big noise if you stand far away from the noise killer)
HTTP/1.1 400
It sounds like someone should start a service to match this machine to the pitch of your girlfriend's or boyfriend's voice. The benefits for relationships are enormous...
"It would seem far easier and more sensible to avoid making noise in the first place."
Am I the only one paranoid enough to see a future where no one will bother to sound-proof anything because these little buggers will be mass-produced and cheap enough (at least for those who can afford it, of course)?
The rich can currently afford non-polluted water, bio-produced food, clean air -- and now silent environment? Welcome to the third millennium...
Okay, I am probably the only one paranoid enough...
Stéphane "Alias" Gallay
Now, where did I put this witty quote?..
This is nothing new. I remember seeing a documentary (years ago - can't remember name) where this sort of technology was demonstrated inside cars to cut out engine noise.
It sounds like this machine will also only work on repetetive noise as opposed to it being 'intelligent'. I would be impressed if this machine could cut out random noises (dogs barking, etc) in realtime.
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Moderator's essentials
You think this will work on my girlfriend?
Wow, this is -really- old news, though I know a lot of /. stuff is old these days, I'm surprised that no one has heard of this before...
.
Personally I first saw this on "Tomorrows World" (a BBC Science and New Technology television program) - about 10 years ago
They even demoed the system in a car, and let you hear the difference.
This has been around for quite some time. I remember being 14 (7 years ago) and seeing a documentary on TV about cars in England with this technology. There was a microphone in the cab of the car, as well as numerous speakers. The microphone would pick up the noise from the engine and the wind rushing past the car, the computer chip would invert it and play it back; the result? A perfectly quiet ride. Additionally, it featured a control panel that simulated noises of different cars. You could make it sound like an F1 racer, or a Nascar engine, etc. The car wasn't terribly attractive though (but the female showcasing it was :).
Lotus (the UK car maker) has been trialling this for while. They had a unit rigged up to a little Citroen AX. When in quiet mode, it was driven gently, when in 12 cylinder mode, drivers thrashed it mercilessly.
They are considering it for a diesel sports car they are looking to build.
I have to say, although I can just about hear humming sounds from here (I think it's the colour printer behind me), FAR more noise comes from the phones.
The unattended mobiles are annoying, the monotonous, almost continuous ringing of external calls arriving to whole ring groups is annoying, but far, far and away is the noise made by a phone on ringback. It's this shrill ring-ring-ring-ring-ring sound that makes it really clear that whatever needed ringing back is MUCH more important than the work of the nearest dozen people.
I kind of wish it was quiet enough to hear the machines humming... then I could think straight.
These are also being tested in cars, to make the car quieter.
Because you wouldn't want to hear pesky things like sirens when you are driving...
I've got a sony headphones. I picked them up for about US$100 at the airport in Narita (Tokyo). In the airplane, they allow you to hear the movie at the lowest setting. In a quiet room they produce a constant buzz. The $1500 Bose aviation headsets also do the same thing but they have nice ear cups that help knock off about 30 db.
This doesn't have much point really, but the kind of noises that piss people off are completely different.
I have two computers on in my room, neither of which are quiet. I can tell which HDs out of the 4 are on, and if any of the CPU fans break. I sleep through this all fine unless some heavy disk access happens, or I hear one of the fans go off. However, if I leave the amp up high, and the speakers hiss even slightly, I can't sleep. My girlfriend also isn't too impressed with the level of noise.
However, at hers, she only has a little laptop. I can't sleep with the high pitch hiss/whine that the HD makes, or the horrible forced air noise the tiny fan makes - and it isn't that I'm not used to it.
Whenever we do crew things for shows, and I need to sleep during the performance so I can work afterwards, I find sleeping behind the speaker stacks is a great place... the treble is cut because it is more directional, but the base stays, and it's quite relaxing. I can even fall asleep in clubs, base is kind of relaxing. It is a different sort of sleep from usual - very hard to wake up, and you get very vivid dreams.
So, you'd think I was fine with noise. But I can't stand working in co-lo facilities. It's not so bad in a cluster room, or somewhere all the computers are the same... but when you have 300 machines each with two fans, HD arrays, loads of raqs, then all the different noises combine, and working in there on anything more complex than running cables is impossible. I was working on a few servers for about 12 hours one day, and had a huge supply of Dr Peppers, so hadn't moved much... when I got up to leave I felt so dizzy, and I think it was a result of the noise. I tripped over a bit of cat 5 and took out a server as well...
