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Everything Is Getting Louder

theatlantic.com

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Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#191

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

zamadatix wrote: post #101
naravara wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in a similar situation I ended up paying for a few hundred dollars worth of acoustic foam for the walls. It didn’t stop everything, especially stopping noise from upstairs neighbors, but it was still a huge help. It’s unsightly though. The kinds that are actually nice to look at as wall decoration are super expensive.

Did you do a before and after dB measurement? I'm curious on quantitatively how well it worked as I was thinking of doing the same thing but I talked to a few musician buddies and read many things like https://acousticalsolutions.com/how-to-soundproof-acoustic-f... & https://soundproofcentral.com/soundproof-foam/ and all seem to agree foam stuck on a wall is for echo not soundproofing so didn't try it out. Also many…

Yes - foam will damp higher frequencies, but do nothing at all for bass. The only way to eliminate bass is with a combination of mass - multiple layers of Rock Wool, Roxul, and such - with air gaps and some extra stand-off damping.

It's usually possible to make a positive difference, but if it's a serious problem a workable fix - better, but not perfect - will eat up a lot of room space.

The real problem is that most apartments and houses are built cheaply and building codes for acoustic isolation aren't nearly aggressive enough. They seem to stop at the level which makes conversations hard to hear, which isn't much help when people have TVs and/or subwoofers.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#192

Post by switch007 »

KoftaBob wrote: post #35
oriettaxx wrote: post #16

the worst are * bells from catholic churches (when they play early Sunday morning they just invite you to blaspheme) * muezzin shouting from the mosque (aggravated from the fact that they talk Arabic, were in many countries, e.g. Turkey, nobody talks arabic, so nobody understand!) and the worst of the worst is that in both cases sound comes from tapes (no live at all, and very bad taped). Any national new legislation…

Where the hell do you live where those two are a common thing? In the US, the vast majority of places have noise pollution laws where neither would be allowed.

Plenty of places in Europe have catholic churches and mosques/less formal places of worship, such as France, Italy and Spain. France has thousands of mosques

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#193

Post by theboulevardier »

htk wrote: post #20
abjKT26nO8 wrote: post #6

For me the trigger is TVs. I've been renting a flat in a poorer area for over a year now. The walls are a lot thinner than in other places. There are a lot of people today (mostly 50+ year-olds) who cannot fall to sleep without the TV on. My neighbor is one of them. And the thing with TVs is that the most irritating sound frequency they emit is the one that is barely audible when you're in the same room, but when you…

I use Howard Leight’s Max every night during sleep to keep my sanity.

They are the best earplugs! I have tried loads of other brands and none compare.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#194

Post by phreack »

Itsdijital wrote: post #166
epistasis wrote: post #134

I found this article's style infuriatingly slow. If it had been a quarter or a third of the length I think it would have been much stronger. It took quite a while to figure out what the hell was going on. And then you get to things like this halfway through: > Thallikar took his campaign to his homeowners’ association and to his neighbors. The response was tepid, though he did persuade one person to email the city. W…

The article has a pretty clear "main story ->side info -> main story -> side info" structure. So I just read the main story parts and thought it was a pretty good read.

That's what I hate. I keep going back and forth skimming for names to try and parse what paragraph relates to what. I'd much rather read two separate articles for each thing.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#196

Post by theboulevardier »

rhexs wrote: post #160
wozniacki wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the "noise" is not heard but felt due to poor dampening of the structures and inferior - if any in the first place - sound proofing. You feel the sharp slamming of the doors, stairway exits and other household "noise" - as the tremors travel along the length and breadth of the structure - all the way in your living quarters. With audible noise you can atleast wear earplugs / use noise cancelling devices. Wi…

I've been in numerous poorly built apartments and the only effective way I ever found to mask doors/cabinets slamming, footsteps etc. was with a portable hose AC unit. The compressor was loud and generated a nice masking low frequency tone making it harder to hear that nonsense. It took a week to adjust to the sound, but after that it was quite soothing. Of course this isn't actually solving anything, it's just drivi…

I'm in a similar situation, the parking garage for my block of apartments is rigght under my bedroom. It's not too bad, except for one neighbour's motorcycle, where he is obviously using a modified exhaust to be louder. In the winter he likes to leave the engine to warm up for about 5 minutes every morning at 7am...

