My stupid noise journey (2023)
194 comments
·March 9, 2025brabel
m1nes
At high and medium frequencies, sound is like water. That means that a small gap can spoil the insulation. That's why recording studios are built as ‘boxes within boxes’.
Low frequencies require mass-spring systems in which the walls are decoupled.
Sound absorption panels don't do anything about insulation. They just condition the sound inside the room or make it less "echoy".
DIY Sound isolation is very, very difficult. If you want to do it, call an acoustic company that knows what they are doing. Not a generic construction company.
MichaelZuo
I think most traffic noise is medium frequency enough that a properly sealed 4 pane window might make a noticeable difference vs. a 3 pane window.
pyinstallwoes
Light is like water too. Go figure.
svilen_dobrev
as sibling comment says, low frequencies are problematic. See what they put around highways, usually a 2cm thick glass and/or stone wall. Maybe put a good fence as far as possible from house?
But then there are even lower frequencies. They go through everything - they are shaking it.. thunder/rumble. A huge mass works, but i don't know if it's only way.
For example, find a hill/ridge that has the city on one side, and nothing/wilderness on other side, go on top of it. You will hear whole city - mostly low freqs. Go a bit further in the "nothingness" direction. Then a bit more. And listen.. the feeling is like your ears are being unplugged - it's that sound disappears - and you are so get used to it..
chasd00
is noise from commercial aircraft low frequency? I live in DFW about 20min from a major airport and I remember going outside after 9/11 when all air traffic was grounded. It was eerily quiet even though I was still in the middle of a large metropolitan area.
wholinator2
Well it includes those low frequencies. I'm sure if you've flown you've experienced the strange ear-plugging feeling of flight. The fuselage is highly sound damped from the engines but you still get the low frequencies. Also could be that pretty much everyone tried to not go outside during 9/11, probably a lot more than just planes stopped
svilen_dobrev
the air being pushed out/around from aircraft engines probably.
most running engines produce some low freqs, and also slow-rotational things.. like cars' wheels thumping on streets and roughnesses there.. esp. thousands of those. And then combinations of almost same freqs produce very low differentials - something on 50hz and another on 53hz will yield some 3hz. Which cannot be heard, it's to be felt.
Another similar silence happens if one is in a street/ suburb/ block-of-flats full of airconditioners-on-walls when the power goes off.
Cthulhu_
I don't think it's possible to build apartments or other connected houses in a way that isolates each unit from another, not without losing the efficiency / cost benefits of connected housing. Case in point, I live in a row of houses, but they just use long slabs of concrete for the flooring, creating a hard connection between the houses.
Mind you, it's fine (for me) most of the time, it's only really an issue if someone starts drilling / does anything in direct contact with the floors / walls.
bongodongobob
There's really not much you can do short of building a room in a room. Your curtains and sound panels treat mid to high frequency but does nothing for the low frequencies of traffic that are penetrating your walls. You need a combination of mass and isolation to treat that.
lukevp
Can you plant bushes or shrubs between you and the road? Also if you add a water feature between you and the road it would add more constant background noise which would raise the baseline that noises would have to exceed before you could hear them.
Anechoic
> Can you plant bushes or shrubs between you and the road?
A thin strip of foliage does (basically) nothing to reduce noise propagation. Dense foliage (meaning you can’t see anything through it or move through it) gets you about 1 dB reduction for every 10 feet of thickness.
dingnuts
one decibel reduction at what reference pressure, and for which frequencies? I think you don't really know, or you would have specified.
as with most things relating to acoustics, the truth appears to be extremely complicated[0] and foliage has different effects at different frequencies including reflection (which may perceived as amplification in some scenarios)
0 https://sarantinosgeorge.com/2019/05/25/the-sound-absorption...
brabel
My house is on the top of a hill. There is already some trees in front of it but it would be impossible to put several lines of them which would be needed to have any effect. I believe a good glass fence in front of the house will help a lot (together with the extra glass on the windows) by reflecting away most of the direct noise (but no idea if that will really work). I've already gone through lots of discussions about it, and you're right, a water feature is suggested often, I need to have a look at that.
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.
greggyb
Past ~20mph-30mph, tire noise matches engine noise.
In the US, at least, this means that the vast majority of streets will not see much benefit from EV transition, at least with regard to road noise. The quality of the noise will change, but not the total volume.
As an anecdotal reference point on road noise, I live within a couple miles of an interstate, and the noise I tend to hear does not have discernible engine noise. This is, of course, from vehicles moving at a very different speed than any within a neighborhood.
Doxin
Fun fact: there's such a thing as low noise asphalt. Obviously it doesn't remove road noise altogether, but it does help a lot.
avidiax
This is true in a scientific, not practical sense, in any American city.