Anyone who has ever pointed a remote control at someone and pressed 'mute' will be really happy about this!
What about energy conversation?
As far I've learned wave canceling does not work globally by physics. If you have 2 waves, they may cancel each other out on some places, but double up on other places.
If both waves would cancel each other of completely, where did their energy go???????
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
I used to work at a Car manufacturer a few years ago where we were testing a similar device in a prototype vehicle.
/j
It's a good technology, but the overall conclusion was that it would be nice to have conversation with a passenger without some pesky bit of kit taking the words from your mouth.
The project was later canned.
The article states that to dampen complex noise like speech in realtime, a powerful computer must be used. I'm wondering why. If you have the speech going into the system to be cancelled, isn't there a more simple way to sample the amplitude and just amplify that sound to the right level and pump it through some kind of inversion circuit and out the speakers?
I dunno, maybe an "inversion circuit" isn't possible, but you've already got that sound to work with; all you have to do is put it 180 out of phase. It seems like that should be fairly simple. Kind of a shame to complicate such an elegant idea with anything more than basic computer-aided sampling. Maybe I'm underestimating the difficulty though.
by Arthur C Clarke, in the collection "Tales From The White Hart" is exactly this scenario. Poor Fenton, blows up the concert hall. With him in it...
Best Slashdot Co
Don't make me beat you over the head with useless Photoshop benchmarks :)
If so, please test in Washington D.C.
I have an old IBM mainframe in my room sounds like a turbo jet engine starting up. And the Xeon's dont help cause i have 19" rackmount fans... Im used to the noise but im unable to talk on the phone... And I find the noise rather loud... Anyone have a suggestion for any perticular device ?
because I have no idea where to get these so called noise reduction devices...
Especially for air travelers - Sony makes some earbud noice cancelling headphones, the NC10. Their performance is much better than Bose's, and since they're so tiny, you can just slip them into you shirt pocket, rather than having to lug a huge package around with you (the Bose ones are HUGE).
And, as I recall, Bose headphones have a pretty severe feedback problem. If you cover the port (say, by falling asleep and rolling over), you're welcomed to a delightful, ear-piercing shriek! So much for noise cancellation.
Oh yea, the Sony's are less than half the price, too. I've been using a pair for years.
Any linear distortion by the speaker is no problem at all, it simply gets taken into account during the filtering. Non-linear distortion is hard to correct, but I doubt its an issue.
Many years ago, Bose produced a set of noise-cancellation headphones used for aviation purposes. They're pretty damn cool, and pretty damn expensive.
Also, about 5 years back, Lotus had actually developed technology to cancel out engine noise in the cockpit of their cars.
Funny thing about that one was that, though they developed the technology, the chose not to deploy it on their vehicles as their signature tinny engine sound was something Lotus owners really liked about the cars.
I'm not really familiar with this technology, but I assume that the cancelling waves - although they mask the sound - still travel into our ears just as the original sound.
Having twice the ammount of noise going into my eardrum seems like a bad idea to me...
Is my assumption correct? If so, count me out!
"The scientist describes what is; The engineer creates what never was." - Theodore von Karman
OK, so we all want to have a smoot, quite ride, but do we really want to have noise reducers that artificially remove sound? I don't think so. Think about it, what if you need to hear the firetruck screaming down the street headed your way. What if your engine starts making funny noises but you can't hear it well enough to know something's wrong. What will it make your stereo sound like? These kind of issues are endless, I just don't think it's a good idea.
~ now you know
(sound of fingers slapping keyboard)
computer: "Silence Machine activated"
husband: "Aghh that's better. Now I can finish that post I was writing to Slashdot"
Free speech? Sure talk all ya want.
Has anybody tried to modify this one to cancel the noise from/inside a PC? There was a previous post on slashdot for this one. But building it for yourself is way cooler ...
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
We have got to install these in American courtrooms. Point them directly at the lawyers.
While we're at it, let's set these up around MTV studios in Times Square. Bliss.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
... (besides the obvious solution of turning the computer off and reading a book, that is) is to move it out of the room. If Larry Ellison is still selling his network computers... I'm in the market. I've moved all but one computer into a rack down in the basement and would move the remaining one if I could find an really quiet desktop device like an X-terminal that I could hang my 19-in monitor off of. I'd rather listen to my stereo than whirring disk drives and muffin fans. Any pointers on where the affordable devices like this are for sale (HDS's prices for their X-terminals are steeper than I'd like to pay)?
