My Stupid Noise Journey
54 comments
·March 9, 2025elric
I hate having to wear headphones in order to block obnoxious sounds. Obnoxiously loud people should simply stop being obnoxiously loud. Houses needed better sound proofing. Vehicles need to be quieter. Planes shouldn't fly over densely populated areas.
So much noise is utterly pointless. A symptom of wasted energy.
Soundproofing homes during renovations is stupidly hard to do. E.g. I can't soundproof a party wall without tearing down and replacing a staircase. I installed new windows which block a lot of sound (double glazing, where each pane is of a different thickness), but noise makes it way in through vents and cracks all the same.
Ntrails
Every night I can hear ubers reversing up the road with their obnoxiously loud lorry-style reversing warning beep. If I'm not already asleep, it keeps me up (and for some reason it takes them forever to park or whatever they're doing).
Obviously it's marginally more safe than not having a beep! So, you know, ancillary impacts be damned...
criddell
When the author mentioned they didn’t understand how our ears and brains process sound and then said they went back to first principles, I thought for sure they were going to end up working on their reaction to sounds and doing something like cognitive behavioral therapy.
theoreticalmal
This was my thought too. Seems far easier to figure out a way to be okay with the noise than to go to great lengths to block it out
NKosmatos
Noise pollution (or sound pollution) is a modern day era problem, and if I dare say disease. It’s getting more and more difficult to isolate ourselves, especially in urban environments.
It never ceases to amaze me that blocking noise/sound (one of the weakest forces) is very difficult, whereas blocking light (being fastest and more “powerful”) is very easy.
It might sound futuristic, but I expect noise canceling force fields to become an everyday household thing in a few years ;-)
taeric
I suspect you don't appreciate how much quieter modern devices are growing to be. The hum of electric lights is mostly a thing of the past. As we move to larger electric motors, the roar of gas motors will become a thing of the past.
Obviously, some things are just loud. My kids hate how loud the frogs are next to our house. And blowers will remain loud. As are fast cars.
But, I really believe the future will sound vastly different in most cities. Would be neat to hear the differences through the years. Moving from horses to pully based carriages to gas cars. Now to electric cars. We have moved really fast.
luqtas
electric blowers are way quieter than gasoline ones, maybe we'll have neat tech like https://hackaday.com/2024/05/18/students-leaf-blower-suppres...
or a revamp on aesthetics with gardens full of fruit trees and other cute flowers than a bunch o grass dating the time where lawns were a symbol of status [0]
taeric
Quieter, but still really loud.
And blowers remain hard to beat in clearing leaves. Not just from grass, but also drive ways and sidewalks.
jrmg
Noise pollution (or sound pollution) is a modern day era problem, and if I dare say disease. It’s getting more and more difficult to isolate ourselves, especially in urban environments.
This feels true to me, but I suspect it’s not. Victorian industry was _loud_, and cars now are quieter than ever.
lowercased
> and cars now are quieter than ever
But no one drives cars any more. They drive trucks. And motorcycles. And anything with engines designed to tell everyone how powerful they are.
I appreciate my friends/neighbors with electric cars. They do not offset the neighbors with F150s, Silverados, Tundras and other behemoths with v6/v8 gasoline engines.
roywashere
Big and loud cars are antisocial and should be forbidden to drive as a private person. CHANGE MY MIND
t-3
Silence is unnatural anyway. If you move to a rural area with no neighbors or traffic in sight, you'll still hear plenty of noises inside your house. Rather than rage about distracting noises, just turn on the radio or something to drown it out.
layer8
I tried a couple of noise-cancelling headphones, but they all produce very audible (to me) noise, not anywhere near what I would consider “silence”.
Room acoustics is so complex that I doubt that a noise-cancelling force field is physically possible. ;)
stavros
> It never ceases to amaze me that blocking noise/sound (one of the weakest forces) is very difficult, whereas blocking light (being fastest and more “powerful”) is very easy.
How is sound weaker than light? Light is stopped by some thin cardboard, whereas sound will just breeze through walls.
ben_w
Both have huge dynamic ranges, but consider:
1. We evolved to spend 50% of the time in the presence of a 1 kW/m^2 light source.
2. As per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_intensity, sound intensity is 10log₁₀(I/I₀) dB, where I₀ = 1 picowatt/m^2, which means 1 kW/m^2 is ~150 dB, which is about what you get from standing 1 meter away from a jet engine (Wikipedia cited a book for that claim, and doesn't itself say which jet engine).
stavros
In terms of energy, sure, light is much more energetic, but the problem with sound is that it can reach your ears with orders of magnitude less energy than light can.
NKosmatos
Exactly my point, we can easily block the light from the sun (roughly 1400W/m2) but we can't easily block the TV/radio (50dB) from the neighbor living above :-)
In my mind I've got this "silly" analogy that noise is like the strong electromagnetic force, very powerful but only in relatively short distances ;-)
keybored
Light doesn’t even have mass! It’s completely puny!
patrickmay
Great story. It reminded me of this quote:
"A month in the laboratory can often save an hour in the library." -- Frank Westheimer
zimpenfish
Similar sentiment used these days: "Weeks of work can save us hours of planning".
jibbit
I used to think background noise was my enemy.. until a week in a stifling motel with a clunky window unit proved me wrong. It started with me having tantrums that i'd never sleep and ended with me having some of the best sleep ever. I've slept with a noise machine ever since
sigilis
What earphones did the author end up using?
