241–250 of 316 posts
People I know don't care much about sounds, and I feel alone with me being easily annoyed by all the sirens, honks, music, PA in airports, cars blazing by, etc.
Good to know there are more people who care about silent environment.
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...and now you know why nosy HOAs are so common even though people always talk about hating them.
It should be possible to have a simple rule requiring noise not to cross into a neighbor's residential property, without having a dedicated organization of busybodies collecting dues and micromanaging everything with a constantly changing set of restrictions.
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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...
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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…
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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…
Apparently a vacuum or a void filled with Helium even a small one will stop sound. Probably impractical but it's an interesting idea.
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There's a special place in hell reserved for the people responsible for all of the beeping and LEDs in the modern home. An eternity of never ending beeps and blinking lights.
Find the speaker/chirper/noisemaker and disable it, using wirecutters if necessary. Black tape works great on LEDs.
I own a couple of devices I would like to do that to, but I can't access the electronics without cutting the entire plastic casing.
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.
In NYC the screeching of the subway trains at the station is easily loud enough to be physically painful to my ears. Especially in underground local stations where you have a local train arriving + express trains rolling past. That can be 90-100 decibels (equivalent to a jet engine taking off 300m away). Restaurants here are regularly 70-90 decibels. Equivalent to the noise of a blender next to you. Everything in the…
What decibel meter are you using to get those readings? Seems insane that the loudest restaurant is equivalent to a jet engine taking off.
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As a trained sound engineer, I don't find this explanation wholly plausible. Human hearing is increasingly less sensitive at low frequencies; the threshold of hearing is typically around 60dB at 20Hz and 72dB at 10Hz. Anyone who has configured a large public address system knows that vast amounts of power are needed to deliver useful response at these frequencies; many systems simply fake the presence of low bass by…
I can’t say whether it is an ear hearing or some other sensitivity to resonance (of the skull?). The sensation is stronger on one side/ear, and it feels like the pressure you feel if someone goes “puh” softly in your ear in a quiet room... except that it happens over and over at a low frequency. I have experienced it in several different places. One place was at college on the cliffs overlooking the Mississippi river…
I have no idea if this anecdote relates to your experience:
My SO was hearing a rhythmic noise. More so at night. Very disturbing. Much drama.
An audiologist (?) determined some of the tiny hairs inside one of the ears were flopping around. The supporting membrane got slack with age. A form of tinnitus.
These tiny hairs are sensitive to motion, so even heartbeats and breathing will create the sensation of sound.
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As a trained sound engineer, I don't find this explanation wholly plausible. Human hearing is increasingly less sensitive at low frequencies; the threshold of hearing is typically around 60dB at 20Hz and 72dB at 10Hz. Anyone who has configured a large public address system knows that vast amounts of power are needed to deliver useful response at these frequencies; many systems simply fake the presence of low bass by…
I suggest you skim this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum
My SO got obsessed with our local version of The Hum. Attending meetups, talking to strangers on nextdoor, letter writing, and so forth.
While I have no doubt there are noises and other phenomenon that most people can't perceive, eg some animals seem to anticipate earth quakes, I prefer Occam's Razor more.