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Everything Is Getting Louder

theatlantic.com

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Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#281

Post by Animats »

j-conn wrote: post #277
Animats wrote: post #171

There's an app opportunity here. Write something which captures audio, timestamps it with millsecond accuracy, annotates it with GPS info, and sends it to a web site for correlation. When you want to find some noise source, get a few people to walk around running this app. Then the site can locate it from the time differences, with a much longer baseline than human inter-ear distance.

Love this idea. My first thought is that calibrating mics could be difficult. I wonder how good existing decibel meter apps are

You locate using time, not amplitude, so microphone calibration isn't an issue. Take the incoming waveforms with close timestamps and convolve them on the server to line them up. Get ΔT values for each pair of phones picking up the matching sound. Each ΔT value places the source on a hyperbola. You need at least 3 phones to get a location where the hyperbolas intersect. More will be better.

Multipath always makes a delay longer, not shorter, which helps in resolving ambiguity in areas with reflective building walls.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#282

Post by ken »

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…

I had almost the opposite reaction. It was too long, but I didn't have any trouble figuring out what was going on (and guessing the ending). I was wondering what the purpose of the article was, given that it's perfectly obvious to me that modern life is too loud, corporations are usually to blame, and tend to refuse to clean up their act. Just listen! How can you not hear it?

This is a difficult topic to report on, because some people will not understand at all, and some people will not understand how others cannot understand. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground on this issue.

The real mystery is why they didn't use multimedia, which would be the perfect vehicle for this. Instead of (or in addition to) writing some poetry about noise, play some noise! Instead of describing the mathematical foundation of white noise, when you're at that part of the article, play some white noise! Alternate with sections of silence, which everyone will then be able to appreciate.

When you care about communicating a message, you've got to match the medium to the message. Otherwise you're not a reporter with an exposé. You're just a writer who wants to show off your clever writing.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#283

Post by pas »

tjalfi wrote: post #273
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's easy to define a rule; the hard part is enforcing it. I've been on an HOA board for a couple of years. Here are some of the things I have learned. Some people (about 5%) are cranks. We have received legal threats because another owner parked in "their" unreserved parking space. Another owner disputed the cost of a roof repair: they had calculated the size of the roof over their condo and that's all they were wil…

Agreed. Though I think the problem is because many of the HOAs don't price in their operating costs. Eg replying to mails. Though legal costs are usually passed on to the particular special snowflake tenant/owner afterwards.

If people were more aware that managing a community is work, they migh better appreciate it, and if they know it costs them money to send their idiotic requests, they would stop sending them. (And if not the members of the HOA will make money eventually the misbehaving member paying a heavy premium for its stubbornness.)

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#284

Post by bllguo »

lowercased wrote: post #253
bllguo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

similar situation for me currently but i manage to survive using a white noise machine. I also leave the fan on in the summer for the noise. I wonder if I would feel better if i transitioned to a quiet sleeping environment. i've thought many times about how loud motorcycles are even legal, especially at late hours. I even see ebikes that are just as loud which is absolutely insane to me. The worst part was when my do…

I agree on motorcycles, but have read that the loudness is at least partially a safety thing for them, as other car drivers won't notice them without some sound.

i'm glad i commented so you could inform me - there's always another side to everything.

that makes some sense, though like you say it must be partial. i have no problem with japanese motorcycles which seem to be much much quieter.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#286

Post by Waterluvian »

heymijo wrote: post #44
Waterluvian wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our neighborhood is built into a protected maple forest. Beautiful 100foot maple trees. The side effect is that most back yards don't have grass. Mine is artificial. And front yards grow a shade grass that people cut irregularly. Leaf blowers just aren't a thing anywhere I've lived. Another random tidbit I thought about corded electric mower is not quiet but far quieter than my neighbours' mowers. They aren't bad!

That sounds very nice!

Up until a tree falls on us one day. :)

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#287

Post by oska »

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…

Also the mis-use of obscure vocabulary:

> In other words, it’s a data center—a columbarium for thousands of servers that store data for access and processing from virtually anywhere in the world.

I didn't know the word columbarium so I looked it up [1]. I don't think it's an appropriate word for this context and not good journalism. You could possibly stretch its meaning to describe a data centre in a poem or novel, but that's a different domain to journalism.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/columbarium

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#288

Post by vonseel »

monster_group wrote: post #77
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 sold my previous house precisely because of noisy neighbors (or rather their dogs). Their three dogs lived in the backyard permanently no matter what the weather - never seen them walked. Talked to the neighbors twice about the noise - no action. Called the cops at 3 in the morning - still nothing. Finally, I decided to sell the house and move somewhere where there is low dog density. I developed a dislike for dogs…

People like that should really not own dogs.

Everyone wants to get a dog when it’s cute and adorable as a puppy then they move on in life and have kids and other responsibilities and the dog just becomes a burden. There are definitely good dog owners, but there’s a ton of people who just have them and don’t really do anything with them besides feed them - dogs need exercise.

I’ll admit I surrendered the only dog I ever had after having her 6 years from when I was a college student until about 3 years after graduation. People usually think this is something to be ashamed of, but I knew the lifestyle I was living at the time was not good for an active dog (golden retriever). At that point in my life I was spending full days in an office and working out at the gym 1-2 hours per day, on top of sitting in traffic an hour or two, and I was moving into a one bedroom apartment after living in houses for most of the time I had a dog. I knew I would be subjecting the dog to a life of boredom and sleeping on the couch if I kept her.

Fortunately, for dogs like Goldens it is quite easy to find great homes through breed specific rescue societies, especially here in Austin (many thanks to Gold Ribbon Rescue).

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#289

Post by vonseel »

lsc wrote: post #184
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…

for me, i personally find that the construction of the apartment matters a lot more than how noisy my neighbors are; I moved from a duplex in a very quiet neighborhood in sunnyvale to an apartment right under the SJC flight path, but the old place was last updated in the '60s and had single-pane windows, while the new place was built in the '80s and upgraded pretty significantly in the aughts. It is rare that I hear…

I agree but unfortunately in my experience the opposite is true in Texas - newer construction usually has thinner walls with less dampening between dwellings. Windows are usually fine though.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#290

Post by vonseel »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #41
htk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I used to sleep with earplugs very nicely until I got an ear infection and the doctor told me to lay off them. So I bought a bluetooth speaker that can play files off a SD card, and loaded it up with a 1 hour rain sounds file and play that in a loop as white noise when I sleep. Feels better as my brain can focus on the soothing sounds of the rain instead of the thoughts that sometimes creep up in the silence of the e…

I grew up sleeping with a humidifier first in my room and then just some kind of noisy fan. Nowadays I use a Marpac sound machine, like you see in doctors offices sometimes. Kind of a quirky habit but silence feels so... deafening.
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