Engine noise always dominates, because 1% of cars are simply purposefully obnoxiously loud, and you need to be powerful and well connected to get enforcement of existing laws about vehicle noise in your neighborhood.
taeric
Right, I see I didn't say it in my first post, but yeah. Loud things are loud. Surface streets, though, should see a lot of improvement.
jononor
Devices with constant hum getting quieter can actually make noise annoyance worse! The brain is good at filtering out constant noises, so they are usually less bothersome. But their sounds can actually help masking out more annoying sounds (variable/unpredictable in loudness and/or pitch). This can be used as (part of) a mitigation strategy for noise annoyance.
taeric
My point with the hum was that even lights have lost the sounds they used to make. My gut is our future is far quieter than the current world.
Again, there will still be loud things. But a lot of the noise of the modern world will go away. It is kind of startling how much of the modern world is gas motors running.
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]
Cthulhu_
Way quieter, but still noisy because of the whine of the engine and air. But also, for anything but small backyard jobs, they don't last enough or you have to end up with a backpack battery model. I'm sure that'll improve over time but for professional use, the energy density of petrol won't be beat.
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.
is_true
I find that with blowers the worst is the amount of dust the throw back in the air. If someone happens to have an air quality device check it the next time there a blower working near
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
natebc
For me it's leaf blowers. Maybe mowers or string trimmers though they seem to be done faster. Leaf blowers for HOURS from ... March through December!
arp242
For the purpose of the conversation, I would say Victorian era classifies as "modern". It's a vague word with different possible meanings, but in many contexts "modern era" is taken to mean "since the industrial revolution" (give or take).
It's not a continual rise in noise levels – there are ups and downs – and for some things volume levels may decrease while for other things noise may increase. But by and large, there seems to have been an upward trend for quite a few decades now.
jrmg
I love your long perspective!
tpm
> Victorian industry was _loud_
Possibly. But no cars, no AC, industry built away from housing. Of course there were horses, trains, loud people. One place that can be quite eye-opening in this regard is Venice. It's really quiet, even when you hear people talking, there are no cars at all and in the evening it's very peaceful, more than any other city I have visited.
Cthulhu_
"Victorian industry" noise was only a problem at the locations themselves though, before cars and outside of cities it would have been a lot quieter than it is now.
Mind you, most suburbs are quiet.
vessenes
I too hate noise. That said, if you've ever spent some time far from human cities, you will notice there's plenty of noise out there, especially at night. There's probably some sort of evolutionary explanation about white noise vs startling noise etc. etc. but the main point is that it's noisy out there! In a very different way than city noise.
tayo42
I used to go out to the mountains to stargaze, so pretty out there but people still lived there. Frequently there would be something like a dog barking for hours. I realized you really can't escape human bs noise.
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).
dredmorbius
The other side of this is that light (EMR) attenuates exceedingly rapidly in matter. Much (though not all) of it will pass through a few tens or hundreds of kilometers of atmosphere, but a distressingly thin piece of solid matter (or many liquids) will block or scatter it beyond all detection save residual thermal noise. (The fact that we can transmit light through hundreds or thousands of kilometers of solid glass is worth marvelling over.)
Sound, being a vibration of matter itself rather than an electromagnetic field, actually often travels better through matter, particularly those low frequencies which are transmitted through structures or the ground itself.
But yes, the far more energetically intense electromagnetic radiation is generally far more easily addressed than far weaker sound eminations.
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 ;-)
RogerL
The tiniest amount of vacuum stops sound as abruptly as non transparent matter stops light. furthermore, there was no amount of sound which can overcome the vacuum, whereas enough photons at enough energy will destroy the matter in its path.
edit: yes, an explosion will expel matter through a vacuum, so in some sense enough noise will travel through a vacuum, but you are probably not going to be complaining about the "noise" if you are showered with enough matter to hear it from a massive explosion as your sudden disassembly will (briefly) capture your full attention. Whereas light trivially crosses the universe, as well as through some matter.
keybored
Light doesn’t even have mass! It’s completely puny!
morning-coffee
> It never ceases to amaze me that blocking noise/sound (one of the weakest forces) is very difficult
Maybe a result of human evolution? If our ears weren't as sensitive to sound as they are, we might not all be here discussing this.
Cthulhu_
If you take that into consideration, loads of animals have even more sensitive hearing. Noise pollution is known (suggested?) to have a huge impact on nature as well, although iirc that's more about sudden noises, fireworks and the like.
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. ;)
sephamorr
Perhaps consider passive earmuffs? I've used 3M peltor x5, they work wonders on airplanes, a bit more challenging if you wear glasses though.
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.
kot_manul
Complete silence may be unnatural but so is Fall Out Boy played so loud the lyrics can be heard a block or more away, for 24 hours a day.