Headphone? Seems stupid and, ultimately, uncomfortable for long-term wearing. (Though they might be nice -- along with some long-johns -- for those stints I sometimes spend in the data center doing upgrades. :-) )
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
It was in "Tales from the White Hart" and the story was "Silence, Please." The real issue, raised by one character in the story (Clarke showing he understood it) and glossed over for the sake of the story, is how you can create a three-dimensional sound field that will accurately cancel a three-dimensional noise sound field everywhere (or at least over a large area, not just at a single point).
.jpg looks like the full picture. But to CANCEL a sound field, you need to quantitatively DUPLICATE it in three dimensions with opposite polarity, not just SOUND LIKE it.
A stereo system creates a sound field that sounds like the real sound field, just as a
In the story, the device fails because of conservation of energy. Sound energy can't be destroyed, so the total energy in the area of silence has to go someplace else. In the story it's the capacitors in the power supply. In the real world, it's an interesting question, but sound doesn't have all THAT much energy and it can't be THAT hard to dissipate a few hundred watts (or, as someone else suggested, reduce the noise in one area and intensify it in another).
Something else that makes me really suspicious about the practicality of the device is that you have to do awfully high quality cancellation to get much of a perceptual effect. For example, if you were to match the sound field with 90% accuracy and cancel all but 10%, you'd get a 20 db reduction which would be noticeable, but certainly would not silence the noise. And it would be far less effective than even the cheapest earplugs.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I just make a osc1~ object in jmax and set it to 15000 hz and volume to 1 and leave for a couple of hours :-) I've broken in several neighbors this way, and you can do it through the ventilation with a $5 tweeter from RadioShack even.
I wonder how animals like cats, dogs and birds react on those machines.
What is the sound quality of those bose headphones though? I mean, compared to, say, some standard GOOD headphones.. like...
Grado 60's, or Sennheiser HD330 or HD570's.
(All around $60-$150)
I mean with the noise cancelling turned on. What is the response? I ask only because in my experience a great many of the headphones out there are utter crap when it comes to decent sound reproduction. Most Sony headphones are crap until you get into their high end ones, you get 5x the quality from sennheiser or grado for the price. Same with most other brands.
I have no experience with Bose, other than their speakers, which, although amazing at first listen, actually butcher the crap out of your audio. It sounds good, but it's not an accurate reproduction.
Would be to use Etymotic ER-6 or ER-4 (see etymotic's website).
:)
Etymotic's canalphones use passive noise cancelling to cancel around 25dB and is way more effective than most of the active units you get. Most of the active units handle low frequency noise well but the high frequencies pass. Passive noise cancellation (Etymotics use the ol fashion earplugs) blocks the entire frequency range and is more effective than the Bose or Sony units as it does not add additional circuitry that could screw things up.
Whats even more is that the Etymotics have *amazing* sound quality (which both the Bose and Sony truly lack), they are some of the best headphones out there, although a little expensive for most (ER-6 is $130 and ER-4 is $270 at Headroom. And no I do not work for etymotic and I really didn't mean for this post to be an ad, if it came off as one
and suggested a noise cancelling feature on the SB Live numerous times. It is not that hard to do but the product manager is more interested in having monthly reports rather then really improving the product. That was 3 years ago.
I looked into using a simular technology to quiet down;
1) A 'Portable classroom' air conditioning unit dropped 10 feet from my property line (25 feet from my bedroom window) 60 dBA , 75 dBC (lots of bass).
2) Neibors 3-4 dogs that bark at everything, and love to howl at sirens.
3) Neibors kids Boomin car stereos, license plate 'Got20s' (and now his brother too).
But decided it would not work correctly for a couple of reasons. First its quite hard to accurately reproduce frequency's below 35 HZ unless you are willing to use a very large box, (about the size of a car interior) or expensive technolgy. Secondly, while noise cancelation would produce a quite zone, it would also produce noisy zones as well. This is because the off axis response and early reflections that end up in phase. Lastly large amounts of bass causes other things to vibrate causing secondary noise which may be more annoying then the original.
