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Noise pollution hurts the heart

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Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#191

Post by jeanofthedead »

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #180
belly_joe wrote: post #2

I feel the sound -> stress connection palpably. Especially sudden loud noises like a horn honking cause me to feel upset for a long while after being startled. Seems like a convincing argument to me for car-free spaces, although honestly I just wish we had stronger social norms against unnecessarily using a car's horn.

I wonder if ear plugs help at all. My partner snores so I wear them at night. Even then, sometimes I get woken up by the low frequencies of large trucks idling (snow removal operations, mostly). The vibrations are not even felt in my ears but through my entire body.

When earplugs fail (as in the case of neighbor's bass, partner's snoring, or rambunctious nocturnal pets), I highly recommend the Bose SleepBuds II. Best purchase of the year for me, and my sleep tracking apps have proven to me that these things work. Might be worth looking into.

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#192

Post by lukastr0 »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #57

Those who are living in the noisy environments, have you tried the recent noise cancelling earphones/headphones? Do you prefer noise cancelling or adding white noise over long period of use? Also I'm looking for noise cancellation algorithms which can add noise cancellation to any generic TWS earphones by processing through smartphone[1]. Google has added audio amplification for any TWS earphones through android as a…

Noise cancelling, in order to work really well, requires extremely fast processing and microphones that are directly on the ears. And then you need earphones with very well-defined frequency characteristics - which would make any approach with generic earphones very difficult. And not only that, the exact distance between earphones and ear matters a lot - that's why high-end ANC headphones like the Sony ones include a calibration routine.

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#193

Post by PurpleFoxy »

RootReducer wrote: post #34
Guest42 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I also don’t like it when locking a car via remote causes the horn to go off and in order to make sure people hit it multiple times.

A neighbor used to come home from work late at night and lock their doors three or four times, and every time it would wake me up. I wish there was a silent door lock and it would just flash the headlights.

I’m in Australia and I have never seen a car that doesn’t lock this way, you hear a slight mechanical latching sound and the lights flash.

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#194

Post by vladvasiliu »

pims wrote: post #181
ricardobayes wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some European countries like Austria have been doing this for many years. Roadside noise level measurements with harsh penalties. If you exceed the limits, they take the licence plate off.

Lucky them, here in France we're probably far from ever seeing such laws given the high percentage of bikers who simply don't care about making harmful levels of noise even right next to small kids. I've considered reaching out to my neighborhood council about it, but I'll probably have moved again due to motorcycles before it goes up to the city/county/department/region...

Well, there actually are laws in France regarding noise. I don't remember what the numbers are, but technically most of the loud pipes on motorcycles are illegal. The registration has a line for the noise generated by the bike under certain conditions, and if you modify the bike (usually the muffler) such that the noise is above that level, your bike is illegal.

The issue, of course, is that there's no enforcement.

Maybe a year or so ago there was some campaign about this with police stopping people in Paris who were too loud. Everyone was talking about how the noise is unacceptable and how there would be a crackdown. This lasted a whole 2 days until the cameras tired, and all of a sudden it became acceptable again, and has been ever since.

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#195

Post by nitrogen »

telchar wrote: post #143
nitrogen wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought about how one would design and market soundproofed apartments and houses. You'd need to condense full-spectrum measurements of ambient levels, indoor transmission, and outdoor transmission into just one or a few numbers or letter grades, and convince other apartment buildings and homebuilders to let you run measuring microphones and speakers for a week. Are there any standards for soundproofed constructi…

There is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_transmission_class

Cool! Though unfortunately it only goes down to 125Hz or so, so it won't cover water hammer pipe noise, flushing toilets, or footsteps on higher floors.

> The STC is useful for evaluating annoyance due to speech sounds, but not music or machinery noise as these sources contain more low frequency energy than speech.

There's also Room Criteria or Noise Criteria, which measures ambient noise from 16Hz to 4kHz, but not transmission.