Some sounds are loud enough to be impossible to block out. If police aren't interested in enforcing noise ordinances and your landlord isn't interested either because they're too busy trying not to repair the $12K a month water leak in the basement of the restaurant you live on top of, your only option is to move.
Cthulhu_
It's all relative, that is, your hearing and brain will adjust to how much ambient noise there is. Up to a point anyway, people go a bit mad if there's too much ambient noise (hence the article).
Likewise when ambient noise goes away though. There's a challenge in a sound studio somewhere that blocks out pretty much all sound, challenge being how long you can last in complete silence. Supposedly you can hear your own blood flowing in there.
It's also why people experience noise cancelling headphones as applying a 'pressure' when they first put them on; there is no pressure as such, but just the sudden absence of ambient noise their ears/brains are used to.
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.
jononor
Yeah the psycho(logical) part of psychoacoustics is actually more important one wrt to noise annoyance.
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
Cthulhu_
I wonder if that's possible. I think to a degree it is, but at the same time, noise and whatnot goes deeper into the lizard brain.
throwway120385
This illustrates the difference between a scientific and an engineering approach to things. A scientist is going to review literature and try to develop a mathematical or mental model for the situation, then proceed to articulate different things to test from first principles. The engineer is going to spend a little time identifying a few pre-existing solutions to the problem and then order them by likelihood of working and by cost, then pick the solution that's most cost effective within the bounds of likelihood. Sometimes nothing you try works, and that's when you dip into research, but usually it's in the form of empirical characterization of the problem and the situation. And you're always trying to timebox the work because you have to solve a real problem in a reasonable amount of time and with minimal risk. You don't have time to go to the college library every time you have a question. So doing the stupidest thing that could possibly work is often the answer. If the answer is to go to the college library then you email a professor instead and offer them some money in exchange for a shortcut because they're going to be better at navigating the research than you ever could hope to be.
1970-01-01
>Never satisfied, I tried some other models. But, no—the model that everyone says are the best were indeed the best. So let’s review: I had a problem. The ultimate solution to my problem was to do the most obvious possible thing. But I convinced myself that wouldn’t work and spent two years trying everything else.
"Try a non-creative approach." -Albert Einstein
elric
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.
stdbrouw
> Planes shouldn't fly over densely populated areas.
Usually the planes were there first, though. Airports were built far away from population centers, but then the surrounding towns or cities expanded.
See https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-is-it-so-hard-to-...
arp242
That's not really how I read in that article. It's the introduction of the jet engine that caused the bulk of the problems. It does mention O’Hare in Chicago as an example of an airport built far from the city only to have the city eventually expand around it, but that was in the 40s, 50s, and 60s and wasn't a big problem until jet engines came along. It also mentions that airports have become much much larger (both in terms if surface area and traffic) – it's not just cities that have expanded. There is a big difference between "an airplane once a day" and "an airplane every five minutes", whether it's during daytime or early mornings/evenings/nights.
My hometown is also an example of an airport built far form the city (in the 30s) only to have the city expand around it, but traffic has expanded massively since the early 00s (after the city expansions happened) with RyanAir traffic. Before that it was mostly a military airport with some limited regional passenger traffic.
As an additional point, the most noise isn't necessarily near the airport but sometimes dozens of kilometres from the airport. Sometimes this is because the airport changed flying routes due to noise complaints and/or expansions.
elric
Maybe that's true where you live. My town is just under 2000 years old.
I get that it makes sense from a logistics point to keep airports close to people. But's incredibly disruptive to all the people who are impacted by frequent loud bursts of noise during landing & takeoff.
kragen
Imrryr, the Dreaming City? I thought it was older than that.
internet_points
Maybe where you live. Our local airport was built about a millennium after the city.
froh
We have obnoxiously loud little people around and sometimes no matter what I say they forget or outright refuse simply stopping being obnoxiously loud.
noise cancelling headphones are a godsend, making the noise level bearable so we react reasonably and kindly despite obnoxiously loud little people.
ryandrake
Yea, if we could solve the "Obnoxious People" problem, it would solve a huge number of other problems. It's wild how much unpleasantness in the world boils down to a few anti-social, obnoxious, belligerent jerks ruining it for everyone.
froh
oops, errrm, I was referring to kids in the household. just claryfyin'
Lanolderen
From the "obnoxious person" perspective a few anti-social karens and kents should get with the times and stop ruining things for everyone. /s
It's all subjective. To me the idea of living in a city and hearing your pulse sounds like living in the rubber room of an asylum. Going to great lengths to do so is weird to me. I do however find the sound of engines and cars/planes pleasant so I'm probably lucky.
elric
Just to be clear: I wasn't referring to children in my rant. Children can be loud (and obnoxious), but that's usually fine. Having an adult around who can channel their energy away from the neighbours is all that's needed there.
froh
thanks for clarifying. yes such people exist and they are a nuisance to deal with.
