Ask Slashdot: Hacking Urban Noise?

b1tbkt writes "I live at the corner of one of the busiest intersections in my city (pop. 350k). Although I've replaced all windows, insulated, and caulked every square inch of the place, the fire trucks and cars with obnoxious stereos still regularly intrude on my home office. Most of the noise comes in through the windows. I'm considering mounting an oblong parabolic reflector in the ceiling above the windows with a steady feed of white or brownian noise directed into it (e.g., via a small speaker placed within the reflector) to create a 'wall' of sound that would act as a buffer to the outside world. Active noise cancellation would be nice, too, but that's probably more than I want to take on. I don't see any products on the market for this sort of thing. Does anyone have any experiences to share with similar homebrew noise remediation efforts?"

Comments

Re:Get a Pair of Headphones

[icebike]

Headphones don't block noise and turning them up to block noise will damage your hearing.
  Amazon.com has ear protectors and they will help.

Actually some headphones do block noise, by having a mic and playing the reverse sound (180 degrees out of phase).
But in any event, living with headphones on is not an answer.

The sound is coming thru the windows. Even dual pane windows won't help, they simply act as a drum.
Three pane windows help some.

What is needed is a dual pane window where the panes are not parallel. Tipping the top of the outer
pane outward de-tunes the drum, and reduces sound transmission by quite a bit. The further you can tip it
the better is works.

It has the additional effect of cutting insolation, while actually increasing insulation.

Any good galzier could do this for you and there are starting to be some commercial models available,
but custom built is the best way to achieve this.