It is strange that after relating all the dead ends in some detail and found his solution, he does not share it.
thenthenthen
I guess Bose QuietComfort (hinted at by the bold font). These are ON ear headphones. Not ideal for me personally. These will hurt after an hour or so depending on your ears I guess. I prefer the Sleepbuds II (see below also)
Azkron
Something that has helped me a lot when dealing with noise or other distractions is present time meditation. Just sit there and focus on actively hearing and feeling everything, I would just do 5 min sessions but quite often. After practicing this for while I became less distracted and more comfortable wherever I was.
Climatebamb
I had a similiar thing with my eye sight: I couldn't believe or accept that my eye sight got really bad in a short period of time (i was 15).
But i did compensate for 5 diopter relativly good.
I did learn plenty of that research, made me more aware of eye sight and because i was very young, hard to say that it was obvious to just accept it at that time.
In hindsight my school grades were definitly worste than they had to be...
And regarding noise: We have a wonderful big lake here in germany and small mountains around it, you can hear the autobahn (going around it) everywhere and we really do a shitty job with handling car noise. Even on the small mountain or in the nature area you hear cars.
I definitly will move out of the city in the next few years and in an area which does not have a autobahn close by. I'm happy driving 30-60 minutes to the autobahn.
aredox
This is a nice follow-up: https://dynomight.net/car-trouble/
stavros
Yeah this seems to be a pattern with this guy. Maybe he just really enjoys thinking about stuff, though.
thenthenthen
I have been on a similar journey. The Bose headphones are nice, but hard to sleep with and they are ON-ear, which hirt my ears after an hour or so. The Bose Sleepbuds are okish, the best of all the products I tried, sadly discontinued. There was(is?) a reboot of the same product but do not have experience with those [0]. Anyone tried those ‘soft’ headband looking headphones for sleeping? Tips welcome
tcoff91
Best solution for sleep I think is a combination of earplugs and Shokz openrun bone conduction headphones. Bone conduction headphones work better when you have earplugs in than they do without them so it works amazing.
My favorite earplugs are Loop Quiet because foam earplugs make my ears sweaty and itchy. If foam earplugs work for you they can’t be beaten as far as noise reduction.
I sleep on my side so I wear the headphones backwards and position the bottom one so it’s not between my head and pillow.
I turn on the iOS background sounds dark noise and put on an audiobook to distract from my mind not turning off. Add in an eye mask and I sleep quite well.
blahlabs
I have a set of sleepphones. They are okay. If I sleep on my side with the earphone directly over my ear, it does start to hurt, but just off with the volume a little higher works, depending on the content being played. I've also found they seem to move around a bit inside the head band and the volume varies a lot depending on where the earphone is in relation to my ear. The battery sits on the back on the band which may not be great for back sleepers.
Any particular questions, happy to answer.
Timwi
I assume that the article is not about sleeping. For sleeping, have you tried foam earplugs?
Klaster_1
Foam plugs absolutely do the job. What I don't like about these is that after listening to a book or podcast before sleep you need to put these in. Some nights, you fall asleep during playback and wake up to dogs barking, annoyed. Other nights, you are on the verge of consciousness and can't be bothered to put the plugs in.
Everything sound-related is always messy in many ways. I bet when we get high quality replacement digital ears you can mute, these will still have some stupid crap going on, like unstable device pairing.
thenthenthen
Foam doesnt work against the noise here. Sleep buds plus Quiet Comfort on max works a bit lol
moab
It's a real pity they got discontinued. The sleepbuds work fantastic and are the only product that works for me.
fmajid
Anker makes these earbuds for sleep:
https://www.soundcore.com/uk/products/sleep-a20-sleeping-ear...
I haven't tried them myself, but they come highly recommended.
null
I have gone through a similar journey. In my case I believed the main problem was the neighbour next door. I got an extra layer of gypsum on the wall but turned out the noise comes from all sides. You can't win in such situation. Apartment buildings not built with noise isolation in mind should be illegal. Had to move out and went to live on a house that was absolutely silent. Well, as long as no one outside was mowing the lawn or something. Then, after 10 years, forgot the problem existed and decided to buy a new house near a busy road. What an idiot I am. Now going through all possibilities: already ordered an extra thick glass layer on my windows (it already has 3 layers), bought sound sound dampening panels (they do not do anything other than help a tiny amount with echo), sound dampening curtains (no effect, but at least stop the daylight well) and may even build a new fence and build glass walls around my balcony. But yeah, you can get used to traffic noise, I hear, and sound cancelling headphones solve the issue as long as I wear them (nearly all day anyway while I work)... it's getting better already after a couple of months. But stumping neighbours upstairs, your only defence really is headphones.