MyNoise – Background Noise Generators • Hacker News Board

Re: MyNoise – Background Noise Generators

#81

Post by bee_rider » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 7:08 PM UTC

shreyshnaccount wrote: post #78

bee_rider wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get a similar answer but through a wildly different path: I think you have to detect the sound with a microphone, then come up with the canceling waveform before the sound hits your headphone drivers (as they will be generating the canceling waveform). Given the typical size of headphones, it would be something like 2cm/(34300cm/s) ~ 60us Although, sound travels faster through solids, so might want to be a little q…

wonder if there's some kind of "virtual microphone" like device that let's you hear sounds further away than a mic in the headset. Google fu showed some ultrasonic virtual microphone but idk if it is useful here..

Hmm, could be. I don't know much about this.

I imagine you want a very good approximation of the soundwave that will hit the ear (so you can cancel it out very accurately). The farther that your 'virtual microphone' is from the ear, I guess the harder it will be to figure out exactly how the sounds it is picking up will combine to hit the ear.

I mean, imagine the extreme case -- your 'virtual microphone' is (virtually) sitting in the path of some directed audio beam which won't hit the headphone wearer at all. Now you do the signal processing and generate a signal to cancel out that directed audio beam, which, because the user isn't in the path of it, causes them to hear it!

Re: MyNoise – Background Noise Generators

#82

Post by xioxox » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 7:46 PM UTC

audiosampling wrote: post #36

Thanks for the kind mention! I am Stephane, the person behind that website/project. I see a lot of people having concerns about the title - Background Sound Canceller - and they are right. That title is not mine, but poster's own. I describe my project as "Background Noise Generators", or sometimes as as "Non-Distracting Noises and Music". They are not sound cancellers but sound maskers . The idea is to create a nois…

Your app is also great to help get to sleep. I find if my thoughts are too active when I'm trying to sleep, then having some soothing sound like rain to focus on is a great help. It also has a stop timer so it won't go on all night.

Re: MyNoise – Background Noise Generators

#83

Post by nathanasmith » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 7:53 PM UTC

One thing I really like about the background noise feature on iOS is it actively mixes with whatever music you might happen to be listening to on the device so that when the music punches in, the background noise generator backs off and when there's a gap in music playback the background noise subtly goes back up. That's a feature I would sorely miss in noisy environments now that I'm used to it.

Re: MyNoise – Background Noise Generators

#84

Post by lostlogin » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 8:10 PM UTC

audiosampling wrote: post #36

Thanks for the kind mention! I am Stephane, the person behind that website/project. I see a lot of people having concerns about the title - Background Sound Canceller - and they are right. That title is not mine, but poster's own. I describe my project as "Background Noise Generators", or sometimes as as "Non-Distracting Noises and Music". They are not sound cancellers but sound maskers . The idea is to create a nois…

> I see a lot of people having concerns about the title

The title, font choice, advert presence/absence and the incorrect monetisation choice are are going to come up.

If you chuck in a gender neutral pronoun you might momentarily distract the pack.

Re: MyNoise – Background Noise Generators

#85

Post by s0rce » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 9:21 PM UTC

I find sleeping in a tent during the rain actually difficult and much prefer wearing earplugs for the quiet, although tent fabric also tends to flap in the wind which frequently accompanies rain. Do people enjoy the rainy tent noise for sleeping?

Re: MyNoise – Background Noise Generators

#86

Post by jpindar » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 9:27 PM UTC

mysterydip wrote: post #16

ssl232 wrote: post #7

I expected a website offering to use your microphone to record, invert and cancel background noise via the speakers. Turns out the website is offering prerecorded sounds instead, not really cancelling anything. Still though, surely someone has tried my idea? It would likely need some adjustability to match the phase delay between microphone and ears-via-speakers but I guess it could work.

Could it work for cancelling tinnitus? Just have an inverse of that sound playing, with some controls for frequency adjustment for individuals.

The Tinnitus Neuromodulator setting works AMAZINGLY well for me. It's effect even persists for some minutes after I turn it off.

Re: MyNoise – Background Noise Generators

#87

Post by ashton314 » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 9:55 PM UTC

This has helped me at so many points during my career and studies. I donate when I can and I recommend you do too—high-quality work like this deserves to be rewarded.

Re: MyNoise – Background Noise Generators

#88

Post by JanisErdmanis » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 10:30 PM UTC

shreyshnaccount wrote: post #8

ssl232 wrote: post #7

I expected a website offering to use your microphone to record, invert and cancel background noise via the speakers. Turns out the website is offering prerecorded sounds instead, not really cancelling anything. Still though, surely someone has tried my idea? It would likely need some adjustability to match the phase delay between microphone and ears-via-speakers but I guess it could work.

I don't think it can be done.. active noise cancellation needs to be really really fast and is done using dedicated hardware afaik.

Can't be done because the sound from source propagate as a spherical wave. To cancel it with destructive interference you would need to make a wave which focuses to the source and would only work if you are in between the noise source and the counter wave generator. Unfortunately to make a plane wave you would need infinite number of point sources or need the counter source further away. An alternative is to track listener and cancel the noise around that region but you would only be able to do that with very low frequencies with wavelength larger than distance between your two ears.

Re: MyNoise – Background Noise Generators

#89

Post by bgro » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 10:31 PM UTC

shipman05 wrote: post #33

YouTube Premium is great for this sort of thing. There are thousands of ambient noise and focus music playlists on there. No ads + music for a reasonable price. I've been a Google/YouTube Music subscriber for years. Every once in a while I think about switching to Spotify or Apple Music since most of my friends are on there, but for my usage, there is no feature parity.

Reasonable price? Is paying more than a Netflix subscription reasonable to have no ads on content with no expanded content library?

Re: MyNoise – Background Noise Generators

#90

Post by JanisErdmanis » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 10:34 PM UTC

srean wrote: post #26

Apart from speed of response that many comments mention, isn't there a more fundamental issue with active suppression using wave interference in a 3D space. There will be places where the superposition of the amplitudes of the original wave and the active/added wave will cancel each other out but there will be places where they will superpose additively. Hypothetically one could position the source of the active supp…

Even if you could track the head of listener and send a counter wave to the particular position it would be limited to a very low frequency sounds with wavelength larger than distance between your two ears. Also neighbors wouldn't be happy hearing two times louder noise as it would be without cancellation.