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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 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...
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.
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.
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
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
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)
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.
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...
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"
Course, I've never really hefted a water-cooled rig before, so I could be wrong, but that's always been the thing I've wondered about it. If it's as heavy as it sounds, it's no wonder I didn't see any at the last lan. Now, on the topic, I think the parent post does raise a good point. As Tim Williamson says in the article, "it probably will have some applications, [but] it would seem far easier and more sensible to avoid making noise in the first place." I have to agree. This sound dampener is really nifty, and proof-of-concept of something I've had in my book for a while because it's the kind of thing that's great for privacy in medbays etc, but it's treating the symptoms, not the cause. Obviously the cause can't always be treated, and there is surely place for these devices, but I think it's also important to try to prevent noise pollution simply by trying to create technologies etc that are quieter in the first place.
Yeah, just shifting the cost, I know.
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.
The military's "been there, done that". There's a practice B52 bombing run the goes over my parents' house. Pretty cool as a kid, we'd hear a B52 coming, and look up in time to see it disappearing just over the treetops. One night, my dad was outside looking at the sky. All of the sudden, a B52 flys over, low enough to make out the cockpit windows (that's how low they typically flew). Only thing was, there was no sound, just wind. Absolutely true. Sound cancelling technology has been around for a long time. For that matter, so have holograms. So, class, which of those silent B52's is the real one?
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.