My dream is to have greater than 60dB of isolation across 20-20k, and preferably more like 80+. I'd like to be able to sleep inside if there's a marching band, a motorcycle tour, an airshow, and a hurricane all going on outside at the same time (and, in reverse, to be able to do all those things inside without bothering the neighbors).

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#196

Post by pims »

Zebfross wrote: post #188
pims wrote: post #71

I've been suffering from tinnitus and hyperacusis for over three years. It led me to read a bit about hearing in general, and more and more studies show that most of the hearing loss we experience as we grow old is nothing natural but the result of the years of abuse we inflict upon our ears in our everyday lives ( https://www.jneurosci.org/content/40/33/6357 ). Even though my situation is specific, this article does…

Just a PSA. I thought I had tinnitus a while back because that’s the first search engine hit on “ringing in ears”, but it turns out it was just ear wax touching my eardrum. If it happens to anyone else, it may be easy to fix.

Yep just get your ears properly checked by a good ENT when it first appears. There can be numerous causes and some of them can and should be treated early. Also do not panic, in many cases it will go away.

In some other cases like mine it's unfortunately not as likely to disappear, so protect your ears and wear earplugs at concerts or anywhere noise is at uncomfortable levels.

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#197

Post by nitrogen »

ryanianian wrote: post #158
nitrogen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A partial solution would be soundproof houses, though that doesn't rescue one's backyard or park from loud neighbors. Every house or apartment should have at least a room or two that are impervious to outdoor noise. At the same time, there are really good reasons to make noise sometimes, from music to machines, so better ways to do that without overly bothering others are needed too.

I've spent serious time looking into this. One of the biggest sources of noise is windows or other places air can start to get in. I re-sealed my windows as best I could, but it's still a crisis of sound. Windows that claim to be sound-isolating either don't open at all or are very expensive to buy or properly install. But: These are the kinds of "nobody cares it's your fault it bugs you and you need to find a soluti…

These are the kinds of "nobody cares it's your fault it bugs you and you need to find a solution" comments that are pervasive.

If I came across that way it wasn't intentional. I actually really, really hate unwelcome sound/noise, but I'm also a night owl so I can't really enjoy many of the things I want to enjoy because it would bother others.

Realistically we all make noise in ways we might not initially realize, so on top of singling out and improving the outliers like car horns and yard equipment, we also have to consider ways to let us all go about our business more quietly, and to find solace from noise.

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#198

Post by kiliantics »

belly_joe wrote: post #2

I feel the sound -> stress connection palpably. Especially sudden loud noises like a horn honking cause me to feel upset for a long while after being startled. Seems like a convincing argument to me for car-free spaces, although honestly I just wish we had stronger social norms against unnecessarily using a car's horn.

> I just wish we had stronger social norms against unnecessarily using a car

I feel the same way but with the sentence stopping here

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#199

Post by croddin »

kiliantics wrote: post #198
belly_joe wrote: post #2

I feel the sound -> stress connection palpably. Especially sudden loud noises like a horn honking cause me to feel upset for a long while after being startled. Seems like a convincing argument to me for car-free spaces, although honestly I just wish we had stronger social norms against unnecessarily using a car's horn.

> I just wish we had stronger social norms against unnecessarily using a car I feel the same way but with the sentence stopping here

Electric cars are starting to get cheaper than ICE cars and that should contribute to making cities quieter in general.

Re: Noise pollution hurts the heart

#200

Post by kiliantics »

reddit_clone wrote: post #152
undefined1 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

leaf blowers are such a pox on neighborhoods. we really need to find an alternative. is it possible to make an electric leaf blower that is both powerful and quiet? or forget the leaf blower altogether and pay kids to rake up leaves instead. make it the new paper route. $N per bag.

Indeed. Are leaf blowers that much more efficient than good old fashioned rakes? Especially if you pay some kids to do it? They get exercise and money out of it. We get some peace and quiet.

People seem to insist on burning fossil fuels for any tiny unnecessary task it seems. It's so sad.
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