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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.
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.
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.
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.
http://xkcd.com/368/
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?
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!"
We put all triple-pane in our house (Winnipeg, Canada) 5 years ago. We noticed the street noise almost disappear. (Not to mention the winter heating bills dropped by ~30%+)
Cost a pretty penny, about $13K for the whole house, but man was it worth it.
Trolling is a art,
So you're saying he should try replacing his windows with linux? It might just work, I've certainly seen installations where I couldn't get any sound to come through linux.
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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.