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.

Comments

White noise

[sparcv9]

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?

Re:White noise

[antibryce]

hahahahah

I read that and immediately thought "Wow, sounds like my last roommate." Then I look at the userid and guess what...it *IS* my former roommate. :)

Cheap solution is near!

[itsnotme]

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! :-)

Re:Noise cancelling headphones

[vandemar]

The other day I let a friend of mine use my noise cancelling headphones to listen to a CD he just bought. After fiddling with his CD Walkman for a bit, he still wasn't able to hear anything on the headphones. It turned out the CD he bought was N'Sync's greatest hits album, and the headphones were actively cancelling out all the noise from it leaving only the real music (ie silence).

Low budget bass removal

[dattaway]

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.

Re:bass

[daeley]

I wonder if this will stop bass vibrations.

I didn't realize they made that much noise. They're only fish, after all. I suggest staying out of the water. ;-)