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#197

Post by frankzander »

abjKT26nO8 wrote: post #6

For me the trigger is TVs. I've been renting a flat in a poorer area for over a year now. The walls are a lot thinner than in other places. There are a lot of people today (mostly 50+ year-olds) who cannot fall to sleep without the TV on. My neighbor is one of them. And the thing with TVs is that the most irritating sound frequency they emit is the one that is barely audible when you're in the same room, but when you…

The dogs are not the problem - the people are. Your dislike of dogs should be more a dislike of freckless pet owners. It's the same with some special birdies in aviary. They can drive you nuts because they don't belong to this environment. It's mostly not the animals but the owners who are the cause of the problem.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#198

Post by hackermailman »

wutbrodo wrote: post #188
hackermailman wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it sounds like bs. But here I am https://bc.ctvnews.ca/police-investigate-after-man-found-dea... and I was a witness in this trial my full name in court records avail to anybody https://www.pressreader.com/canada/the-province/20080411/281... you know who I am now, who are you?

I don't think that was the implication of the GP comment? I think it was just phonetically riffing off of the "no X, no Y" structure of the end of your comment, in reference to Ice Cube lyrics: > No barking from the dogs, no smog, and mama cooked the breakfast with no hogs

I swear my brain was cooked living in that area too long. Excuse my cringeposting tangent

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#199

Post by ryandrake »

abjKT26nO8 wrote: post #6

For me the trigger is TVs. I've been renting a flat in a poorer area for over a year now. The walls are a lot thinner than in other places. There are a lot of people today (mostly 50+ year-olds) who cannot fall to sleep without the TV on. My neighbor is one of them. And the thing with TVs is that the most irritating sound frequency they emit is the one that is barely audible when you're in the same room, but when you…

These are some of the many reasons that I'll never voluntarily live in a shared-wall apartment or townhouse again. People coming and going, dogs barking, couples fighting or having loud sex (or both at the same time), bass music from the ghetto-cruisers in the parking lot, and TVs, TVs, TVs! No way, never again. Unless I fall into total financial ruin, for me it's single family home, ideally with lots of space and vegetation between my next-door neighbors.

It sucks that this kind of housing just isn't getting built anymore, even in my almost entirely suburban town. Buyers who want this kind of housing and lifestyle need to settle for older and older homes. When was the last time a single family home was built that's not the same footprint as the lot size? 1990? All that's going up around me are those so-called "luxury" 3-story condos, stacked up and mashed together on tiny lots. That's probably what is most profitable for developers, so who can blame them? There just don't seem to be enough of us in the market for peace and quiet.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#200

Post by sak5sk »

Ever since I moved to the states, I've had nothing but stress from noise. First in Midwest where neighbor never walked their dog. They blasted music at 3 am (confronted many times and all). Then on the west coast - noisy streets nearby my apt. Then between the 405 and the 5 in Irvine (the highway noise never ends) Then again when I moved to Washington and had an upstairs neighbor who would have kids over every day running, all day no carpets. When running stopped, vacuum came on. Rinse and repeat. All those years I have developed hate for the way things were. It seems no matter where I went there was no escape from noise. Three years ago I moved to rural Japan and my life has changed dramatically. Over here, everyone has kids in my neighborhood. Naturally, they get quiet around 8pm and I don't hear a single sound by 9-10pm. It's been heaven. Now when I sleep through the night it's dead silent and I can rest my weary soul. The area lacks in so many other ways, but the dead silence of the night makes up for all of them. I wish everyone had a chance to sleep in complete silence (unless you are one of those people that needs sound to sleep).
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