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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?"
Quit being a downtown hipster and move to a nice house on a quiet street.
I recommend a pair of headphones
I think the problem is that you've only focused on the building. It's more effective to stop it before it even gets to the building.
double paned?
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Have curtains made from the kind of heavy drape they use in studios. Check out how people deal with acoustic treatment in home studio builds. For instance the gearslutz.com "studio building/acoustics" subforum has many threads to geek out on.
Do not line the walls with ordinary egg-crate foam. Whatever you put on the walls should be fire-rated. Yeah, it's more expensive, but you get what you pay for.
Egg crate foam has a tendency to burn like gasoline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire
--
BMO
I used to live right on the A10 highway into London. I move about 400 yds away and the traffic noise was a distant hum. I know that for some /. readers 400yds is beyond the pale when it comes to walking but around here parking spaces were like gold dust so people walk to the top of the street and take the bus, another 200yds there was the train station. 5 mins on the bus took you to a Tube Station.
Many of my neighbours at that time didn't have a car. They didn't need one.
More fool you for choosing to live where you do.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
n/t
Although there are dozens of vendors selling what sound like promising solutions, there is only one solution that really works: more mass. Think of it as a physics problem.. sound waves energy transmitted through the air that cause parts of the structure (including the structure above and below) and environment (e.g. the air around you) to vibrate at a particular resonance. The only way to stop the noise is to stop the vibration. A popular option is to use double drywall with something like rockwool insulation between the studs. You can get away with either 2 x 1/2" drywall or 2 x 5/8" drywall with a small furring strip in between without sacrificing too much living space. Look into Green Glue as an additional way to dampen vibrations in that setup. You can also go for a detached wall or "room within a room," but that starts to get expensive to do right.
If you want to look at a "serious" solution ($$$$), you should try to find a sound mitigation contractor in your area. They can survey the room during different times of day and determine what the best solution is for your situation.
It's the bass that really pisses me off. It's like legalized assault on my ears.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
How and what, exactly, have you insulated, and where is your domicile in relation to the street?
Do you have sound dampening mats on the ceiling? If not, bear in mind that most houses and apartments are above street level, and most of the sound will be reflected off the ceiling. A layer of sound dampening material there should have the largest effect.
If you live low to the ground, sound insulating the walls that can see the street, rather than just outside walls would have a similar effect.
A few strategically placed plants or sound dividers - think cubicle walls but far less intrusive - can also help.
If you must go with a noise generator (which I don't recommend), try pink noise instead of white. The sounds from the street you try to mask out are going to be mostly low frequency, and white noise will mainly add more sound energy in the higher end of the spectrum.
soundproofing.org (a retail site despite the .org domain) sells a lot of the stuff for that. Kind of a weird and funky site, fun to browse.
What you need, if you have the technical know-how (if you are up to the challenge - or maybe the tech' already exists), is 1) a microphone that will detect the noise coming in on a particular vector, 2) a uni-directional speaker (parabolic - they are never 100% uni-directional though) 3) software that will receive the sound, process it, and retransmit the 'inverted' sound-wave back at the source - at the same amplitude. you need to also take into account the distance from the microphone, the speed of sound, and the precise nano-second in which to transmit the inverted sound. It's easy in theory but in practice.... This is essentially how noise cancellation technologies work. It's complicated and don't under-estimate the vectors involved - refraction, caused by an improper calculation of 'direction', will cause leakage and may induce sound-waves that are more irritating to handle than 'normal' sound.
http://xkcd.com/368/
Although I've replaced all windows, insulated, and caulked every square inch of the place,
I've been in houses on a busy streets where the street noise stops at the walls and windows. So, possibly, you did not go far enough. For example, there are windows and there are sound-reducing windows.
Maybe you need to re-evaluate what you did to keep the noise out before you embark upon a project to reduce or mask the noise inside the room.
1) Noise cancelling headphones.
2) If the above doesn't work, then move.
Go buy a decent stereo system and throw on some Slayer- Diabolis In Musica.
Crank that bitch up and you wont hear shit outside.
Just the magical screaming from our good buddy, Tom Araya.
Problem Solved.
inside with a window that is separated from the "real" outside wall by a few inches.
You will be surprised at how effective this is while leaving the original "look and feel" of the room.
I like microcars
Why? If you value peace and quiet and fresh air, move to the countryside and you won't have to insulate yourself from your surroundings. A city of 350,000 can't be that big that you would have a long commute when you needed to get into the city.
One of the last things I've ever bought from Sony were their ultra-expensive MDR-NC500D digital noise canceling headphones. I can't speak for other noice canceling headphones, but can definitely not recommend the ones by Sony. Don't get fooled by the advertisements, the actual noise canceling is pretty weak, does not have any effect on car noise, and is only noticable when you listen to music. (You can't use them just for canceling outside noise.) Moreover, they need power all the time in order to work at all. In my opinion, they are definitely not worth the money.
then you may want to experiment with constrained layer damping
You'll need to find some clear viscoelastic adhesive in tape or sheet form - something similar to the stuff used to stick credit cards to the paper info sheets they're affixed to when they're mailed out. Then have a sheet of glass cut to the size of a window pane. Cover the window pane with the viscoelastic layer, (complete coverage with no gaps is required), and then apply the sheet of glass.(Clear sheet plastic may also work, but AFAIK optimum results are obtained when the constraining layers have similar properties). You may want to attach pull-tabs of fibreglas tape at the edges of the glass to make it easier to remove them if necessary.
The experiment shouldn't cost too much to try on one window. It should be immediately obvious whether or not it's worth doing the rest of the windows. After treatment you won't be able to see clearly through the windows, but at least they'll still allow the light in.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
You won't be able to cancel out road noise for an entire room. Noise cancelling basically only works with headphones and in certain controlled industrial environments. For a room with road noise coming from different directions from moving sources with a moving listener it just won't work.
I'm afraid you are basically screwed. The only option is to move.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Short of moving, the only way you're gonna get the sound level down is more insulation, even though you've already done some. Can't hurt to deaden the surfaces inside to damp the noise that does get in: carpet, soft wall coverings or hangings. Heavy (or heavier) drapes on the windows.
Of course, all of this will change the aesthetics of your place in other ways, too. And not necessarily to your liking.
I am not a crackpot.