Community Noise is a problem no matter the source, If you wan't to help make the world more quite, I would suggest visiting 'The Noise Polution Clearing House' at http://nonoise.org
P.S. I find that using a pair of 18" hooked up to my game box and playing unreal tourney works great for eliminating a boomy car stereos parked in my neibors driveway, and its fun too. Castle Wolfenstien also works but is quite abit less bassy than unreal.
Real world noise cancelation, particularly in large areas is really tricky. Part of my architecture practice is designing veterinary clinics, which have all sorts of noise problems. The biggest problem is that you don't want to hear the sounds Spot makes during some necessary proceedures when you are out in the waiting room. I've spent a lot of time explaining why white noise generators won't work for this to my boss. He reads 'noise maksing' and 'noise cancelation' in an ad and takes it at face value.
White noise systems basically use a psychoacoustic trick to make conversations less distracting: By lowering the signal to noise ratio, you brain is less likely to pick up on the conversation in the next cube, and you feel less distracted. Noise cancelation is typically only available in very small spaces: like inside headphones. The point to the article is that for a lot of money, you can make the very small space somewhat larger.
When you read the article, it's clear that they are only talking about noise suppression in quite small areas. Great for my girlfriend sitting on the couch studying (currently distracted by her neighbors in the next apartment who can't interact with their children other than by screaming). But this won't help me when trying to quiet a whole waiting room. Basically we need to build exam rooms like music practice rooms - (physically) heavy walls with few penetrations.
With just a little fine tuning.. the words "Honey, are you listening to me?" take on a whole new meaning..
Am I the only one old enough to remember the one wherein Tom built active noise cancellers to defeat some bad guy who was using deafening sound as a weapon?
(Now that I think of it, the active-camouflage suits that MIT is working on are a variation of Tom's submarine that made itself invisible to sonar by cancelling the echo and copying the pulse through to the other side of the boat. Pretty soon there won't be any fiction left!)
Isn't that just like the typical Slashdotter, making things SOOOO much more complicated than needed? If the PCs and equipment in your room are unacceptably loud...
...
...
...
...
wait for it
...
...
...
...
...
TURN THEM OFF.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
That's my karma line.
Thief!
:P
fnord
Please make it legal for me to beat the life out of those a-holes who drive around with their bass cranked up to the point where you can hear it inside buildings. I don't care if they have arrested development issues or a desperate need for attention, I don't want to hear their crappy music. Hell, you can't even hear the music, just the same monotonous thudding (c)rap beat. These clowns must have no eardrums left.
A clear case of society getting shafted just a little bit more in the name of the all-mighty inDUHvidual. I'd be amazed if they actually started enforcing local sound laws (already on the books) against these jerks.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Try, this...
Stick your fingers in your ears while chanting "I can't hear you!" or humming the national anthem.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Can I tune this thing to my wife's voice?
Ok...I'm no scientist, and I long for quality silence, shut my windows and the computer still hums, turn that off and the house makes noises, put on the headphones and the wind is still audible unless I actually play some music which kind of defeats the purpose. Nature, technology, the world, all out to stimulate my ear drum.
Here is the question. Is this new fangled white noise more noise pumped into my ear designed to fool me into thinking I'm not hearing anything, or is it truly canceling out the sound waves so they do not enter.
Am I just signing up for a preview for my future where I will accept the label "hard of hearing" or will this actually give my mind, and eardrum some relief.
On the other hand, the article also has some (thin) technical details:
Does anyone know about the latency involved with using a tms320c32? It might be possible to rig a software solution to run on a PC, perhaps leading to a homebrew version.Has anyone had any experience doing programming of this nature? Bear in mind that response time would have to be very low to cancel noise that you didn't predict (such as low-frequency hums, fan noise, etc).
The Signal/Noise ratio can be improved in two ways. Remaining silent is the OTHER way.
Who else here thinks the silencing ought to be mandatory for motorcycles? God those fucking things piss me off.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Most of the noise my computers generate seem to be from the fans. I wonder how difficult it would be to build this into the fans themselves. Very close range, regular sound pattern, seems a lot less challenging what this guy in the article is trying to do, and should be at least as cheap as noise cancelling head phones. At the right price I think there would be a market for SILENT cpu and case fans.
