Making Your Room Quiet 416
el_flynn writes "This may be a cure for those of you with loud computers, or perhaps those who spend lots of time in NOC rooms that generate lots of noise: NewScientist.com mentions about a "Silence Machine" that gets rid of unwanted noise. I want one to quiet down my neighbour's loud dogs. " These are also being tested in cars, to make the car quieter. I've got a pair of the headphones that the article alludes to - they make airplane travel much nicer, and having something like this to cancel machine noise would be excellent.
Noise cancelling headphones (Score:5, Interesting)
I was absolutely amazed- I'd tried cheaper noise cancelling technology years ago and not really been able to tell the difference, but this time I was turning the noise cancellation on and off with glee!
I hope they catch on so we can get some volume pricing going:)
Re:Noise cancelling headphones (Score:5, Funny)
A much better solution (Score:4, Informative)
And, as I recall, Bose headphones have a pretty severe feedback problem. If you cover the port (say, by falling asleep and rolling over), you're welcomed to a delightful, ear-piercing shriek! So much for noise cancellation.
Oh yea, the Sony's are less than half the price, too. I've been using a pair for years.
A far superior solution (Score:3, Informative)
Etymotic's canalphones use passive noise cancelling to cancel around 25dB and is way more effective than most of the active units you get. Most of the active units handle low frequency noise well but the high frequencies pass. Passive noise cancellation (Etymotics use the ol fashion earplugs) blocks the entire frequency range and is more effective than the Bose or Sony units as it does not add additional circuitry that could screw things up.
Whats even more is that the Etymotics have *amazing* sound quality (which both the Bose and Sony truly lack), they are some of the best headphones out there, although a little expensive for most (ER-6 is $130 and ER-4 is $270 at Headroom [headphone.com]. And no I do not work for etymotic and I really didn't mean for this post to be an ad, if it came off as one
Re:A far superior solution (Score:2)
What it comes down to is that the etymotics do have better sound quality, but their 'cancellation' is non-existant - they're simply passive 'sound blockers'. They don't negate the sound waves at all.
They're really just well designed earplugs. They do block sound, but they do NOT 'cancel' it. So their efficacy at lower frequencies (such as plane rumble) is not very good.
You're right that active noise cancellation doesn't work very well for high frequencies - but passive blocking does. So the Sony's gave me the best of both worlds - solid cancellation at low frequencies, and effective blocking of sound at higher frequencies.
Re:Noise cancelling headphones (Score:2)
In a single-engine airplane it makes a big difference. In a multi-engine airplane or jet, it's like magic. It makes you wonder how we ever got by without them.
Question for you. (Score:2)
Grado 60's, or Sennheiser HD330 or HD570's.
(All around $60-$150)
I mean with the noise cancelling turned on. What is the response? I ask only because in my experience a great many of the headphones out there are utter crap when it comes to decent sound reproduction. Most Sony headphones are crap until you get into their high end ones, you get 5x the quality from sennheiser or grado for the price. Same with most other brands.
I have no experience with Bose, other than their speakers, which, although amazing at first listen, actually butcher the crap out of your audio. It sounds good, but it's not an accurate reproduction.
The thing is.. (Score:2)
Dells (Score:4, Informative)
Anyhoo, a company I do a lot of work for recently gave all agents brand spankin new Dells. While they are the shities P4s available and they are paired up with SDR mem - they are REALLY REALLY quiet. My trick of the trade is to get 1.2 GHz Durons and take the voltage down and underclock them, then they run nice and cool and there are some quiet fans out there and I use a nice sparkle psu that has a quiet fan on it, but I can still hear them in a small office. This P4 however is damn near silent. They have not been in dusty office environment long enough for me to tell you if the fans go over time, etc.
I know the computer lab @ my school (in the chem library at least) has a bunch of the almost same Dells (same hardware, different case) and its whisper quiet in there
You can do quiet cases with full clocked AMD AXPs - look for the screw mountable Zalman HSF @ www.2cooltek.com - it comes with resistors to slow / quiet the fan down. Good airflow / tied down wires help a lot to keep the case quiet. Also, check out the sparkle PSUs -- lots of power, little noise.
PPS - Silent water rigs are popular since only one fan is needed for the radiator and you can get pretty big fans that run nice and quiet
Re:Dells (Score:2)
Yeah, I'm just realizing I need to get a new fan for my Athlon XP. I have a Thermalright SK-6 heatsink and a Delta fan that is loud as all hell. I want a quieter fan, but I'm a gamer and I need something that will still keep my CPU cool under heavy use. I haven't heard about any other fans that perform as well as this one, but are relatively quiet. If anyone has suggestions, then I'm open to ideas. Otherwise I may end up looking into this noise canceling thing. Though I don't think it'll help in my situation :(
Re:Dells (Score:2, Interesting)
Course, I've never really hefted a water-cooled rig before, so I could be wrong, but that's always been the thing I've wondered about it. If it's as heavy as it sounds, it's no wonder I didn't see any at the last lan. Now, on the topic, I think the parent post does raise a good point. As Tim Williamson says in the article, "it probably will have some applications, [but] it would seem far easier and more sensible to avoid making noise in the first place." I have to agree. This sound dampener is really nifty, and proof-of-concept of something I've had in my book for a while because it's the kind of thing that's great for privacy in medbays etc, but it's treating the symptoms, not the cause. Obviously the cause can't always be treated, and there is surely place for these devices, but I think it's also important to try to prevent noise pollution simply by trying to create technologies etc that are quieter in the first place.
Yeah, just shifting the cost, I know.
Re:Dells (Score:2)
I used a very expensive alluminum case and w/o the radiator and fans it was very VERY light. Adding the radiator, fan, and water did not add enough weight to it where it FELT heavier then your average case. My main rig however is a meter tall full tower w/ wheels. I thought about making it water cooled since I have more then enough space in here
However, there are a lot of the $40 newegg.com specials that if your two HDDs and CDRW + DVD are mounted in the 5.25" slots then you can removed the 3.5" hard drive bay (or dremel it out if you have to hold it there for a floppy drive) that give you pleny oh room for a radiator and fan. With proper securing mechanisms, that water rig will stay very tight during movement to LANs. Also, you can mount the Hard Drives in one of those silent holders that cushins the HDD so you wont have movement HDD issues to keep the case more protabale and even quieter.
Why only Apple ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Because other manufacturers are not using PowerPC CPUs. One of the PowerPC's advantages over Intel/AMD is power consumption / heat generation.
Another factor is that Apple has absolute control over the interior of those silent Macs (later model iMacs and Cubes). The location of heat sources, careful selection of components to meet design parameters, unobstructed cool air intake, unobstructed convection paths to remove hot air, and most important of all: they don't let the end user screw around with it (adding RAM is about it).
Life is much simpler when you don't let the average clone shop "technicians" or do-it-yourself'ers pick a bad case and powersupply, block a hot component's airflow with a rats nest of cables and crap, and try to compensate for their poor work by adding a few more fans.
As for Apple's tower configurations that more closely resemble PC's, they are very noisy.
Re:Why only Apple ... (Score:2)
White noise (Score:5, Funny)
Re:White noise (Score:3)
Even the sad thing with me, is that I know the particular pitch of the fans. I can tell which devices are on just by the pitch.
Re:White noise (Score:2)
Re:White noise (Score:2)
Re:White noise (Score:2)
Oscilloscopes make patterns that are not just beautiful art, they also convey great troubleshooting information. I used to leave an oscilloscope on to watch the clock signal or an address line on an experimental overclocking project. The output of the clock must be clean and pure, because anything less than a square wave can trigger an earthquake of bad timing on the bus. A debugging must for overclockers.
Another place to use the scope is on the address lines, where beautiful patterns can be observed. You can detect when certain subroutines are being entered. Its like watching your system's behavior in a fractal sort of way. Its the visual equivalent of leaving a floating input of an amplifier laying across the motherboard.
I'd strongly recommend owning a scope. Unlike a voltmeter, a scope provides a detailed visual of intermittent problems. Very handy for troubleshooting hard to find problems in your car, for instance. Loose connections always show up with a characteristic noise, undetectable on a voltmeter.
Re:White noise (Score:5, Funny)
I read that and immediately thought "Wow, sounds like my last roommate." Then I look at the userid and guess what...it *IS* my former roommate.
Re:White noise (Score:2)
sad but true
Re:White noise (Score:2)
Re:Speaking of sleep... (Score:2)
Unfortunately, you don't always want to tune out 360 degrees of hearing... so there's some adjustment of the hearing aids required when you move into a different setting.