What you need are multiple layers of different acoustical impedance; that is, hard and soft materials layered. Whenever there's an impedance mismatch, radiation gets reflected. An optical analog is a dielectric mirror. However, the really low frequencies are always a problem, and that's where more mass will help.
The above will definitely help...We used to have neighbors who were too rednecky to teach their dogs not to bark, so I ended up with a fan or a white noise machine in every room. One of my house mates had to do the same thing.
It will do literally nothing. Sound waves simply add. You can't get rid of sound waves by adding a bunch of random sound waves. The sound waves you don't want will pass right through. Now, if you simply have a white noise generator in your house, so that the ambient volume is higher, that may make it so that your ears have a harder time picking out specific sounds, which will, in turn, make it easier to ignore them.
Barring that, noise cancelling headphones or double-pane windows, as others have mentioned, are going to be your best bets. And double-pane windows are good for heating/cooling anyway.
As an aside, I'm also rather skeptical that noise cancellation for the entire apartment could ever be practical. The problem is the waveform bouncing off the various walls and other features of the apartment is going to be too complex to accurately measure or cancel. And then what about the sounds you do want to hear?
Sounds like you are doing it wrong. Contact a local contractor for an estimate or to simply chat about your options since you are a DIY kinda guy. Just realize the solution will not be cheap (time and/or money wise).
my mom posts on slashdot.
My adaption to fart mufflers and loud base was a sound detector and a machine gun. If the passing car got too loud, it would track and fire.
I havent built it yet, but one day...
I wouldnt shed a tear for these obnoxious people. They disturb hundreds of people daily, so fuck em.
And the motorcycles.
It's all about our narcissistic society. "Hey look at me! I'm special!"
When I was young I used to drive a car that made an annoying sound. I would simply crank up the radio, and the problem went away!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Crank up the sound level on your stereo to really high levels and use it constantly to mask street noises. Magically, after a while, you won't need it any more.
Nate
It won't be cheap, but you can do better. Double paned glass helps. Did you insulate the floor? Did you double wall insulate the rooms? There's about a million things that can be done, but it has to be done right or you won't get anywhere. Look into a book called Home Recording Studio: Build it Like The Pros. It's a little over the top, and not quite 100% applicable to this purpose, but if you follow that, and you still have issues, than you have to move, but I highly doubt that you'll still have issues if you do it right . (An example of "right" in this context is ensuring that you do NOT fasten everything to the studs, because in doing so you are transferring the sound through the studs and basically bypassing any insulation you've created, but this is a very complex setup to achieve, so do your homework well.)
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Er ... why, if the noise bothers you??
When I choose somewhere to live, right at the top of my list is that it must be somewhere where nobody will have any reason to drive past unless they live in the same street.
Everyone is entitled to peace and quiet.
-Fred Rogers
I used to live in a townhouse about 50ft from a 6-lane highway, with no protective soundwall. The noise from the highway was a constant buzz coming into the house, with occasional spikes (big rig trucks and straight-pipe Harleys).
Installing dual-pane windows solved the general problem of the constant higher noise level. Only the truck/Harley noise came through. Note that after a rain, car tires make more noise, and THAT still came through the windows a bit.
In your case, you need more help. Maximize your dead air space. Dual-pane windows will have have a smaller air gap than your walls, so start with the windows. If you need further noise abatement, hit the exterior walls, next.
For windows, something like this:
http://www.soundproofwindows.com/
For walls:
http://www.google.com/search?q=sound+absorbing+insulation/
I later bought a 60-year-old house (which already had dual-pane windows), and during a subsequent remodel we replaced all the half-inch drywall with 5/8th-inch, and added better insulation in the walls.It did a great job of reducing the "garage noise" (power tools, racing engines, etc.) from my neighbor's house.
We did the same for the interior walls, and replaced all the hollow-core interior doors with solid-core doors. Now any teen-chatter or stereo noise from the kids' rooms is effectively muffled into oblivion.
but 30 years of tax cuts and underfunded police departments means the cops have better things to be doing. That's why you don't see these guys in wealthy parts of town.
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Put that caulk in all the holes. And you can never have enough caulk. Some people prefer black caulk but that's up to you. Just make sure you get as much caulk as you can. Two caulks, three caulks at a time, the more the merrier. Invite your friends, the pizza boy, the pool cleaner, the plumber etc to join in with your caulk party.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I've had similar trouble. Dreadful downstairs neighbours who thought it was entirely appropriate to play loud music at all hours of the night, I could quite often hear the lyrics through the floor and windows. Brownian noise worked tremendously well but you have to remember that you're only covering the noise up, you have to be okay with noise somewhere between an industrial fan and a jet engine. (If you pretend really hard, it sounds like the ocean,) I used a modest stereo. Perhaps, if you have one laying around that can produce enough sound in the desired frequency, you can give it a test. If you require some source for background noise, I used http://simplynoise.com/ Brownian noise with oscillation.
Have you considered using a Trembler? Any of the "Stick it on a flat surface and turn it into a speaker" stuff out there could work well, and may also keep eavesdropping to a minimum (if privacy might be an issue).
Over at Thinkgeek.com, they have this little portable option: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/eaf8/
Try your Google-Fu, and see what else you get.
Good Luck!
Sound will still come through from the floor/ceiling if not insulated.
A guy I knew in college had this problem in his dorm. His roommate was a music major, and he had some PA equipment that he used for shows. Just a half stack probably, it was a dorm after all, but it was more than enough to blast this louder than any dorm room stereo could hope to keep up with.
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Basically, all soundproofing is about weight. More weight=less noise gets through. To reduce the noise coming in through the windows you need to increase the thickness of the panes or their number. Double or triple glazing, or even two double-glazed panes in series with an air gap of ~15 cm in between. You'll also need to look at the window frames. Old steel or aluminium frames are excellent sound conductors.
You can go pretty far with this; my father did some consulting on a housing project near an air force base. They managed to get sufficient soundproofing that living next to F-16s taking off wasn't aggravating any more, but they spent as much on the soundproofing as the houses had cost to build.
A friend lived near the airport. His house was upgraded from double pane with storms to some better double/triple pane without storms. The new windows where supposed to be better at blocking the sound of the planes.
Summary of the story, the new "better" windows didn't work as good as the old windows with storm windows at blocking noise.
So if' you've already upgraded the windows, add storms to the outside. It's an easy thing to install, and they typically are under $100 a window. Install can be as easy as hold it up, and put a few screws in.
Added bonus, it can help reduce heating/cooling costs. (not enough savings to pay for them, but it won't hurt!)
If windows aren't the problem add more/better insulation, there aren't any limits if you don't need to see through it.
Those who can, do.
I lived on a loud corner in SF a few years back. The walls were fine, but most noise was coming past the windows (which weren't cheap). I sourced 1/4 acrylic sheets, had them cut to my specs at the distributor (TAP Plastic in SF) and affixed them to the window frames with double-sided sticky foam tape. (Also put a rip cord if I needed to remove them fast).
It worked great. Cost somewhere above $50 per window. But I did have to sacrifice fresh air :(
My remedy may not be what you want but all the noises from outside reverberate in the glass......so remove the windows. Paint a window in a few places and make it look like you have windows so you have that windowed feel without feeling shut off completely. That's a remedy you may want to think about. David O'Rourke
Did you buy the place?
Did you know it was noisy?
Are we a little sensitive?
Is this your homework assignment?
Why do you find yourself living at that place?
Have you considered other places?
With a population of 350K,(try 5M people for noise), what city is it?
Do you know of the personal impact of living in an area under constant noise generation?
Maybe a good project to start , you will get no luck for low frequency but for the rest i think it's something possible
to insulate against sound. Googling "sound insulation" will bring up relevant products and services.
Try putting soundproofing on your ceiling and then get some sound proof blinds like these: http://www.blindschalet.com/aqq-1580-soundproof-blinds.html
Installed carpet with substantial padding underneath also helps.
Alternatively, you could buy some large vertical blinds and glue soundproofing material to the back. If the home soundproofing material isn't thin enough for blinds, the automobile sound insulation will be. If you need to hide the appearance of materials, glue on loosely woven fabric, not paper or other sound-reflecting materials.
Someone else suggested using a sound dampening room divider, and that's a good idea if your room is big enough. That will add sound-dampening surface area to your space.
It did wonders for the noise on Detroit's streets.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Suck all the air out of your place and wear a spacesuit. You can probably pick up a spacesuit and vacuum pump for not too much at a GSA auction.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Soundproof drywall - 1 sheet is equal to between 8 and 16 sheets of regular drywall. Put it up, 2 sheets thick and no noise will come through your walls at all. Then build yourself a picture frame larger than your window. Back it with the soundproof drywall, put some random picture you like in it, and hang it over the window. If you want to move it to see out the window on occasion, hang it from tracks so it can slide back and forth, or put it on hinges.
Sirens and the like, are specifically designed to pierce through background noise. White noise works when blocking out conversations and other ambient noise... but sirens are a whole other animal.
"Cheap and works every time. After a few minutes, you'll forget you have them in."
I'd suggest the same. I work shifts and needed them to be able to sleep during the day. Now I can't live without them.
Not only sleeping, but programming, reading and other stuff is great with plugs.
But you can't forget them after a few minutes in the beginning.
I tested 2 dozen of them and still I needed 3 weeks until they didn't hurt anymore. If you wear them 8-10 hours, your ears need to adapt.
It _will_ hurt for some time, but then it's heaven.
Windows transmit percussive noise quite well even if they are insulated. The best solution I have come up with was to use translucent corrugated roofing panels (such as http://www.wolfleader.com/products/brand/sequentia/ ) on the outsides of the windows. The currugation serves to both deflect noise away and to redirect the percussive waves so that they aren't in sync when they hit the glass (and thus don't transmit as well). Add some black-out curtains (the kind with the rubberized backing) for when the noise outweighs your need for sunlight or use some more expensive translucent sound absorbing curtains (such as http://www.gizmag.com/empa-translucent-sound-absorbing-curtain/18556/ ). There are commercial/industrial solutions that use similar techniques, but nothing I found was translucent and all of it was extremely expensive compared to the commodity items available at your local hardware store.
First you must measure how many decibel of attenuation you need. For this you need a sound level meter: If you don't have one at hand, a microphone + PC sound card + Audacity can be used as well (many apps for Android/Ipad are also available for this). Measure two sound spectra at your location: the first one with traffic noise present, the second one when you feel that background noise level is comfortable for you. The difference between the two spectra will tell you how much attenuation you need, and which frequencies need to be attenuated more.
Next compare the attenuation offered by each possible solutions (noise attenuationg windows, wall insulation, etc.) against the attenuation you need to achieve. If it isn't enough, move away, otherwise try installing the best solution you can afford.
Noise should be stopped before it enters the walls of your home: Once it is there, it can follow unsuspected paths to reach your ears (pipes, wall joints, etc.). The best way to stop it is to increase the acoustic impedance of external walls and windows.
Attenuation could be increased using viscoelastic materials like rubber: however they are best for attenuating high frequencies.
You don't get $$$ by being lucky unless you inherit it or you hit the lottery.
People are free to move and live where they want. I suppose you want them to stay and suffer the festering blight of poverty and crime? As far as "solving the problems", name one city that has ever solved the problem. You can't solve stupid and the people causing these problems are Stupid incarnate.
I live outside a city and pay no city taxes. I pay county taxes for fire and police (County Sheriff), and a Hospital District and we have our own water district. I take no resources from the cities nearby, but I do spend my money there. When we pay off the bonds on our district, the city plans on annexing my neighborhood. So then I'll get to pay city taxes and get bum fucking nothing in return except a library card. That's when I move further away.
You people who want everyone to live crammed together in some kind of supposed utopia of harmony and efficiency are nuts. City living has it's advantages and its drawbacks and people are free to choose city, suburban or county lifestyles. Who the hell are you to say anything about their choice?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
...might quiet things down out there.
Maybe if you're that sensitive to noise getting an apartment on the busiest intersection in a major city was a bad idea.
You can move, you know.
Liberty in your lifetime
See, the lucky ones with all the $$$ leave, and leave behind a festering blight of poverty and crime instead of solving the problems.
I'm sorry, I don't see how it's possible to solve the problem of urban noise any time soon, not without some serious active noise cancellation technology (which is bound not to work well as you walk around your urban apartment). The biggest problem is cars and trucks. If we switched to something like SkyTran and most people gave up their cars as a result, then that'd cut down noise a lot, but there doesn't seem to be very much movement towards any public transit these days. Electric cars will help a fair amount, but a lot of noise is not from engines, but from tires, and it looks like it might be quite a while until everyone's driving an EV. There's nothing you can do about loud stereos. And the Harley riders will never give up their muffler-less gas-burning contraptions. And there's also nothing you can do about horn honking.
Cities are noisy by nature, so if noise is a problem, leaving it behind in a "festering blight of poverty and crime" is the only solution, though I don't see how noise and crime are linked. Manhattan is noisy as heck (people seem to honk their horns there more than any other American city), yet it's probably the most crime-free large city district in the country.
Double (or triple) glazing where the winow panes have a different thickness prevents resonance. Filling up the space between the panes with helium works well too, and no id doesn't diffuse, not through several mills of glass. For the roof, consider a fake ceiling of sound absorbing material. Have a look at www.rockfon.com.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
...and if double glazing doesn't work, quadruple glazing and if that doesn't work, brick the front windows up...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Someone else already mentioned Sound Proof Windows, but in my house 90% of the noise comes through the walls, rather than the windows. I discovered this after upgrading my windows, of course.
If I were building from scratch using stick construction, I'd consider using staggered studs.
If I were really motivated, but not building new, I'd use Green Glue and just add that between the existing wall and an additional layer of new drywall.
There's plenty you can do on existing construction, but most of it is expensive, and a pain in the butt. The insulation and caulking you've added probably won't help much, since the exterior is attached directly to studs, to which the interior is also directly attached. It transmits vibrations easily, without regard for your insulation. The staggered studs and the green glue are the best ways I know of for dampening residential noise.
Back OT, however, the answer is triple glazing and lining the outside wall with Noisekiller - which is a polymer foam/lead/foam composite which can silence the sound of a marine Diesel engine in a steel enclosure.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The reasonable man wants to fly, so rather then to expect the world to change and give him wings, he creates the airplane.
The unreasonable man wants to fly, he goes on the internet to find an anti-gravity device.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The effort I had to put in at school in the 1950s learning to add, multiple and divide pounds, shillings and pence was totally wasted. We actually had a maths teacher who thought metrication was a Bad Thing because it would reduce the ability to do mental arithmetic. What he didn't see was that you only really need the ability to do mental arithmetic if you have to use a dysfunctional system of weights and measures.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
http://chomikuj.pl/Enouqh/E-booki/txt/Arthur+C.+Clarke/Arthur+C.+Clarke+-+Silence+Please,71861083.txt/
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. -Gandhi
I mean, obviously, moving is your best option. Cities are loud places. Although a city with 350k is pretty small, if you're living in the center of the place, you're going to have to deal with noise. If you haven't gotten used to it yet (which is kind of surprising, really), your long-term solution is to save up some money until you can afford to move to the 'burbs, or out to the country. Or to a smaller town.
That said, I lived in a bigger city (600k or so) in a bad neighborhood (so there were cars and sirens all night) for a little while. Heavy drapes help, with the added benefit that people can't see in your windows. Sirens are made to be heard, so you might have a hard time really insulating yourself from them, but as for just general road noise and city sounds, I'd move your office into an internal room, i.e. one that doesn't have any windows, and that preferably has rooms with doors between it and the outside. As others have said, you could certainly install double- or triple-pane windows, but at that point you're better off spending the money on a down payment on a house or condo somewhere other than the busiest part of the city. Plants, bookshelves, basically stuff to get in the way and create more surfaces between the windows and you seem to be somewhat effective in reducing sound. Also, since you won't be able to get rid of the sound, you might try doing stuff like leaving the tv or radio on in the background, just as a low-cost "white-noise" alternative.
But, really, the core issue here is not how thick your windows need to be to live in the middle of an urban area and not hear anything. It's why you would locate yourself somewhere that you're not going to be able to work, or, the way it sounds, live comfortably. I don't know what you do for a living, but, if cost is an issue, a long-term solution might be to relocate to a cheaper area nearby, where you're still close enough to meet with clients in the city if need be, but you're not in a noisy area. Based on where you're posting and what you're posting, I'm assuming you're not a glass blower or a mime or anything, so I'd also point out that the wonder of telecommuting is that you can do it from quite far away...
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One thing you most certainly wouldn't want to do, is to add more noise; it will only make you tired. I'm pretty sure you should be able to fix the problem with proper insulation. In fact, that's the only way to stop sound from coming in. Once it's in, there's basically only one thing you could do to make it less annoying, and that's to improve the acoustics of your rooms. Think things like carpets, acoustic panels, smart furniture placement, removing or covering up reflective surfaces, possibly even bass traps. Goal is to stop standing waves that amplify certain frequencies (the "room modes") and to lower reverberation.
This will get you two things: the sound coming in is amplified less by your rooms and the sound that originates indoors will be much clearer, standing out from the outdoor noise much more. If you are serious about solving this problem, I suggest you have an acoustics expert look at the problem and do some measurements. Often some very simple cheap measures can improve the situation tremendously.)
Slightly relevant TED video claiming that such noise can actually kill you: http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_why_architects_need_to_use_their_ears.html
0x or or snor perron?!
We lined a computer room with Soundsoak panels from Armstrong with the intent of keeping the noise in. It was very effective. Before the hardware was installed the effect was downright eerie. The room was so quiet it was almost painful. It was as though your ears were confused, and straining to detect some sound. http://www.armstrong.com/commceilingsna/article66317.html
Stick a microphone out the window, plug it unto your computers Aux or Mic in. Use /dev/mic as a random number generator.
Broadcast studios always have double windows, but the panes are at an angle to each other. Placing them parallel to each other makes them more likely to resonate with each other.
Bruce Perens.
Wait... would that actually do anything?
Are you saying that a curtain of sound (perhaps not even directed so that you can hear it) inhibits the passage of other sounds through it? I don't know anything about acoustics, but this seems untrue.
But maybe subby doesn't have $300k lying around for a nice new house by the coast.
Neither did I. I live on the Oregon Coast, which is nothing like an east-coast cost-of-living, let alone the likes of Martha's Vineyard or Palm Beach. The houses I'm looking at purchasing cost an average of $85k-$150k, and yet are within blocks of the surf. Unless you count summer tourists, the town I live in has a population of less than 1200.
Sorry if you got confused *shrug*.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
PS: about the other bad assumptions you made, to wit:
My favorite part about this phenomenon is the people who leave usually re-incorporate outside the city so they don't have to pay taxes, often relying on government services (education, housing, etc) while they got 'bootstrapped' enough to move to a suburb just outside the reach of the taxes they relied on.
I live 85 miles away from the nearest metro area (Portland). I sincerely doubt that PDX or its bedroom communities are going to grow over the Coastal Range and reach all the way out here. I pay taxes into and rely on the services provided by my wee town and by Tillamook County - not Portland, Beaverton, Hillsboro, or whatever. The towns out here were incorporated back in the late 19th-early 20th century.
Trust me - no one lives out here to leech off of Portland's gov't services; the tourist dollars that flow from it are quite sufficient. ;)
To sum it all up? Maybe you should, like, you know... ask before making assumptions next time?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I rent. Quiet street, no traffic. If I so choose, a 1 minute walk gets me to the nearest intersection, where I can listen to cars and radios, if I so choose.
I rent. If I want, a simple phone call to one person ends my relationship and I can move. If you own, now what? Agents and notaries and taxes and blah blah blah... What a waste of time and energy.
Also, architecturally, I've seen some buildings on busy streets in Montreal that have angled windows. I suspect that having two parallel rows of straight facades on either side of a street creates an echo chamber as sound reflects back and forth between two buildings.
Look at this.
My thought would be to build a concrete planter as high as is allowed around the outer edge of the property. This ought to be effective in reflecting a lot of the noise that comes from tires, engines, or is reflected off the road surface back toward the road.
Then possibly install a fence on top of that (or behind it); mount the fence panels on both the outside and inside of the posts for maximum sound reflection / damping. Make sure the fence panels are as rigid as possible (i.e. 3/4" plywood or glass blocks).
A bushy hedge planted in the concrete planter might help, not as much as the fencing but it should be cheap.
I've considered mounting a plexiglass sheet outside windows, some distance from the house wall, allowing window to be opened for air if necessary but acting as a separate shield. Be sure to try to eliminate sound waves from bouncing off house wall, hitting inside of plexiglass, then hitting window. Nicely crafted mounting brackets could make it acceptably attractive instead of hideously ugly.
Re-evaluate the windows that you've already replaced: properly done they ought to be stopping most sound, glass being so rigid as to reflect sound waves quite well. Maybe try triple-glazed in your office window(s).
Finally, like others have said, bring in a specialist for their advice.
Good luck!
Here in Phoenix, most houses are surrounded with concrete block walls. They're great for privacy as well as sound deflection. They're usually 5-7 feet tall, and make life very pleasant.
1 - From the moment you wake up, and every hour after that, fire a blank from a firearm of choice 3 inches away from each ear. It goes without saying that it should be fired at a safe spot, not your forehead.
2 - Reverse the noise frequency's so it cancels out the noise.
3 - try meditating, if you go to a Vipanassa retreat and learn how to do some correct meditation you will be able to shut it that way.
4 - Go and live in New Delhi, Calcutta or Cairo for a year. After that your city will sound like an oasis of peaceful tranquillity (those cities have made it obligatory to have cruisecontroll... on the horns)
5 - combine 1, 2, 3 and 4
6 - if this doesn't work maybe moving to a quiet forest is an option, but mind the animals, they can be quite loud as well when mating season is about to start
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
There are detailed laws for the sound level from cars. If you have the connections a cop can issue some tickets on that specific corner; otherwise, you can lobby for an automated system similar to speed cameras. It will bring lots of money to the municipality and improve the neighborhood. You will not be able to do anything about ambulances, police cars and firetrucks.
Admit it - You put loud exhausts on your cars and trucks because you have to compensate for your tiny penis. Why else? Or is it just that you like to annoy people? You want "raw power"? Try flying a military jet. As to "freedom", how about your understanding that others lose their freedom to peace and quiet because you're an asshole. You want loud noise? Put a stereo on your bike (undoubtedly a Harley piece of crap) and some ear phones. You get the "loud" you want without annoying other people.
Less than two weeks, fat ass.
They're called externalities. Suburbia is unsustainable, period. Until your heating, electric, and transportation bills include a tax for the carbon output, I call bullshit.
You also, as you admit, use the city regularly. In fact, the reason you live NEAR the city, and not in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, is that you depend on the city, but are too selfish to pay your fair share.
Meanwhile, at least here in the United States, the average city dweller pays more in taxes than they get in benefits, while rural and suburban dwellers leech off of their funds.
I'm a fellow suburbanite too. I just don't act like I'm not screwing the world by choosing a selfish lifestyle
Actually 8 days and some hours is closer to one week than two! Took me 9 to drive because I stopped in chicago and was drunk for 3 days.
music lover since 1969
There's an idiot I see who leaf blows his pool. Not around the pool, THE pool. I say gas every last one of them.
What's your jurisdiction? I may know solutions for the annexation problem.
Intelligent idiots are we. | Evil men do not understand justice.
Get some earplugs.
Of course your best approach would be to attenuate the noise. Next, whether you can mask it with PINK noise, depends on how high a noise level you're left with. You can also mask it with more complex, soothing sounds. But the idea of parabolic sound reflectors sounds impractical to me. If the noise level is deafening, forget about trying to mask it. What I once read, many, many years ago, was an Ad for "Transducers" that could be glued to window panes, and which used their own mass for inertia, as a counter-balance to the sound waves they send through the glass. Transducers are not usually designed for the mass consumer, however commonplace they are in Science. This one Ad I once saw, bragged about how hard their glue actually was, so that good sound quality would be preserved. But the idea in the 1990s was, to position this transducer in a corner of the window where it won't obtrude visually, and to feed it with an externally-amplified pair of wires. Your window should play whichever Beethoven symphony your amp will feed it. AND, if that project because 'uninteresting or something', you simply disconnect the little transducer from its signal. You don't try to pry it off again.
City living is shitty right up until you get rid of the cars. Take SF for example, turn 2 streets out of 3 into parks with bike paths and use the rest of the streets for public transportation, and it might actually work. But that's the kind of thing that we won't do until it's well past time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you don't have storm windows try adding them to one or two windows. The Extra air space and material will greatly cut down on the transmission of some sounds. However, nothing is going to keep out the low bass sounds Only thing to do about that is work on a city ordnance, but that will not win you any friends.
http://www.bose.com/shop_online/headphones/noise_cancelling_headphones/quietcomfort_15/index.jsp i can't believe i'm the first to mention it! maybe i can finally get some respect with the mod points now?
Below a certain population density, mass transit doesn't really scale. Take a look at these maps, and you'll be able to tell the places where it makes sense, and where it doesn't: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density
Most of Europe is pretty dense, and large swaths of Asia, but unless you live in an urban megaples in the U.S., it generally doesn't work so well.
Oh, and the original poster should just buy some soundproof windows; a rating of 45 will yield a 95% reduction in the sound comin through the windows, so long as they are kept closed.
OP, You may want to try white noise (www.JetCityOrange.com/white-noise/), pink noise (www.JetCityOrange.com/pink-noise/), and (my favorite) brown noise (www.JetCityOrange.com/brown-noise/) as well as things like waterfalls, surf, hail storms, etc. Then again, you may wanna just move to a quiet street. I grew up on a main drag with 4 lanes of traffic and a light rail down the middle a block and a half from the police & fire stations. Guess what? As an adult I *insist* on quiet neighborhoods. I've lived next door to 2 cemeteries. Best neighbors I ever had.
Somebody asked me the same question when some Con Ed workers were drilling up the street in front of her window, and this was the answer I gave her (although I like the noise-cancelling idea):
I used to work in a factory in the Bronx that made acoustic soundproofing panels for radio stations, music studios, etc.
These panels were about 8 feet wide, 4 feet wide, and 5 inches thick. They were made like a sandwich. The filling was 3/4-inch sheetrock glued to a layer of about 4 inches of fiberglass. On the outside of the filling, they had 3/16-inch aluminum panels. The outside aluminum panels were normal aluminum sheet. The inside aluminum panels were punched with lots of tiny holes to absorb sound better. They were spot-welded together, which was a lot of fun.
They were very effective. The factory was very noisy, with grinders, pneumatic drills and stuff. If you stood the panels up into a little closet on 3 sides of you, the sound would be dramatically reduced. They were pretty heavy -- it took 2 guys to move them onto a truck, and I'd guess they weighed 150 pounds apiece.
You know how the walls of a normal apartment is made of sheetrock (wallboard) panels. To make a recording studio, they would install these acoustic panels instead.
As I write this I am sitting on 43rd St. and 10th Ave. 10th Ave. is a heavily-trafficked main route for fire engines, and drivers love to blow their horns. Con Edison has jackhammers in the street all the time. If I leave my window open (as I like to do), it's pretty noisy. If I close the double-glass panel window, it's a lot quieter (although it's stuffier and I have to turn on the air conditioner).
If the noise were continuous, and it were really bothering me, I would consider making my own acoustic panels. Instead of aluminum and sheetrock, I'd make them out of cardboard and fiberglass. Fiberglass is used for heat insulation, so you can easily find it in Home Depot or local lumber yards. It comes in standard sizes, either in rolls or panels. I'd make the panels 4 feet wide and just high enough to clear my ceiling. The thicker the better -- I'd make them 4 or 6 inches thick.
The best way to make them would be to find cardboard cartons that somebody had thrown out that were just the right size -- say, 4 feet by 7 feet. They ship mattresses in cartons like that. I'd check in the mattress stores, or maybe hotels, that get mattresses delivered in boxes like that and throw them out. Or you can find big sheets of cardboard that you can cut and fold to size. (It's not hard to cut and fold cardboard. I learned how to do that in fourth grade). You can use glue and tape to hold the cardboard together after you fold it. The best heavy-duty cardboard is from the boxes that refrigerators come in. Some apartment buildings regularly replace refrigerators so they'd have a lot of boxes.
So you make for example 4 cardboard boxes, each about 4 feet by 8 feet by 5 inches (inside measurement -- that's important, so the fiberglass will fit). Fold the boxes. Place the 4 foot by 8 foot by 5 inch fiberglass batting into the boxes. Seal the edges of the boxes around the fiberglass with glue and/or packing tape to keep the fiberglass inside and prevent it from spilling out. Put those panels in a line in front of your windows and they should dramatically reduce the sound.
(Fiberglass can be messy, so you have to be careful, maybe working outdoors, wearing old clothes, etc., but people use it all the time. You can get instructions on the Internet.)
One minor problem is that the cardboard reflects sound. You preferably want absorbent material on the side towards you (which is why we used perforated aluminum sheet).
One of the best absorbent materials is egg crates. (This is not styrofoam egg crates, but fluffy cardboard, which has much better acoustics.) People have actually made sound studios using egg crates on the walls and ceiling for sound absorption. You used to be able to get egg crates from big restaurants that used lots of eggs. (These are not t
You need to install a multi-layer object made of two (or more) materials that transmit sound waves by very different amounts; this is known as an impedance mismatch. It Can Be Shown that the incident sound waves will be strongly reflected at the mismatched boundary. In this context, double-paned windows (thus layers of glass and air) will provide the mismatch you need.
And, as another poster mentioned, this will provide good thermal insulation, as a bonus.
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
OK being an EE... here is my suggestion... 1. I know you can use window glass and convert it into a speaker... I do not have the method right here, but I have seen it done several times... next buy a cheap set of active headphones... and put a small Mic out side the window... then attach the output to the inside window/ speaker... this should cancel out the noise... and you then have the option of hooking a stereo to the windows/speakers and can enjoy the music...
American houses are generally built with VERY sound-conducting walls. Which also have approximately zero thermal insulation effectiveness.
I've lived in Russia where all houses have thick walls (because of these pesky -40C winters) and are much quieter. You can't block all the noise (especially low-frequency road noise), of course.
And you also need to get rid of assholes.
Where was your doctor educated? Maybe by the dolphins in the Ocean Educatorium near your beach? Do you think he'll be able to perform a heart surgery if you need it?
Do a google search with the four words: designing studio windows soundproof and you'll get a bunch of instructional articles and videos.
It's not expensive: Essentially two or more windows "in series" at slightly different tilt angles, sealed very tightly (an air leak is a sound leak) with attention to how it's mounted. If you can build a window frame and a window you can build a soundproof window.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
American houses are generally built with VERY sound-conducting walls. Which also have approximately zero thermal insulation effectiveness.
Newer houses, made of timer framing (preferably 2x6, for thicker walls) and high R-value insulation, actually do quite well, along with double- or triple-pane windows. Many of these are also rather quiet inside, since the properties for thermal and acoustical insulation overlap a lot. Unfortunately, a lot of older houses (only a few decades old in fact) are much more poorly made as far as insulating value; back in the 60s and before, they didn't have any real insulation at all, and windows were just cheap single-pane windows with little or no insulating ability or weatherproofing. People laud the craftsmanship of much older houses (100+ years), and in fact those houses were made well, but they didn't know the first thing about making a house energy-efficient back in those days so these days they have to be extensively renovated to be livable.
