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How Restaurants Got So Loud

theatlantic.com

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Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#121

Post by f_allwein »

tapland wrote: post #6

Locally (Stockholm, Sweden) the head of the city libraries has made a statement of battling the 'quietness norm' in libraries. Most of them now have playgrounds, one in Kista (where I happened to live at the time) won awards for best library in the world and in Sweden the same year. It was completely unusable for what me and my fiance usually do at the library. The study rooms had the ventilation system for the build…

Pro tip (for people in London at least): Senate House library in London rents out private Study Carrels to its members. These are located in the reading rooms (which are usually very quiet) and have their own walls and a door you can close. I loved them and did some fantastic focused work there (although others found them claustrophobic...)

https://www.senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/using-the-library/inter...

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#122

Post by bluGill »

seanalltogether wrote: post #75

One thing I didn't see mentioned in the article is that loud restaurants can provide diners with a sense of privacy. In a sea of noise your conversation will easily be drowned out before reaching others. Additionally, more ambient noise means less chances of being irritated by other diners.

It also means I can't understand my wife when she speaks. It is bad enough at home with my kids yelling at the top of their lungs (any ideas on how to break them of this?), when we go out it is impossible.

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#123

Post by jlokier »

ainiriand wrote: post #24
Alreadyobsolete wrote: post #2

It's worth mentioning that the noise levels of restaurants and public spaces can also be inaccessible to those who hearing impairments and those who may be sensitive to overstimulating audio input. I can personally attest to being in busy restaurants in which my grandmother simply cannot have a full conversation with me since there's so much surrounding noise.

I can attest to that. I am deaf from my left ear and when I walk on the street I need to be on the left of any person walking with me, it is impossible to hear anything. In restaurants, pubs, bars, I have already given up and I know that I will miss most of the conversations.

Same here. I'm not usually deaf, but from time to time one ear blocks for a few weeks.

When that happens, I totally know what you mean about being unable to hear conversations in restaurants, bars, etc.

Even when my talking partner is aware, localising their voice from the din with one ear is really difficult. (Btw, there's some really impressive research at using AI techniques to help with that, which will makes it way into hearing aids eventually.)

Its at times like that I find it's way too easy to maintain a conversation with nods and yes/nos without having a clue what it's about. I've even done it in languages where I don't understand a word. I feel it says something about the speaker, that they can talk for ages without any confirmation that it's understood and no meaningful talk the other way :)

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#124

Post by tapland »

L_Rahman wrote: post #88
tapland wrote: post #6

Locally (Stockholm, Sweden) the head of the city libraries has made a statement of battling the 'quietness norm' in libraries. Most of them now have playgrounds, one in Kista (where I happened to live at the time) won awards for best library in the world and in Sweden the same year. It was completely unusable for what me and my fiance usually do at the library. The study rooms had the ventilation system for the build…

There is a very simple solution to this problem. Build more libraries or bigger libraries. A terrific example is the Jefferson Library in lower Manhattan. It is technically a children's library to the point where it's nearly impossible to find bathrooms that are adult accessible without children. It is also possibly the best quiet library in the city because the upper levels of the space are adult only and nearly pin…

Oh. If there is one thing we are not lacking it's libraries.

Actively fighting to make them all louder is what's causing it here, not a lack of libraries.

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#125

Post by dsfyu404ed »

adwhit wrote: post #14
keiferski wrote: post #7

I'd love to read an analysis of how the world in general has gotten so loud. Even a few hundred years ago, the centers of massive cities like Paris, Rome, or Istanbul must have been significantly quieter, being that cars, horns, trains, speakers, boomboxes, industrial plants, airplanes and everything else that creates noise pollution didn't exist.

Cars must surely be the main cause. There is an interesting phenomenon known as "shifting baseline syndrome" where we tend to compare our environment to what we recall as a child and inevitably conclude that is has gotten nosier/busier/more polluted, not realizing that environment of our childhoods were already heavily degraded. The world in which we evolved would have been almost silent, almost all of the time, apar…

Traffic in a city where every street is cobblestone and they are traveled by horses with iron shoes pulling carts and carriages with iron tired wheels is not going to be very quiet.

I would expect that the noise was in fact less than modern vehicles but the cities of the past were not full of the quiet sounds of nature that people like to whitewash their imagination with.

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#126

Post by adrianN »

always_good wrote: post #113
adrianN wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't go to libraries anymore because I can get any book I want for 3-4 Euros shipped to my door.

I hope you can appreciate how fortunate you are. Though 4 Euros ($4.50) is less than half what I pay for most books I want on Amazon. It would be very expensive for me to feed my book-reading habit like that. I couldn't afford it without libraries. It's nice that you can afford to spend money on books, but we need a solution for everyone else, especially if we agree that books are a good thing for society. Recently t…

Of course there are people who need libraries and I support funding them even if they're mostly empty. But I think a sizeable fraction of the people who used to go to libraries but don't do so anymore are like me and just buy the books they want to read used rather than go to the library.

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#127

Post by whatshisface »

something2 wrote: post #119
jlokier wrote: post #108

There's an ice cream and bagel place in town. In the late evening it's consistently packed with people on their laptops or reading books. One day I noticed the music was much louder than usual, and asked the staff to turn it down. I figured it was a mistake because it was normally much quieter. They told me this was the new company policy. To set the music uncomfortably loud to make people leave, after finishing thei…

Does wearing noise-cancelling headphones actually protect your ears? My understanding of noise-cancelling(at least the active kind) is that it would play the noise you would normally hear but in a mirrored fashion to dampen out the noise you'd hear. I'm just wondering if that would protect your ears, do as much harm, or double it.

Noise is noise, and if you cancel it out it's gone. Sound waves obey the superposition principle, which means that if I take 1 psi and superimpose -1 psi, I get 1-1=0 psi.

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#128

Post by f_allwein »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #120

I hate loud restaurants, I hate loud cafes, I hate when I have to listen to dumb music all the f ing time. I am also very surprised that no one has figured out a way to offer a quieter version to customers like me. I'd pay more to have a quieter experience.

From the article, it seems like it's not about "figuring it out", but about noisy places being more fashionable/ profitable. That said, I hope some keen entrepreneur will open, say, a restaurant in London with curtains, carpets and tablecloths. Don't think such a place exists, but maybe the time is ripe...

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#129

Post by justinph »

JohnBooty wrote: post #68
Alreadyobsolete wrote: post #2

It's worth mentioning that the noise levels of restaurants and public spaces can also be inaccessible to those who hearing impairments and those who may be sensitive to overstimulating audio input. I can personally attest to being in busy restaurants in which my grandmother simply cannot have a full conversation with me since there's so much surrounding noise.

Yeah, my hearing's not the best and I really just cannot hear what people are saying half of the time. It's like... everybody's struggling to hear each other, but I really cannot hear. I just can't do those kinds of spaces, at least not if I want to have a conversation.

Might be worth looking into hearing aids. I have the same thing and got hearing aids, which help an immense amount.
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