Cheap solution is near! (Score:5, Funny)
I can say myself, I've been deaf since I was born ( I was born deaf ) so I can say that its the easiest solution since I cant hear diddly so all of my computers are supposedly "quiet" for me! Soundproof padding for my room? Nah! dont need it!
Re:Cheap solution is near! (Score:2)
Re:Cheap solution is near! (Score:2)
Sadly, not all movies come with RWC (Lord of the Rings
Re:Cheap solution is near! (Score:2)
Its a cool system tho, but I'd prefer the subtitles to be ON the movie itself so that there's less of a chance that I'd miss something, and I've talked with a lot of hearing people that they actually LIKE to see the subtitles because some movies are so loud that you cant hear people talking and they get to see what they said because of the subtitles, and it helps older people who cant hear that well anymore to boot..
Re:Cheap solution is near! (Score:2)
I agree that some hearing people would prefer to see captions even if they don't need them. I know that my wife prefers them on. However, I also know people who don't like the captions. For instance, if I have one friend who has a caption-capable TV. He knows how to turn them on, since he does it whenever I'm over there. However, once I leave, he always turns them off again, which suggests that he'd prefer not to see captions on his programs.
I doubt that you'll ever see permanent captions at the theaters, because marketing people are notoriously scared of trying new things if they think it might alienate their existing customer base.
Beyond! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Beyond! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Beyond! (Score:2)
Stuff on ears? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Stuff on ears? (Score:2)
Another science fiction become science fact (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, this device isn't as sophisticated - it needs continuous deterministic sound, so it can anticipate in advance what sounds to produce. But it's still interesting - perhaps one day we will have the technology to produce Star Trek translators. Or at least primitive ones designed to automatically convert a single spoken language.
Re:Another science fiction become science fact (Score:5, Funny)
Why can't they just make like everyone else and put a fish in their ears?
Probably sooner than we think... (Score:2)
It would require a reliable speech recognition system, combine that with a translator, then a speech generator.
Conceivably, using already available software you could program your computer to do it right now. Take a dictation program that can convert speech to text, run that through a translator, then reconvert it back to speech. It wouldnt be very accurate (as accurate as your translator is), but it would work roughly.
The only problem is that no system will ever be able to do it star-trek style in perfect real time. Different positions of things like verbs in some languages require listening to the whole sentence before translating. German comes to mind as a language which tends to shove verbs to the end of a thought. This at the very least will create something of a pause. Which isnt too bad really.
Where such a thing would be very beneficial would be carried by soldiers. If you put all those pieces of software in a carry-able platform, peacekeeping soldiers could use them to communicate more effectively with locals.
Re:Probably sooner than we think... (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.phraselator.com/ [phraselator.com]
I haven't seen one in person, but I heard a demonstration of one on NPR. Sounds like a pretty cool gadget.
its a start... (Score:2)
Useful, though.
Re:Probably sooner than we think... (Score:2)
The only problem is that no system will ever be able to do it star-trek style in perfect real time.
So our whole world would look like one of those foreign movies, where the peoples' mouths move and then 2 seconds later out comes "All your base are belong to us".
Older than Star Trek (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Older than Star Trek (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's see:
- geosynchronous communications satellites
- noise cancellation
- liquid-mirror telescopes
- giant black monoliths on the...er...never mind, skip that one for now
Re:Another science fiction become science fact (Score:2)
this is cool! (Score:4, Interesting)
That being said, the technology is the same thing as noise cancelling head phones (such as these [buy.com], these [about.com], or these [minidisco.com]). These headphones simply rock if you have not tried them.
alternatively, you can use more traditional methods to quiet things down, like insulation. Putting some dynamat [dynamat.com] in your car will really dampen the noise and make it nice.
One thing I have always wanted to try for fun, is get a really sophisticated sound cancellation system with many microphones and many large speakers to broadcast the "anti"sound, and put it in a large area like a park or the mall.
then, don't tell anyone about it and watch the puzzled look on people's faces when they can't hear each other.
maybe it's not possible, but I sure do think it would be funny.
bass (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:bass (Score:2)
Geez - 4 digits sums ! This is really an undergraduate project that would involve two microphones, a low pass filter, an amplifier, an audio amp, and a speaker.