In my case, I got used to sleep with the computers turned on in the bedroom, the idea is that when everything is totally silent, I hear all the unregular noises, clicks, walking, neighbour yelling, whatever.. the computer noise is regular and after many years I guess my brain got used to that specific frequency and it doesn't stop me from sleeping at all... If I turn everything off, I wake up at any unregular sound, and I find it very irritating.
:)
Man that will be weird when the girlfriend will move in. I just hope that one won't do the mistake of asking me to chose between her and the computers
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
No one would suspect a thing!
The power of denial is the great leverage of communication when they KNOW you have done something. Give them enough suspision, but not enough proof. The social engineering object is to use this opportunity to drive your loud argument into their weakened, desperate state.
Intimidate by the power of denial. When they accuse, use this precious time to illustrate their vulnerability. Be mad, not just pissed off. Twist their logic into epic proportions of insanity. They will either leave you alone, or try to match wits. Always trump their argument with a more grandiose element of insanity and do not let them win. After all, they have been playing rap (or other lame noise) at unhuman levels for an inordinate amount of time. Illustrate the chaos they have created.
But always deny knowledge. In this war, you must fight noise with noise. This is insanity at its best. Replace it with your projection how annoying they are. It will throw them off if they try to make a logical case against you. The resulting communication about noise is sure to be music to the ears of other victims.
The day they invent a device that can cancel out my girlfriend's voice, is the day I'll gladly give them all my money.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Bose seems to provide absolutely no standard audio information on their website about these headphones. They go on and on about noise cancelling abilities, and how great all their adapters are, but I can't find anywhere where they show a response curve, impedence, THD, etc.
I'd be interested in seeing what people on here say - but from what I have heard - the damage to your ears can still be done, but you don't get all the noise... I personally don't see how that is - but I'd be curious if this would help prevent some of the damage from noise pollution or else we will be a world of deaf people in a few years seeing as the number of noisemakers is increasing at a rapid rate over the previous years.
(or tell me a good hearing aid company to invest in)
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
hurry up and invent something that will let me blast music in my cube, but cancel it outside the cube...
My mom's a pediatrician, and she talked to a hearing specialist at the hospital about my loud computers. He said in the long term, loud desktop computers can cause tinnitus (ringing in the ears) just like too many rock concerts. I have a Chrome Orb on my Athlon, it's not quiet.. I make sure to keep it under an adjacent desk, on the carpet, and away from my bed. It's also in a good quiet case.
I don't have a link to a study since I just take my mom's word, but if anyone has one please post it. I do, however, have a slight case of tinnitus.
If you'd actually talk to some of the riders of "those fucking things", you might find out that for them, being loud is a matter of safety. Motorcycles are harder to see (particularly because most drivers aren't looking for them) and the riders are much more vulnerable in crashes. They need all the "visibility" they can get. Of course, not all of them need to be as loud as they are...
A few years ago my girlfriend told me that her next-door apartment neighbor liked to play loud, bassy rap music. She had politely complained to him on a couple of occasions, but he tended to resume his behavior after a while, and she was ready to get the landlord involved.
I decided to try a psyop instead, so I brought my CD of Pulse Demon by Merzbow, stayed at my gf's apartment for a couple of days, and waited.
Her neighbor began pumping his stereo pretty loud, and I gave it a few minutes before I ran my "test." I pointed my gf's speakers to the wall and started Merzbow on very low volume, and slowly cranked it until there would be no mistaking the unholy scream of industrial noise on the other side of the wall. Then we closed the bedroom door and turned up the TV to mask the noise (we didn't want to terrorize ourselves too!).
We waited a full half hour before the guy finally came to the door, and although he was miffed, he seemed more confused than angry. He didn't know what it was. I apologized sweetly and explained that I was showing my gf how to use a shortwave radio a bit too loudly, and oh-by-the-way, could he turn his stereo down too? He said sorry, and left with the same quizzical look he brought with him.
I left my Merzbow CD with her, just in case, and her neighbor rarely played his stereo very loud after that. Apparently the guy moved out a couple of months later. We have Merzbow to thank for his service.
--
"Folks just call him Buckethead." -- Les Claypool
I have "talked to the riders of 'those fucking things,'" my father rode motorcycles in his youth, until a crash shattered his hip, putting him in a cast for most of a year (during which he lost a good 10 lbs of leg muscle), and permanently shortening one of his legs. And yes, the crash occured despite how noisy his motorcycle was.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD