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New Tech to Help Prevent Hearing Loss?
Wired is reporting that Blomberg is working on an invention to help users maintain a greater control over the volume output of portable music devices. Many people have expressed a growing concern about hearing loss in recent years due to the increased use of headphones and exposure to loud music. From the article: "Les Blomberg, executive director of the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse, described hearing loss with a nice analogy: 'If you have a field of grass and you walk on it, you compress the grass and it bends down over the night, and in a few days, it springs back up and is OK again. But if you keep doing that over and over, you wear a path in it. And that's kind of what happens with hearing loss.'"
Not a sound engineer, but a bassist. And I think I can provide the answer.
The solution we seek is what's known in the guitar world as a "compressor" or "limiter."
Fortunately, they are cheap and easy to build. What they do is put a ceiling on a range or ranges of frequency. I use it when I want punch in my high end but I don't want the thump in my low end to get out of control.
You can build the compressor to kick in and level anything (on all ranges) that exceeds the normal medically accepted maximum amplitude for human hearing.
The beautiful thing about compressors is that they stop you from producing obvious sounds you don't want but they don't simply reduce all sounds produced by your device.
What's so hard about this? And why in the hell are we calling this a "new tech?!" How about calling it "common sense?" If I ever designed a media player, this would be implemented regardless. The end user could look to find an amplifier if they want to blow their ears out, Apple has faced lawsuits and they will face even more as the millions who purchased their products use them and then deafly eye Jobs' deep pockets.
My work here is dung.
I think they're called "speakies" or "speakers" or something.
You know... I've always wanted a more complicated, over-engineered way of controlling the volume of my iPod. The volume control interface is just too damn easy to use.
It's called a volume control - sometimes in the form of a knob, sometime a button.. This is going to revolutionize the industry!
Starsucks
The last thing I'd want is some funky crazy software automagically controlling the "volume" of my iPod so that I can't here my music...
REA Doesn't this mean that it'll sit there and ramp up and down the volume with a certain periodicity or randomness? In this case... it sounds REALLY annoying!
Matthew Wong
San Francisco, California
http://www.themindofmatthew.com
I mean, according to my common sense, blowing loud noise (and music, no matter how good, is just that) into your ears causes deafness. Anyone claiming he didn't know that should probably start going to elementary school again. He might have missed more than just that.
... oh ... umm...
What's next, smokers claiming that
Can I sign up for that suit somehow?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I remember hearing about this when portable cassette players and cd players first came out.
Much more hearing loss that ever before recorded because of headphones.
Last time I checked, the only thing that is different since the 70's is the size of the headphone.
Kids still wear them too much, and listen to them too loud and unfortunately some still will have hearing loss.
It's not a "new" technology that is causing the problem, iPods didn't invent loud music.
It's kids not knowing about the volume control until it's too late.
The rest of the article has some fairly common-sense stuff about protecting your hearing... nothing very techy though...
The whole ipod is killing this generation's hearing hysteria lately has been bugging me though. Loud music and earbuds were around long before the ipod... are there any stats that look at how many people were using walkmans in the 80's (or whenever they came out), portable CD players after that, and what effect that had on hearing? It's not like any of this is a new problem, the only difference I can see might be in the extent...
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
Oops I messed up the post. Here is what I "meant" to write! The last thing I'd want is some funky crazy software automagically controlling the "volume" of my iPod so that I can't hear my music...
FROM THE ARTICLE: The analogy: 'If you have a field of grass and you walk on it, you compress the grass and it bends down over the night, and in a few days, it springs back up and is OK again. But if you keep doing that over and over, you wear a path in it. And that's kind of what happens with hearing loss.'"
Doesn't this mean that it'll sit there and ramp up and down the volume with a certain periodicity or randomness? In this case... it sounds REALLY annoying!
Matthew Wong
San Francisco, California
http://www.themindofmatthew.com
No one has *ever* thought of using a saturator before! Capping music's volume is *such* a novel idea, let's get them a patent. Get them a fucking patent! I mean, normally, I'm against patents, but we gotta have some kind of way to reward those with truly novel inventions. Where would we be if these guys hadn't thought of limiting the music's volume? We're be throwing rocks at each other, I tell you!