That's not why its expensive... (Score:2)
For example, cancel out your neighbor's bass, but not the conversation you're having with someone in the same room.
Hmmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Low budget bass removal (Score:5, Funny)
What can be described after that is guaranteed to be silence. Except for breakage of items in the host's bookshelves, etc... Slight profanity may be also side effect. Use with caution and deny any knowledge when questioned.
Dealing with noise sources (Score:4, Interesting)
The power of denial is the great leverage of communication when they KNOW you have done something. Give them enough suspision, but not enough proof. The social engineering object is to use this opportunity to drive your loud argument into their weakened, desperate state.
Intimidate by the power of denial. When they accuse, use this precious time to illustrate their vulnerability. Be mad, not just pissed off. Twist their logic into epic proportions of insanity. They will either leave you alone, or try to match wits. Always trump their argument with a more grandiose element of insanity and do not let them win. After all, they have been playing rap (or other lame noise) at unhuman levels for an inordinate amount of time. Illustrate the chaos they have created.
But always deny knowledge. In this war, you must fight noise with noise. This is insanity at its best. Replace it with your projection how annoying they are. It will throw them off if they try to make a logical case against you. The resulting communication about noise is sure to be music to the ears of other victims.
Re:bass (Score:2)
I wondered about this too, when I first read about it fifteen or twenty years ago. (I think it was an article in New Scientist then too.)
Anyhow IANAP (I am not a physicist), but it seemed to me that for the waves to be exactly out of phase when arriving at your ear, the source of the anti-noise should be as close as possible to the noise -- or it should be right at your ear. If the anti-noise generator were 180 degrees from the source of the noise, as you approached or retreated from the noise sources, the two waves would go in and out of phase. The shorter the wavelength the more critical the location of the anti-noise generator.
Bearing in mind IANAP, but it seems to me that this technology would work best with Bass.
Re:bass (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't realize they made that much noise. They're only fish, after all. I suggest staying out of the water.
Re:bass (Score:2)
Cancles (Score:2, Offtopic)
Fix My Tinnitus (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fix My Tinnitus (Score:3, Interesting)
The Cone of Silence! (Score:2)
I can't hear you!!!! (Score:2)
Heard about this about ten years ago (Score:2, Informative)
The suggested uses for the noise cancelling device was actually to place the device on the actual noise-making machine, not to create a device that "cleans" the area of noise, like the device mentioned in the article or like the noise cancelling headphones.
The idea was to create things like noiseless lawn mowers and noiseless vacuum cleaners. I always wondered why I never saw these devices.
This unit seems useful in that it can block out certain types of noise, but considering these people expect to charge over $1400 US for this, I can see why there never was a noiseless lawn mower...
In-box silencer (Score:4, Insightful)
How about this idea: have an extra soundcard installed in your machine, hook it up to a small mic and speaker, and put the mic and speaker inside the PC casing.
Input from the mic would be fed to some app that could analyze the sound coming in, generate the appropriate cancellation frequencies and output via the speaker. Tada - quiet PC!
Of course you wouldn't want the mic to be on continuously - there would be feedback when the mic accepts signals from the speakers. But we could possibly run a cron job that turns on the mic while shutting the soundcard output, and perform the analysis once every minute/5 minutes/whatever your fancy. This would be a good way to make use of your spare cycles.
Howzat?
The real question (Score:2)
This is a lot more complicated than headphones. Headphones are relatively one-dimensional (one microphone, one speaker, one eardrum per circuit) - the only thing you have to worry about is not generating feedback.
This seems to be a more complicated 3-dimensional solution, and it'll have much more complicated problems. Does this cancel noise effectively in corners? Will a computer monitor cast a non-noise-canceled shadow? Is there a limit to the noise source (can it be all around you, or must it be generated in one specific place?)
questions... looking forward to the answers!
Save money (Score:5, Interesting)
Cost? About $10 - $20 depending on how much you have lying around. Best thing? It lets you use any headphones you like instead of being stuck with the inferior quality of many noise cancelling headphones.
I've done it and it compares well to most sub $100 noise cancelling headphones.
Dangerous : violates conservation of energy, (Score:3, Funny)
So, there is a noise source producing sound energy and I have a so-called noise cancelling machine producing out-of-phase sound energy.
