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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 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.
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 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.
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
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
That's an interesting questions. I would guess you would need a TON of power to cancel out the sounds of a jet engine, but it would be an interesting question to ask an anti-sound engineer.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
This was already done in the Get Smart! T.V. series.
No, no no. That'll just create more noise, that of gunfire. We musn't add to the problem.
:)
That said, used a silenced gun. No worries!
LOTR: Elijah Wood is a munchkin asshat. Yes, asshat. LOL.
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
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
Have you ever tried noise cancelation headphones? I also work in a large lab (filled with noise hard disk arrays) and have often thought about getting some noise cancellation headphones.
my problem is, i do not know how well they would work in that environment. I would think they would work well since the noise is constant and similar to a jet airplane, but i want to be sure before I buy some.
so if you or anyone has tried them in a noise server room/lab, let me know how they worked.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
yes I do, headphones aren't because people will talk to you right?
ok, you need fabrics, cloth that sort of stuff. Get cloth chairs, anything that will absorb sound. You don't want solids because they create that sound you get when you cup your ears.
Try putting up a cork board near your desk as well, you can post stuff to it. Try getting cubicle walls that are fabricy.
internet like monkeys'
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 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?"
Yes, but it'll create such noise only once... :-)
Say no to software patents.
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}
For example, cancel out your neighbor's bass, but not the conversation you're having with someone in the same room.
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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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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!"
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 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/
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.
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.
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...
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.
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
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.
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.
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
... (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
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
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...
...
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...
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wait for it
...
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TURN THEM OFF.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Unfortunately, you don't always want to tune out 360 degrees of hearing... so there's some adjustment of the hearing aids required when you move into a different setting.
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
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.
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.
Never mind that there are at least 3 of these things commercially avialable RIGHT NOW. They work amazingly great. Course you can't hear your boss yelling for you or the phone ringing so maybe not so great for maintaining your job...
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Things are far from silent in a machine room with ANR, but it is much better with them on (it sounds a little quieter, but I can stay in much much longer).
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...
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
Agreed. The object is to transfer acustic energy to an object. Resonance will fill an object to its seams. The key is locating the sweet spots with the signal generator. When you hear something rattle, its time to turn up the volume in hopes of hearing the sweet music of something dancing onto the floor.
With CDMA, you have no directional information... Your single antenna isn't capable of isolating the source of a signal. It's all a mishmash. That's why you need PN codes.
At a cocktail party, it's a different kind of mishmash. Suppose you are standing at the centre of multiple sound sources. Person B, standing at your 4 o'clock, speaks. That sound will arrive at your right ear moments before it arrives at your left ear. Furthermore, you have other cues to indicate that the sound is coming from behind you (not sure if this is your ears or just being able to feel the vibrations in your jaw or body). Your brain basically triangulates on the source. What's more amazing is that your brain can do this for multiple simultaneous sources to the point where you can pick out a single conversation in a crowded room.
I think the whole voice identification thing is another neat brain trick - not too familiar with that...