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
This just in, Wired is reporting that Bloomberg is working on an invention to help users talk over long distances without shouting and thus save the strain and inevitable hoarseness that comes with it:
Making you think you're crazy is a billion dollar industry.
So, if I understand well, I should not let people walk over my ears if I don't want to become deaf?
Here's the answer. http://tinyurl.com/nu4vx
First one to the patent office wins!
If I keep reading Slashdot day and night, I'll go blind. :P
Brilliant!
Most people who listen to loud music do so with full knowledge that listening to music so loud might be bad for their hearing. And they choose to do so anyway. Some sort of device or software that "makes users aware of unsafe volumes" will not do much to stop them from listening at that volume. It's not like most people don't already know. The EU already tried to force iPods to limit their volumes, and European consumers went out of their way to circumvent those restrictions. What's this new invention going to do to try to stop me?
It's called a VOLUME CONTROL! And it's already on EVERY DEVICE that outputs audio. Now you mess with the volume level of my equipment I WILL SUE. People have a right to fry thier ears. It's NOT the fault of the equipment and if you go and mess with it, people CAN undo it and WILL.
Gorkman
Why is this even news? How hard is it to turn down the volume? Idiots...
- Andrew
I meta-moderate because I care.
In other news from the future: Blomberg invents revolutionary button that you can press when you want the music to stop immediately, and continues at the same point when you press the button again! Very useful when you have to pick up the phone.
My karma ran over your dogma
I really think I suffer more hearing loss from those noisy mufflers people put on there cars than my actual MP3 player. Even if this is in fact successful we can still suffer from outside noises like cars, jet planes, etc. Also sometimes the noise outside is greater than the actual music playing when walking on the street or on the bus that you are forced to crank up the music in order to hear the music itself. I know there are noise canceling headphones but frankly they do not work that well and cannot prevent hearing loss either. So just jumping on MP3 players will not fix everyone's hearing.
Instead you can start beating those kids who put those noisy mufflers to make there car sound fast than worry about digital audio right now.
The easy way to avoid hearing loss from your portable media player is, as Chris Rock would say, "turn that $h!t down!"
Really, just turn it down. I'm known amoung my freinds as the one who likes to listen at really low levels. And I don't think thats a bad thing.
Think Deeply.
Like boiled lobsters, damaged ears cannot be returned to their previous state.
While yes, it's best to avoid things that are bad for you, why don't I see anything about ear therapy? Is there something one could be doing besides limiting noise to help the ear? Treating it like a binary "loud bad, quiet good", there's got to be something that can be done to help the ear in its downtime, no?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Bingo!
My commuter car has an interrnal Cabin sound level of 80+Db at highway speeds. it goes up to 105+Db when I roll down the windows.
So to hear the radio I have to get it another 3 or more DB above that.
some kid cranking 90 to 100 Db into his/her ears is not new and certianly much less damaging compared to the insane levels I have been exposed to all my life in industry, on the highway (Morons on a Harley at 80mph ergister almost 120Db)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
For the most part, the reason people crank their music up so loud is to drown out ambient noise. Standard buds are *horrible* for sound isolation. Not only do they allow plenty of ambient noise in, but they waste energy leaking sound out, which also has the effect of annoying the people around you.
The solution? Either get a good set of cans, or buy canalphones. Personally, I picked up a set of Shure E2C's. Expensive? Yes. But the sound isolation is *amazing*. I can drive these phones at easily half the power of my old buds and still be able to hear my music perfectly while dropping ambient noise at least 10-15 db. As an added side effect, they have excellent sound quality, particularly at their price point. They're worth every penny, IMHO. And for things like long road trips or flights, they're a life saver.
I've been in the subway and I could hear the music some guy is playing on his earbuds. 5 feet away.
:-/
So when I ask why he plays it so loud, he answers: "Because i can't hear it otherwise".
And the problem is that in the discos (or whatever they're called now), they play the music too loud, so much that you have to SHOUT so you can hear anything. Has anyone gone to those parties and measure the decibels there? (or course it's much cheaper to play the music at deafening levels than having speakers distributed over the place)
So it turns into a vicious circle, you can't hear so you pump up the volume.
I think the best tech to prevent hearing loss is EDUCATION. If the kids want to become deaf, at least we can say we DID warn them.
Thousands of bedroom doors were then slammed simultaneously followed by parental threats of cutting off allowances, selling personal properties "owned" by teenagers and stored "under [the parents'] roof" and demands of "living by [the parents'] rules while in [the parents'] house"
what a world... I think I saw something like this on MTV once..
Wired is reporting that Blomberg is working on an invention to help users maintain a greater control over the volume output of portable music devices.
Please tell me they haven't patented the volume wheel.
It's called "Assumption of Risk".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assumption_of_risk
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
you just made the point I was going to...
though this only works for people like us who want to listen to music at reasonable levels. if you slam the levels up even in quiet rooms, there is no hope!
It's going to be a dupe comment but here goes.
If I want to have any chance of actually *hearing* the music in an urban setting, I need to crank the volume up to max. The environmental noise of busses, people chatting on their cell phones, (heck, even an office environment,) means that I need to have that music set at max-1 or max (depending on the track) to have any chance of actually hearing it.
I had the pleasant surprise of being in a park this weekend and found that 60% volume was more than adequate to actually hear the music. But finally being in a park and not having all that incessant background noise, I didn't feel the need to listen to music that much.
I should really just shell out the cash and get a good set of earplug/earbud combo headphones that block external noise. Do these things really work at 50% volume?
I suggest you read Slashdot
To protect my hearing I would love to have a car mounted electromagnetic pulse gun for zapping cars or trucks who play their stereos way too fucking loud. Not only could I use this tech to protect my hearing but any passenger in my car and of course those in targeted vehicle. Next time I pull up to a stop light near a car or truck with it's stereo booming it automatically targets. As soon as the light changes I zap the offending vehicle and drive off. I'd also like to have one mounted on the roof of my house but disguised as say a satellite dish or rotary vent. When the sound sensors pick up an offending vehicle. It would target it then once the vehicle was far enough away zap it and fry their stereo (not to mention any cell phones or other electronics in the car).
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
...Brubeck Yelps at Leering Floss?
Modern music is already limited to all hell, there's no dynamic range at all.
...is that different headphones have different volumes at the same power output. One of the really cool things about the high output of the iPod is that you can hook up higher quality headphones to them and it's still powerful enough to drive them. For example, my BeyerDynamic 250-80's have 80 ohms of resistance vs. the about 40ohms for the standard iPod earbuds. I have to turn the "volume" up higher on my iPod to reach the same volume with my headphones compared to the earbuds, but it's still able to drive them, which is really cool. If you read head-fi.com, you'll find that some people actually buy portable headphone amps so they can drive their high-resistance headphones. I think it would be really cool if my iPod could tell me the decibel level that I'm playing my headphones at. But you'd need some sort of extra interface between the headphones and the player, and possibly some sort of microphone in the headphones, to be able to do that.
What did you say?
They've been warning us about how rock 'n roll was going to damage our hearing since I was a teenager (maybe before, but I wasn't paying attention). And I'm past the half century mark.
Music isn't the problem!
From TFA: if something sounds as loud as a lawnmower, you need hearing protection.
Bingo! Why don't I listen to my stereo when I'm mowing the lawn? BECAUSE I CAN'T HEAR THE DAMNED THING no matter how loud I turn it up.
My late uncle wore two hearing aids, one in each ear. He never listened to rock, and probably never listened to any loud music at all. He did, however, run a factory.
I worked in a copper factory for a couple of months. LOUD!! Even with hearing protection it was louder than any rock show I ever attended, let alone a pair of headphones.
Do you hunt? Then forget about the loud music, one shot from a small caliber gun will give you tinnitis. I hunted as a teenager, a 20 guage shot gut will make you completely deaf for a minute or two. It pisses me off that silencers are outlawed, I would consider a silencer a safety feature!
When I was in the Air Force working on the flightline, the rule was that you always kept the aircraft on the left of your vehicle. I found out why when I got out - a 10% loss of hearing in my left ear.
Those jet planes are damned noisy! The generators aren't quiet, either, especially the ones with jet engines (used to power C-5As).
Do you ride a motorcycle? Does your car need a muffler?
Forget the loud music, you're going deaf anyway from the other noise. Enjoy your music LOUD while you can still hear it at all.
-mcgrew
Sadly, the whole thing really doesn't have anything to do with preventing hearing loss. As it only warns users abourt high volumes, it serves only to prevent lawsuits. Mind you, I'm not saying that it's not a good idea, I just think it's sad that this sort of thing needs to be done.
... another new invention, called the 'dimmer-switch', has been invented to help prevent eyes from being irritated by too much light. This follows on the footsteps of 'sun-glasses' which help in the outdoor environment where a dimmer-switch can not be used...
First of all, the solution briefly mentioned in the article is apparently software vaporware. A software solution is going to either be overlimiting or worthless because it doesn't take into account the characteristics of the earbuds, headset, speakers, or whatever you are using. A given signal output will generate widely differing volumes depending on those characteristics. Especially if the output device contains amplification or other signal modification capabilities of its own.
Second, the misleading summary on Slashdot is unforgivable. RTFA.
Third, who says that everyone out there has the same threshold of damage in the first place? If they actually succeed in creating a device that reliably limits this, it will quickly be set for the lowest level known to harm anyone and become a defacto built in requirement for all devices as soon as the first lawsuit hits a manufacturer that either doesn't include the capability or allows it to be trivially disabled. Inventions like this are scary for that reason. There are way too many examples of these types of stupid protections being imposed on us.
A common example these days is water temperature regulations. The human body's burn response is actually a response, not a physical burning. The heat activates receptors, actually the same ones activated by capsaicin (pepper), that trigger the body tissues to blister, swell, etc. The trigger point of this response differs widely from one individual to the next and is dependent both on the individuals receptor concentration and the responsiveness of the receptors. The generally accepted worse case is that some individuals burn at a temperature as low as 120F. I've known others who drink 180 degree coffee as if it is nothing and can snack on habernero peppers in relative comfort. Those others do not sense heat the same and a 120F shower is cold to them. Where this hurts them is when the zealot overprotectors in our society do things like put in regulations that the hot water at the tap in a motel room cannot be over 120F, thus impinging on the freedom of many to enjoy a comfortably hot shower.
I'd bet just about anything that, like temperature, the vulnerability of the cilia to damage differs from one person to the next. Moreover, it probably varies even more than temperature because there are so many points at which the transmission of sound to the cilia can vary such as, the shape of the ear, the flexibility of the eardrum, the flexibility of the joints in the bones that transmit the sound through the middle ear, the flexibility of the cochlea's membrane, and even the resiliency of the particular individual's cilia.
We've got to start complaining loudly (no pun intended) when supposed advances are announced by scientists who are ignoring individuality. Individuality is what is being protected by freedom. We have given up much freedom to today's oversimplified "science" and it's influence on things like public perception, medical treatment, government regulation and civil law. No more.
I have a tape player that already has this, it's called AVS (Auto volume somethingIforgot). If you turn it on, the volume only goes up to a certian point. If you keep increasing the volume knob, nothing happens. In effect, it's a switch that breaks the volume knob.
But this software will just WARN people of dangerious volume. Which will really really work, cus nobody ignores warnings or popups on electronic devices, right?
When Doug Lenat gets Cyc working we'll have a machine with common sense. Was can then shrink this down to a single chip and implant it in people's brains. Should also solve some other problems like preventing people placing hot coffee between their legs in the car.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
Headphones vary dramatically in their efficiency. "Safe" on one pair of headphones might be "much too loud" on another, and "barely audible" on my very-nice-but-inefficient AKG K240 phones. Therefore, it is impractical to create a general solution to this problem either in software or in something like a hardware compressor/limiter.
Presumably, Blomberg assumes use of the crappy ipod earbuds, but a lot of people toss those.
A real general solution would require measuring the actual SPL level in the ear canal, or calibrating the limiter to the pair of actual headphones in use. This is left as an exercise to the reader.
Meanwhile, Buskirk's advice from page 2 of TFA still stands.
...is that considered 'new tech'? Or old skool?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
FTFS: Blomberg is working on an invention to help users maintain a greater control over the volume output of portable music devices.
Isn't that called a volume control? If they patent it, I'm going to kill somebody.....
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
I find that everything is too loud these days. I can't go to the movies anymore, because they are uncomfortably loud. No amplified music concerts. No clubs, no bars. It's all too loud for me. Even the PA announcements on public transportation are loud enough to cause pain in my ears.
Is it just me?