The end result is no sound, therefore energy has been destroyed.
This violates all the fundamental rules of nature.
I urge you not to build this thing
Re:Dangerous : violates conservation of energy, (Score:2)
The energy still passes through. It's been studied for a long time (play with a slinky, wave from each end, you'll see parts cancel each other out but the waves still carry through)
The Fenton Silencer (Score:2)
This only works for low frequencies (Score:5, Informative)
You could build a system that cancels for a small target area from a distance, but it's going to produce twice the sound in other places.
Um... (Score:3, Funny)
You know, they make a
- A.P.
Re:Um... (Score:2)
Use in a car? (Score:2)
Car noise-cancelling (Score:4, Interesting)
Best bit was that after the car was 'silent', they simply put some nice beefy speakers in the car, linked it to engine RPM and load, and added a bit of computer wizardy. Suddenly the Audi sounded a whole lot more like a Ferrari, or at the flick of a switch , a F1 car (with 12,000 rpm 'wired' to about 4500 real engine rpm), they even had (heh) a jet turbine, but it was a bit crappy, cause turbines don't quite spool up like 4 cylinder cars do
The presenter was having a ball, caning this little car around town - from the camera's position in the car it was pretty realistic.
Pretty much the 'killer app' for noise-cancelling tech in my opinion.
Re:Car noise-cancelling (Score:2)
Mac OS X Users: An Easy Solution (Score:4, Informative)
Give Noise [blackholemedia.com] a try. It's free and it works pretty well for me.
A little tip: I think you'll find that pink noise works best if it's being generated from a source that sits between you and the noise you're trying to block out.
Another tip: pink noise are also good at keeping your noise masked. If you want to have a conversation with your girlfriend and don't want your roommate listening in, turn on some pink noise.
Re:Mac OS X Users: An Easy Solution (Score:2)
Software-based solutions? (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's a challenge, implement it in one line of Perl :) //whatever
Record -> invert -> playback
mmmmm,
for() { read("/dev/mic", buf); buf = buf * (-1); write("/dev/dsp", bug);}
Yes, I have google'd & freshmeat'ed...
ANR headsets in aircraft (Score:3, Informative)
Prevention is better than cure. (Score:2, Interesting)
Would it not be better for case manufacturers to manufacutre boxes that are sealed (sound proof). No air vents. Plus a tiny air compressor (air conditioning) inside that keeps the temperature, humidity at desireable levels. It would also remove what little dust is present too.
Current levels of technology could implement this easily and cheapily. Prevention is better than cure. This is a simple solution, not a bandage fix.
"I would like to change the world, but Microsoft will never give away any source code!"
Re:Prevention is better than cure. (Score:2)
If you want a quiet computer, try an iMac. No fan = little noise. You hear the hard drive and cd drive occasionally but that's it.
Atlas 10k III Ultra160 hard drive is quiet (Score:2)
But I wanted good performance for a machine I was converting to a dedicated fileserver for my home office (finally a machine I could leave running Linux all the time, without having to reboot, running Samba, Netatalk and NFS for all my machines). So I decided to try the Atlas 10k III. [maxtor.com]
The one I ordered was a Quantum, but I guess they got bought out by Maxtor, or something, anyway Quantum is still around but only sells tape drives now.
I read somewhere that the 10k III's were quieter than previous 10,000 RPM drives so I was pretty hopeful.
My first drive didn't work. I tried it at first in my mac on an adaptec 29160, but the 29160 didn't detect it. I thought it wasn't spinning up because I couldn't hear it.
Maxtor sent me an advance RMA (secured by a credit card) and I got the new drive today. I have 30 days to return the broken drive or else they'll charge my card.
The web page above says they are Ultra320 but the drive I have is labeled Ultra160. No matter, really, I don't think one drive can sustain a 320 MB/sec transfer rate - these high transfer rates are most useful for RAIDs.
I was distressed when I put the new drive in my PC on an adaptec 39160, because I couldn't hear it at all! There is another drive in the box, an old 2 GB IDE drive with Windows 2000, and the old drive completely covers up any sound coming out of the 10kIII.
I was really upset until I went into the Adaptec SCSI utility to test and format the drive, which checked out fine.
I'm really impressed. My wife wants me to get these for all our machines.