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...
arp242
It's also a solved problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rwJ5NCf1Vw
Tesco delivery trucks have them here in Ireland; it's pretty good stuff. Still quite loud/noticeable when you're up close, while at the same time not being completely obnoxious to everyone in a kilometre radius.
Looking at their website it mentions several patents, so perhaps that's one reason it's not more widely used.
amenhotep
Good lord, I've gone a long time without knowing what that was all about. First time I heard it I assumed the lorry had a broken reversing beep speaker or something!
elric
Car alarms are similar. Maybe (but doubtfully) they'll prevent your car from being stolen/trashed/emptied. But at the cost of waking up an entire neighbourhood every time a bird shits on it a little too forcefully (or whatever it is that randomly sets off car alarms in the middle of the night). That's not a tradeoff that works for me.
Your house is on fire? Fine, wake up the whole neighbourhood. You're in physical danger? Sure, emergency services can be as noisy as they need to be. Some of your stuff is in danger of being stolen? Meh, I don't want to get out of bed for that.
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".
andrewflnr
But what he's talking about is an hour in the laboratory saving him months in the library, so to speak. As usual, wisdom is knowing which situation you're in.
Cthulhu_
Except that they spent two years in the library and laboratory even though there was an obvious solution that they refused to try first. It's like replacing parts in a computer before checking if it's plugged in.
andrewflnr
Right, to be clear, an hour in the lab would have saved him years of research, if he had done it. All I'm saying is that the lab time vs research time question can go both ways.
metalman
I have been thinking and learning about sound and noise control/isolation for a long time. I am quite sure that active noise cancellation in real domestic environments is impossible. Simple physical isolation will always be cheaper and more effective. The idea of portability is founded on an overly simplified and ancient demonstration of sign waves cancelling each other, and fataly leave out how human hearing actualy operates, and there are now indications that the very best active noise cancelling headphones, are working, but with side effects that are disorienting, and likely very bad for your health and brain.Do the deap, deap dive into just how sophisticated human hearing is at discerning usefull information in an increadably complecated environment, and the fact that there is NO OFF SWITCH, this isn't just an osiliscope excersise, your brain is fighting furiously to figure out what that wierd sound is, please be nice to your brain and dont feed it an endless unatural, impossible in nature, signal. 3 years of sound engineering in a past life, and still loving sound/music/audio and searching for implimentable solutions to NOISE
MinimalAction
I completely understand the sentiments of the author. It's easy to fall into the trap of "it's too easy to be true; let me try out a 'clever' way", and fall into the cycle of figuring out things that have 100 different parameters and thus hard to model realistically.
On the other hand though, which are the best noise-cancelling earphones or headphones? I've gone down this route, and haven't been satisfied with what was suggested. Airpods Pro 2 seems great at canceling noise, but sounds flat. Soundcore products have a phenomenal sound quality, but can't cancel noise as effectively.
chrisldgk
Sony Head- and earphones have in my experience been the best at both. The WH-1000XM series are the best noise cancelling headphones I’ve tried so far and the WF-1000XM series are the best earphones I’ve had. My personal favorite tip is the Sony Linkbuds S, which aren’t as good as the WFs at either sound or noise canceling, however they’re the best price to performance you can get on the market IMO
Edit: I should also say that the tuning on the WH headphones is pretty bass-heavy (somewhat obnoxiously so), so make sure to use an equalizer to remove some of that.
internet_points
I've never tried wireless earphones, only headphones. Do the WF-1000XM work for removing the noise of construction work and such? I'm thinking concrete drilling and circular saws and such
chrisldgk
Yes, it does a quite decent job in both high and low frequencies. The place I live in actually used to have a quite large construction area right next to it, so having something like this during the day was a godsend. You can still hear it of course, but it’s a lot more quiet. With earbuds specifically it helps that they also act as earplugs even when off, though enabling noise cancelling does get rid of even more noise.
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
chilldsgn
This article resonates with me. I have neighbours that have been renovating for the past 6 months (free-standing house) and the noise is unbearable, it causes physiological responses in my body and great anxiety.
Another neighbour has a gardener that spends half the day blowing leaves in his backyard every Saturday and it's making me hate living here. I like this house and neighbourhood, but the noise ruins it. I'm sick of people telling me I'm being facetious when I get upset about the noise.
I tried my shooting earmuffs, which do help a bit, but the annoying sounds come through. I finally resorted to noise-cancelling headphones, albeit cheap-ish ones from Sony and the past couple of days have been great. My focus has improved and I feel less exhausted. The headphones are the only thing I changed about my lifestyle.
I hope I can move out of the city in the future, the noise is really draining.
aredox
This is a nice follow-up: https://dynomight.net/car-trouble/
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.