Replaygain is the solution to this problem- it allows for a regulated volume among all your music, and preserves all the differences in volume throughout a song or album. http://replaygain.hydrogenaudio.org/index.html
I can't hear you. Can you type louder? Answer: just create devices which don't amplify the sound so much, and provide a smaller output. Why can a ipod with ipod headphones create sounds so loud they damage hearing? Because Apple designed them to. 9This does not just apply to Apple and ipods.)
You seem to have forgotten the existence of multiband compressors. They allow you to set up multiple compression levels depending on frequency. With enough work, one could set one up that could finely control an overall frequency curve, keeping a signal within the maxiumum safe thresholds for human hearing, varying in amplitude by frequency.
l tiband.asp
See this explanation here: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug02/articles/mu
The problem with current volume controls is that your ear adapts the gain to potentially high levels of noise. For example in a noisy environment you crank up the volume and your hearing adapts to that level of sound and you stop noticing how loud it is. An improved volume control system in my opinion should let you crank it up to whatever level you want, but afterwards it will reduce the volume very slowly so in the end you you are not exposed to unsafe levels of sound for too long. Has this been tried?
Blomberg is working on an invention to give users more control over the volume output of their portable devices
You mean like the volume knob that has been installed on every single portable music device that I have ever seen in my entire 29 years of existance? And if someone want's more precise sound control, many (if not most) high end (or MP3) devices have an equalizer built in. Why do we need an external device for something that has already been in place for many many years. Hell, even some headphones come with a volume control knob...so between the headphones and the knob on my iPod, why do I need the gov't restricting this? Why do I need someone to create a piece of software and sell it to me, when I can already control the volume.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Kids still wear them too much, and listen to them too loud and unfortunately some still will have hearing loss.
;)
I resent this statement saying kids listen to loud music and it implies that adults do not. As a 29 year old male, urbanite, I can tell you I enjoy blasting my ears out - in fact my music is so loud, if you were standing 5 feet from me, you could clearly hear Linkin Park blaring!
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Just get a set of these Shure headphones.
They act as real earplugs, which keeps sound out. So...without the outside distractions, I don't need to turn up the volume.
With my iPod volume at 20-25%, I've had people at my desk talking to me, and I didn't even know they were there
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
I learned on a Ninja 250 - just about the cheapest bike/smallest street-legal engine you'll find on a motorcycle in the US. After 15-20 minutes of 50-60mph riding, I noticed that my ears rang, so I started wearing earplugs.
Now I've got a ducati 999 sports bike with a for-racing-only muffler. It's basically 4x the ninja in about everything (hp, torque, engine size)... except noise. It's actually much quieter! On the highway I now rev the engine at ~2.5k -- not the 6-8k that the ninja needed. Because the 999 puts the muffler under the seat instead of next to the wheels, it has room to put a huge muffler on it. It's a race bike, so that done for performance reasons, and not just to be quiet.
It drives me crazy - I call someone who mumbles, so I turn up the volume all the way on my phone, straining to hear them... Then they start yelling to a co-worker, or kids, whatever. Or they push touch-tones.
My wife says my ears are just too sensitive - but that sort of rapid volume change, especially on tinny little speakers like most telephones - it hurts.
I want a limiter I can plug inline using normal sub-mini jacks for my cell phone that will set an absolute top limit for volume, while allowing me to turn up the soft sounds.
Different headphones have different sensitivies - by as much as 20dB. This means that even if the player has a calibrated output to ensure it cannot blow your ears, switching to more sensitive headphones will cause overload on your ears. Conversely, the player will be unusable with an insensitive pair of 'phones.
I have read many mp3 player reviews, and one of the key things pointed out by reviewers is whether the sound goes really loud, and people won't buy a player (and I recall the same happened to tape walkmans and radios) if it won't go really loud.
It's one of the things I do in shops with TVs and radios - I check I can turn them up really loud and not get rattles and buzzes. I also discard the cheap nasty phones that come with many portable audio devices and use my noice-cancelling phones or medium/low cost Sennheisers - these transform the sound from a cheap player.
The common sense advice is to take a break from listening to music every 20 mins, and "reset" your ears, that way you won't let the volume level keep creeping up
Just try searching for audio equipment that produces high-quality sound at relatively low volumes. Good luck! Not even us Slashdotters could find any measure, or review based on such criteria, let alone your average Joe walking into a consumer electronics store where he's encouraged to buy the 300 watt sound system because it's better than the 150 watt one.