I'm installing just the bare essentials of Debian potato on it as I write these, and then I'm going to use debian's go-woody script to update it to woody.
Enterprise server admins might be skeptical of running beta software on a fileserver, but I've been running unstable (sid) on my Mac for months with few problems. My only concern is which kernel is the best, I want to run a 2.4 kernel on it and I'm not sure which I should use.
Audio recording/restoration applications? (Score:2)
This would be great for recording audio direct into the computer, if you could cancel out the fan noise but still keep the full frequency range of what you're recording. Sounds unlikely though. It'd mean I can take my machine out of the closet though!
Hmm, now that I think of it, anyone have any ideas about a way to temorarily shut off the fan? I've got a Mac G4 tower. Maybe there's a way to get to it software wise, but I'd guess I'd probably have to wind up doing a hardware mod--make a switch to turn on/off the power to the fan (this would be so I could shut off the fan, record a few minutes of audio, then turn it back on). Or is it a bad idea to shut off the fan for even a few minutes?
I'd just about go into conniptions if this techology could be used to restore old blues recordings and get rid of the scratchiness. Some have so much scratch and hiss they're almost unlistenable, like some Skip James or Blind Lemon Jefferson tracks. You have to really listen to hear the nuances of what they're playing. But if they could take out the scratches and leave all the sound... Oooh, baby.
Really cool. (Score:2)
In the past my 'server' has just been a Micron PC with SCSI and 512M... The nice thing about this has been that it is cheap and quiet.
I can always hear it in the background but it does put me to sleep and the white noise keeps the sound of the busy SF streets from waking me up.
The problem is that chicks don't dig it. When I have a girl spend the night they always complain that they can't sleep. If they are REALLY hot sometimes I will just shutoff the machine
Then I got a *really* good deal on a 5U server. The only problem is that it is LOUD AS HELL! Then I had to swap my room/office situation around.
This made me think... I think the white noise is TOTALLY not worth it. I have started to notice s slight ringing in my ears when I am in total silence. I am just concerned that it might be this constant white noise causing the problem.
So I might buy this thing... see if it improves the situation..
knock on wood
shotgun (Score:2)
I need noise! (Score:4, Funny)
Does anyone ever consider that I might *want* noise? The dorms I live in are so damn loud that I'll do anything to bring the ambient noise above the human- and stereo-created noise threshold.
Right now I've got a non-functional AC unit and dual in-window fans going primarily for this purpose alone. The frige is right next to my bed and since I don't have any money for food, I sometimes leave the door propped open just so the compressor runs and lulls me to sleep. I'm also considering buying a monster box fan to put next to my bed so my frige doesn't have to work so hard. (Or if I actually want to put anything in it.)
And don't get me started on my computer. I think my neighbor can tell when I shut this thing off.
For the curious, I have tried those anti-noise machines and noise-cancelling headphones, but they don't take care of 99% of the problem for me: bass. Until I started working nights, I'd usually be up until the wee hours of the morning because some dipshit wants to have a Jurassic Park marathon with his dipshit buddies. Let me tell you how fun that is when I had to get up a 6AM for work every day.
And yes, I have also tried earplugs, but again, they don't block out the bass... the sound has such a low frequency that it travels through your skull rather than through your ear canal.
Re:I need noise! (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, the guy in the next cubicle has the "Billy the Big-Mouthed Bass". He has it on motion-detection, and nothing is more annoying that a fish that jumps out and sings when I go to the bathroom.
Won't work. (Score:2)
NOT an alternative for just booting that AMD and getting a Pentium...
Me.
You can't remove all the noise (Score:2)
Random Noise Stuff (Score:2)
I have two computers on in my room, neither of which are quiet. I can tell which HDs out of the 4 are on, and if any of the CPU fans break. I sleep through this all fine unless some heavy disk access happens, or I hear one of the fans go off. However, if I leave the amp up high, and the speakers hiss even slightly, I can't sleep. My girlfriend also isn't too impressed with the level of noise.
However, at hers, she only has a little laptop. I can't sleep with the high pitch hiss/whine that the HD makes, or the horrible forced air noise the tiny fan makes - and it isn't that I'm not used to it.
