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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 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 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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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