Change needs to happen at the manufacturer spec level, and also the audio review level, to take into account the fact that some of us still want clear music without blowing out our ears.
Morons on a Harley at 80mph ergister almost 120Db
Slightly OT, but it never ceases to amaze me that those things are still legal. There's absolutely NO reason for them to be that damn loud, except for the riders to compensate for their small penises by letting the whole freaking neighborhood know they are coming. It's like some neanderthal way of beating their chest or something. Piss off the neighbors, show 'em what a badass you are, YEAAAAHHHHH!!! Fucking idiots.
Honestly, if Harleys are legal, then why require mufflers on cars at all? I've never heard a car without a muffler that was anywhere near as loud as a stock Harley. What a nuisance!
"Ear plugs." Or maybe they could stop making audio equipment where the volume can go up to 11.
I know people like earbuds because of their small size, and this is a disincentive for the vendors, but really, they should all get together for some wholesome industry initiative action, form a flashy hearing protection initiative with a conspicuous logo, publicize it all over in the press, agree only to include headphones that block a certain amount of ambient noise with their players, and slap the logo on their products. The advantages:
Are you adequate?
It's not about "volume" but "dynamic range".
If you have background noise of 40db (not uncommon in a car), then if you turn the volume up loud enough to hear the soft parts, the loud parts get blasted out.
Happens all the time on TV -- real noticable on Sci-Fi, where they compress program volume down so that the max-sound is at about 65% (numbers are guestimates based on experience) of the dynamic range of the medium. Then the advertisers come in and balance commercials with the minimum range set to about 30%, and the loud spots peg up near 95%.
On reputable stations, they will balance the average output to some fixed standard, but on cheap-stations like scifi, they downgrade the program signal so advertising gets boosted way beyond normal. My volume setting on Sci-Fi channel is about 10-15% higher for program segments than on other channels -- but when commercials come on, prepare to get blasted.
Same happens with music devices. Not only is there a wide dynamic range available on the device (the more expensive the device, usually the wider the dynamic range), but it's compounded by users having to crank up the volume to drown out background noise. That makes the loud sections *way* too loud.
I solve the problem on most of my pre-recorded stuff by normalizing everything (though not usually compressing, as compressing causes loss of fidelity). Same
problem happens on sound playback out of my computer. Play a video and sometimes I have to turn the volume up to 80% to hear anything, but play a WAV or some CD's, and they are already normalized to 98%. Ouch!
I think what you really mean is that our ears hear more accurately at higher volumes.
There is a psycho-acoustical phenomena called the Fletcher-Munson Curves or Equal Loudness Curves.
There is a good explanation of it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_loudness_curve
Yes I am an audio engineer.
Libertas in infinitum
The problem is that different drivers (speakers) do not operate all at the same efficiency level.
For example, a really efficient driver may only need x watts to produce a given sound at 1 meter at 100dB SPL (sout pressure level).
While a less efficient driver may need y wats to produce that same sound at 1 meter at 100dB SPL.
Therefore, limiting the output of the device will limit the types of drivers (speakers) you can use with the device. If you limit it much, then really crappy low efficiency speakers won't produce enough dB SPL to overcome the noise floor of ambient noise.
And yes IAAAE (I am an audio engineer)
Libertas in infinitum
more OT:
I had a neighbor once that was a big harley nut. Every morning after his 3rd shift he would come home and rev his harley in his driveway for 20 minutes waking up everyone. Many people complained and he told them to F-off.
This neighbor was directly next door so his noise bother me more than others... Instead of doing the cops thing filing noise complaints and generating ill-will with the guy I simply pulled the old Fiero out of the garage, removed the exaust headers backed it so they pointed directly at his house and started the car reving it for 20 minutes at about 3:00pm. He bolted out of the house screaming what the ________ was going on. while I'm there leaning over the engine compartment with my shooting earmuffs on. I was generating at least 20 times the noise his harley could ever dream of.
I then proceeded to do the same trick as he pulled... every time he tried to talk I revved the engine and pointed at my ears asking "what did you say?" "I cant hear you!"
that was the last time he screwed with his noisemaker in the driveway early in the morning.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.