Whenever we do crew things for shows, and I need to sleep during the performance so I can work afterwards, I find sleeping behind the speaker stacks is a great place... the treble is cut because it is more directional, but the base stays, and it's quite relaxing. I can even fall asleep in clubs, base is kind of relaxing. It is a different sort of sleep from usual - very hard to wake up, and you get very vivid dreams.
So, you'd think I was fine with noise. But I can't stand working in co-lo facilities. It's not so bad in a cluster room, or somewhere all the computers are the same... but when you have 300 machines each with two fans, HD arrays, loads of raqs, then all the different noises combine, and working in there on anything more complex than running cables is impossible. I was working on a few servers for about 12 hours one day, and had a huge supply of Dr Peppers, so hadn't moved much... when I got up to leave I felt so dizzy, and I think it was a result of the noise. I tripped over a bit of cat 5 and took out a server as well...
Energy conversation (Score:2)
As far I've learned wave canceling does not work globally by physics. If you have 2 waves, they may cancel each other out on some places, but double up on other places.
If both waves would cancel each other of completely, where did their energy go???????
Complex computer... (Score:2, Interesting)
The article states that to dampen complex noise like speech in realtime, a powerful computer must be used. I'm wondering why. If you have the speech going into the system to be cancelled, isn't there a more simple way to sample the amplitude and just amplify that sound to the right level and pump it through some kind of inversion circuit and out the speakers?
I dunno, maybe an "inversion circuit" isn't possible, but you've already got that sound to work with; all you have to do is put it 180 out of phase. It seems like that should be fairly simple. Kind of a shame to complicate such an elegant idea with anything more than basic computer-aided sampling. Maybe I'm underestimating the difficulty though.
Bose and Lotus Have Done This Before (Score:2)
Also, about 5 years back, Lotus had actually developed technology to cancel out engine noise in the cockpit of their cars.
Funny thing about that one was that, though they developed the technology, the chose not to deploy it on their vehicles as their signature tinny engine sound was something Lotus owners really liked about the cars.
Tested in Cars? (Score:2)
One way to omit noise... (Score:2)
... (besides the obvious solution of turning the computer off and reading a book, that is) is to move it out of the room. If Larry Ellison is still selling his network computers... I'm in the market. I've moved all but one computer into a rack down in the basement and would move the remaining one if I could find an really quiet desktop device like an X-terminal that I could hang my 19-in monitor off of. I'd rather listen to my stereo than whirring disk drives and muffin fans. Any pointers on where the affordable devices like this are for sale (HDS's prices for their X-terminals are steeper than I'd like to pay)?
Headphone? Seems stupid and, ultimately, uncomfortable for long-term wearing. (Though they might be nice -- along with some long-johns -- for those stints I sometimes spend in the data center doing upgrades. :-) )
Typical (Score:3, Funny)
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wait for it
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TURN THEM OFF.
Commercial Applications Only (Score:2)
On the other hand, the article also has some (thin) technical details:
Does anyone know about the latency involved with using a tms320c32? It might be possible to rig a software solution to run on a PC, perhaps leading to a homebrew version.Has anyone had any experience doing programming of this nature? Bear in mind that response time would have to be very low to cancel noise that you didn't predict (such as low-frequency hums, fan noise, etc).
Why quiet in a noisy environment? (Score:2)
Man that will be weird when the girlfriend will move in. I just hope that one won't do the mistake of asking me to chose between her and the computers
Re:Airports (Score:2)
Re:Really want to quiet the dogs? (Score:2, Funny)
That said, used a silenced gun. No worries!
Re:Really want to quiet the dogs? (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, but it'll create such noise only once... :-)
Re:Large Scale Lab Noise (Score:2)
my problem is, i do not know how well they would work in that environment. I would think they would work well since the noise is constant and similar to a jet airplane, but i want to be sure before I buy some.
so if you or anyone has tried them in a noise server room/lab, let me know how they worked.
Re:Large Scale Lab Noise (Score:2)
Things are far from silent in a machine room with ANR, but it is much better with them on (it sounds a little quieter, but I can stay in much much longer).
Re:Large Scale Lab Noise (Score:2)
ok, you need fabrics, cloth that sort of stuff. Get cloth chairs, anything that will absorb sound. You don't want solids because they create that sound you get when you cup your ears.
Try putting up a cork board near your desk as well, you can post stuff to it. Try getting cubicle walls that are fabricy.
Re:Noise cancellation is a simple thing (Score:2)