I've lived in Russia where all houses have thick walls (because of these pesky -40C winters)
We have temperatures that cold too, in the midwest/central states like Minnesota and North Dakota.
You can't block all the noise (especially low-frequency road noise), of course.
Yep, so no matter what you do, big diesel trucks are still going to be annoying.
And you also need to get rid of assholes.
How are we supposed to do that? The term "ugly American" exists for a reason.
You could mask it with this noise.
or maybe this one.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
We have temperatures that cold too, in the midwest/central states like Minnesota and North Dakota.
Also in Alaska. Everyone always forgets about Alaska! I've been in Minnesota and Alaska, and houses there are much better than the average US ones.
Yep, so no matter what you do, big diesel trucks are still going to be annoying.
Still, they're much less annoying than a high-pitched motorcycle whine.
How are we supposed to do that? The term "ugly American" exists for a reason.
Well, there are all those lax US gun control laws...
Where was your doctor educated?
Not by the PDX city government, dumbass.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Still, they were probably educated in a university in or near some other city.
Although they're less effective against things like engine noise, I found shutters helpful for reducing the nighttime intrusion of city centre noise. If you've got some reasonably dense timber board, try covering your window openings with it (inside or outside depending on which is more suitable) and see what difference it makes (you get an additional air gap before the glazing plus the sound absorbency of the board). I don't suggest you board up your windows for good (though, this being Slashdot, I don't discount it as an option), but if it makes a substantial difference you can install something more permanently that hinges and folds to give you access to daylight when required.
Also, if you live on the top floor, noise may be coming in through the roof so insulation above the ceiling may help.
This video shows something similar http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QCJM9tqvvI
As does this one.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
Either move or get a set of noise cancelling headphones.
Double windows, like in BMW luxury cars, 7-series has been doing a long time. Thick windows too, custom made. Not that expensive really.
That is if you must have natural light coming in still, which you obviously want.
Active noise cancellation is not that expensive anymore, i recall seeing headphones for 100€ or so with active noise cancellation! :)
You could hack from that set a cheap active noise cancellation system!
A little bit of experimenting is required with the location of the receiver microphone to get the timing right, and the distance of the reflector if reflector is required.
As for other surfaces:
Look at car acoustics, there is many types of noise insulations! Some are cheap, some a little bit less cheap. Common in everything: Comes in easy to apply format, "mattress" or "paint".
The "paint" type is usually very massive and to be applied thick, often just bitumen which is very cheap. Will not "dry" ever completely necessary. Thickest form needs to be applied with heat.
The "mattress" types are usually for specific types of noise, the bitumen type usually is best used to stop vibrations etc. in cars, and functions for all types of noise. The mattress types are usually lightweight and thus usually effective only for certain bands.
Often the mattress types also include heat shielding & insulation.
The cost per m2 ranges from couple euros to 30 euros with these, but i'm sure you can get them in big quantities far cheaper than that.
Downside is that these are only suitable for inner structures, so if you live in brick / concrete building you'd need to build separate inner walls too, thus most likely not suitable to your application.
Active noise cancellation might be the best bet here.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
You don't get $$$ by being lucky unless you inherit it or you hit the lottery.
Except that you sort of do. Even discounting the factors that you have no control over that shape you - intelligence, parents, school, place of birth - there's still a lot of luck in making significant money. You can apply for a job and be the perfect candidate but be rejected, or you can be a mediocre candidate but get the job. Likewise you can start a business and run it perfectly but go insolvent, or make mistake after mistake but have huge success.
Hard work, intelligence, tenacity and so on all make it more likely that you will succeed, but it would be hopelessly naive to think that everybody with those attributes makes it or that every self-made man succeeded on his own merit.
Interesting that you use the word bullshit and carbon tax together because that's what it is. I pay for my heating, electric, and transportation just like the city dwellers do, but to different people.
I call bullshit on you.
What s my fair share for "using a city"? When a city dweller goes to another city, do they have to pay their fair share? I have 4 incorporated cities around me, which do I owe my fair share to? When I "use a city" I pay sales tax as well as contributing to their tax base by sustaining the local businesses. It's no different than someone from City A going to City B.
I pay a home owners association. The board is filled with idiots, tyrants, and morons...just like a city council. A City is nothing more than than, but with tons of extra crap they saddle themselves with and boat loads of oppressive regulations.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Non-food goods are made in China, Mexico, and various other third world countries.
My food comes from farms in the country, most outside of city limits.
We have a hospital close by which is also not in the City. They pay fewer taxes than the city hospitals.
I have AT&T for internet and they have nothing to do with the local city.
The bottom line is we could do just fine with big cities around us. But of course, without all those farms in the country side, the city dwellers would die of starvation.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Try one of their sets, which include a wide variety and try them out. It's rather difficult, since after a few days your ears hurt no matter which ones you use. I use QUIET ones, with cords, so if one falls out during the night, I find it by following the cord from the other ear. They come in 3 sizes.
It's like riding a bike, your ass will be sore for days no matter which saddle.
http://www.howardleight.com/earplugs/quiet
PS. Use some cream to avoid micro-abbrasions to your ear while placing them, which can get infected.
So...turn it into a Disneyland?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I take advantage of cheap commercial products manufactured overseas. No manufacturing plants in most cities these days
I have a hospital almost withing walking distance...also not in the city limits.
Cities are great. I can go there to buy stuff and do things. I pay for that when I do. But I see no reason to live there and put up with all their crap though. If you want to live there, go right ahead. I'm not going to stop you. Open a shop there and I'll buy stuff from you. I don't really see why you have a problem with people who don't live in the city.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I think every understands that becoming wealthy involves a little of luck, otherwise known as catching a break.
But as they say success = Opportunity + Preparation. And there are plenty of people who made the opportunity themselves too.
But to just say that you can't become wealthy with just your own determination, hard work and insight is pure bullshit. It flies in the face of hundreds of years of success in America and all over the world.
But if that's what you believe, then my friend, you will never become wealthy.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It already is, it would just be a nicer, cleaner one. It's already just as expensive and well on its way to being as controlled, though they control an overlapping yet still different set of things.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually the constant drone of traffic (not the submitter's complaint, I know) is less detrimental to sleep and concentration (as well as being easier to mitigate) than barking dogs.
