41–50 of 169 posts
I don't know if you city people realize it, but birdsong in cities is freaking nuts. I can barely hear myself think in many cities now, from all the birds. I live out in the country, and I don't get anywhere near as much of a cacophany of birdsong as I hear in backyards in Philly and Baltimore inner-city neighborhoods. Take a hike some time and stand still and record the birdsong, and then go into a neighborhood with…
I think of ambient silence as the most valuable sound of all. Think about what it'd cost you to get freedom from your neighbor's lawnmower, traffic, sirens, construction, dogs barking, and the rest of the mindless noise that involuntarily assaults the average person's brain all day. You might think you can move out to the country, but most of the homes you might buy still have plenty of it. Neighbors will have bigger…
With modern (unmodified) cars a lot of the time tyre noise is actually more significant than engine noise, so a switch to electric by itself won't do it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re trucks beeping - that’s partly legal responsibility isn’t it? I mean, we have had the ability for trucks to beep as they back up for far longer than we have had the ability for them to realistically have functioning rear view cameras. And since the normal expectation is that vehicles go forward, it makes sense to alert when doing something unexpected, like backing up. And so the laws we have mandate and expect bee…
It looks like it is required in the US only when the view is obstructed, which I interpret to mean only when there isn't a camera. I would guess people keep using them because there is no perceived downside, and if they hit anyone they can say, "Hey, we told them we were coming." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-up_beeper
Big fan of quiet. My home environment sits at about 30dB as measured by NIOSH’s sound level monitoring app, 32 during fridge cycle, 35dB when I have air conditioning running. In previous places I wasn’t able to control external noise as much and I had to use earplugs to focus; I tried half a dozen and found Etymotic’s earplugs to be by far the best (they claim to designed to reduce sound by approximately 20dB at all…
The Environmental Noise Directive (END) doesn't stop countries permitting houses to be built along motorways, next to fire stations or near airports/flight paths or trains. Once the houses are built people will live there. What we need is some good tech to make our homes and gardens more peaceful and quiet.
I'm always surprised that we tolerate so much unnecessary noise. We let people fly helicopters around and run leaf blowers. We even allow trucks to go beep beep beep and alert everyone within a kilometer that they are backing up, even though we have rearview cameras, like it's everyone else's responsibility to scurry out of their way.
The more money you have, the less you hear. Why is it homes are the cheapest next to airports? Because planes on their flight path will drive you crazy. People don’t tolerate noise. It’s the poor people that do, the ones that can’t control their environment.
nope.
now I wear noise cancelling headphones when I'm home
The duality of man: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/the-end... - "Why Everything Is Getting Louder The tech industry is producing a rising din. Our bodies can't adapt." (2019) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/09/let-bro... - "Why Do Rich People Love Quiet? The sound of gentrification is silence." (2022)
I remember reading that second one. What a load of garbage. I simply have a hard time sleeping. If I seek out quiet, that's me trying to adapt my environment to meet my biophysical needs the best way I know how, not me punching down to the proles. Not everything has to be a normative classist struggle.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Badly measuring is a pastime of horn manufacturers but people do mount train horns on trucks. I had one in an old car, and it was certainly loud as blazes, but once you were some tens of feet it was dropping off. It does carry for miles in a way that’s hard to explain.
They do get closer to their rated volume than I expected, that’s true - I honestly expected the best would top out at 120dB even close up, just because these things are necessarily mounted within a few feet of the truck cabin and that would be physically painful already. But at least some truck horn manufacturers are almost living up to their claims (sadly). “Super bright” flashlight manufacturers still take the trop…
Of course, if you are a Real Big Boy you get a horn off of an aircraft carrier.