I moved to an ex-burb with one of the features being less noise, and although it is quieter 99% of the time, the 1% of the time that the dogs of the people in my neighborhood are barking has been a nightmare - actually it would be an improvement if it was a nightmare because that would mean I was actually getting REM sleep. Yes, there are nuisance laws but a dog doesn't have to bark for 30 minutes at a time to ruin your sleep. Just a few barks an hour or two before when you wanted to wake up will wreck your day. Yes, I wear 30 dB earplugs, yes I run a white noise app on my phone - the bark breaks through all of it. My next technocal step is sleepphones, which all reviews indicate are uncomfortably hot when it's not winter... I'll see if I can get my responsible neighbors to join me in complaining and just maybe the jerks will pull their heads from their asses.
I'm now looking into options for dog-free communities or at least a living arrangement where my ability to sleep for 7-8 hours doesn't hinge on the machinations of the canine brain. Since I can't seem to find any HOAs which prohibit dog ownership I'm thinking of a high-rise condo. Probably for the best anyway since living under an HOA would mean having to groom my lawn religiously, and I'm not a fan of yard work.
I don't enjoy the thought of sharing walls with other people, but I'm hoping to find that well-constructed condos (which are typically of better build quality than rental apartments) have good sound mitigation baked in.
In my ideal world I'd be able to buy enough property that my nearest neighbor would be so far away that they could have a pack of howling dogs and I wouldn't even notice, but in addition to the expense (including ongoing property taxes) the commute would be insane. A shorter commute would be a definite perk of downtown living.
Actually a good advice. It is better to spend 3 month on searching for a good place, instead of suffering for 3 years. Anyway, ad some vibration absorbing stickers to the center of the window. This will reduce vibrations. Do the same for doors too, if you can. The stickers are probably only available for industrial purposes, since I have seen them only in industrial places. Otherwise consider a heavy curtains on the sides of the window and one in the center. The best would be, if you could build a small hill between the road and the house and plant some bushes on top of it. This is how considerate cities do it for their inhabitants. Imagine a line of little green hills that are separating roads from buildings. Dresden did it a while ago and it worked like magic.
~ Best man at your service.
Just solved similar problem for myself. Windows should be absolutely sealed. You make tenth-millimeter gap and noise insreases considerebly. Frames should have labirinth profile. Tightly installed. Glass of different kind, 2 or 3, all different width, different gap between the windows. The bigger gap is the better. You can find actual research results on which configuration gives which noise improvement level. The idea is that different frequencies penetrate different materials more or less. Interesting is that some tests show that there are window configurations that actually increase noise on some frequencies because of the resonance effect. Different gaps reduce that effect. Make sure you've got proper ventilation system. Absolutely no point to buy expensive windows and then keep them open! Floor, wall and ceiling are basically same idea. More layers of different material, better disconnected from each other - the better. For me mostly windows did the trick. I can only hear the street when something really heavy passes by and the vibration goes through the soil and building structure. Otherwise problem is gone.
Another option is custom in-ear monitors. I wear JH Audio IEMs at work (open plan office, grrr) and play mp3s that are a mix of white noise/surf/rain. They work so well I had to get a desk phone that flashes a light when it rings. As a bonus, if you want to listen to music they have superb sound.
http://www.jhaudio.com/
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
Those cost a bit, I was always to cheap to buy one of those. :-)
As you mention the flashing phone, since I sleep with plugs, I also got an alarm for hearing-impaired people, which also has flashes, really loud alarms and a vibrating gimmick that you place under the sheet.
That allows you to awake without your partner noticing when you have different schedules.
Keep It Simple Stupid :-)
I'm fairly sensitive to outside noise, and my solution for years has been a simple electric fan. It generates plenty of local white noise which drowns out all the noise from outside.
Works great with no need for parabolic reflectors or active noise cancellation or anything else that might require a DARPA research project. :-)
If noise prevents you from working and you are unable to get used to it -- move to a quiter environment. I stopped noticing church bells, police sirens, etc. at all after 2 or 3 months of living where I live now. That's a nice thing about human mind -- it adapts to constant stimuli levels.
If you live in an appartment and you are above the 1st floor and your city regulations allow it, you could try hanging sound reflectors around your windows, so that sound coming from below may bounce back to the street. Lateral view: Window --> |/ -- Reflector. Play with the position angle to get the best compromise between view of the outside and level of attenuation. Different materials and thicknesses will work best for different frequencies, being bass the most difficult to reduce.
http://xkcd.com/368/
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I'm an audio engineer. Many audio engineers would see a 'cool' building like an unused church and think that would be a great place for a studio. Usually we 'find' these buildings because they are in busy places which we are going past on our day to day. Disused churches or utility buildings are actually terrible places to build a studio because of the amount of money that needs to be spent to keep noise out. As an audio engineer you want to spend your money on high quality audio equipment and making the working space comfortable (good seat, lighting, painting etc) - after all you will working here 10-12 hour days for 7 days a week. If you have to spend major dollars on sound proofing 'outside' noise then you are taking money away from the important stuff. The other problem will studios in 'busy' environments is the different types of noises. The deep bass rumble from a bus stopping and starting is very hard to eleminate, it's possible but expensive. The only way to stop it is using thick concrete. But....Here is an interesting idea - if you spend a lot of money keeping the outside noise 'out' - you also get the problem of 'inside' noise reflecting back...it's a little bit hard to think through but if a loud guitar sound is made inside a well sound proofed studio the noise will be absorbed (yes) by the expensive soundproofing but will also be 'reflected' back into the studio! Cheaper than thick concrete (and eleminates the sound reflection problem) is the bass trap. The only problem with a bass trap is that is doesn't stop the noise from the drunken people who are waiting for the bus....right when your trying to capture an Emmy winning performance on mic. There isn't a perfect place to setup a studio - but right on a main street isn't a good place to start.
Dont know about that, they still count money in pounds.
Ah but those are metric pounds which are far better than the pounds-shilling-pence system that preceded it and used to be referred to as the 'LSD' system which, as far as I can tell, if probably what you would need to take in order before it made sense.
Since he's in Britain it'll be a real pint - 568 ml, not that rip-off US version. Any way, you wouldn't - you'd just order a half-liter
Actually in the UK that would be 0.5 litres.