Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Noise is all around us

thewalrus.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 169 posts

Re: Noise is all around us

#71

Post by state_less »

bm3719 wrote: post #6

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…

The quietest place I've ever experienced is out on the ocean, after a calm, anchored on the great Bahamas bank. A stillness came over us as we shut the engine off and listened to the vast nothing.

Re: Noise is all around us

#73

Post by kcb »

Turskarama wrote: post #12
bm3719 wrote: post #6

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.

By far the most annoyance is caused by illegally modified cars and bikes.

Re: Noise is all around us

#74

Post by gonehome »

wrp wrote: post #70
bm3719 wrote: post #6

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…

Rural living can be noisier than the suburbs. It depends on density, agriculture type, presence of commercial activity, etc. Where noise ordinances exist, they are generally more lenient outside city limits. In the USA, getting action against a noise nuisance is extremely difficult. The quietest living experience I've had over the past decade has been a modern high-rise apartment in Korea. Between-unit noise insulati…

Yeah, newer build city building in SF is much quieter than Palo Alto.

The constant lawn equipment in suburbia make them incredibly loud. Gas leaf blowers are banned but it doesn’t matter, they’re used anyway along with hedge trimmers. They are basically going at all daylight hours, it was one of the surprising perks of moving to the city - much quieter.

Re: Noise is all around us

#75

Post by cableshaft »

I'll probably never have proper quiet again, as since 2019 I've got permanent Tinnitus in one ear. I can ignore it sometimes, and I can sometimes cover it up a bit with ambient noise like waves or out in nature, but it's always there.

Not sure what caused it. Predates Covid so it's not that. Might have been working in an open office that always had 4-6 conversations going and I had play music on headphones loud enough to block it out, or my previous car that had a small hole in the muffler I never ended up getting fixed, it got kind of loud at times. Or possibly an antibiotic I took a long time ago I had a bad reaction to that's also known to contribute to tinnitus, although that was quite a ways back that I took it now.

Regardless of the cause, I'm stuck with it now. No hearing loss either, at least not yet (I've been tested). Just that stupid ringing.

Re: Noise is all around us

#76

Post by cableshaft »

blueridge wrote: post #62
fwlr wrote: post #32

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…

Thanks for the earplug recommendation—just purchased! I have to bring earplugs to the movies now. Maybe it's me, but the audio in some movies is so absurdly loud that I want to just get up and walk out.

I just bought some earplugs for that same reason (In the DnD movie I was like "That's it, I need to get earplugs"). The ones I'm trying are not supposed to block noise necessarily, just dampen and take the harshness out of the sound. Going to take them to the next movie or bar I go to and see if it makes it more manageable, because my ears can't really take the noise anymore.

Re: Noise is all around us

#77

Post by Turskarama »

MH15 wrote: post #42
Turskarama wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Anecdotally, I live in a large apartment building in car-centric Southern California, and individual cars driving into the parking garage outside my window don’t disturb me (I like to sleep with the windows open). It’s the larger work vehicles that are the problem. The engines in big trucks (moving vans, trash trucks, construction equipment) are not tuned how personal autos are, for a variety of reasons.

For sure it's different with trucks. Sometimes that works in your favour, like when it's bin day and you forgot to take the bins out last night.

In general though I don't really know enough to know why they can't make commercial vehicles quieter. In my experience at least city buses manage to be relatively quiet.

Re: Noise is all around us

#78

Post by trailbits »

lstamour wrote: post #8
jmugan wrote: post #7

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.

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 might make sense for older larger vehicles that primarily move forward to have backup beepers. But every commercial oriented vehicle seems to have them now, including the smallest of dock loaders. These smaller vehicles have clear visibility in all directions but still put the burden of avoiding danger on everyone else instead of the vehicle operator. This is unreasonable and disturbs and annoys people at a large radius away. There is no excuse in this day and age to not build and retrofit commercial vehicles with obstacle avoidance systems and proximity sensors to replace backup beepers.

Re: Noise is all around us

#79

Post by totetsu »

cableshaft wrote: post #75

I'll probably never have proper quiet again, as since 2019 I've got permanent Tinnitus in one ear. I can ignore it sometimes, and I can sometimes cover it up a bit with ambient noise like waves or out in nature, but it's always there. Not sure what caused it. Predates Covid so it's not that. Might have been working in an open office that always had 4-6 conversations going and I had play music on headphones loud enoug…

I just think of that ringing as the sound of silence.

Re: Noise is all around us

#80

Post by tomxor »

tornato7 wrote: post #63
runeb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with tinnitus and hyperacusis I think about this often. A bus or truck dumping its air brakes right next to you, incredibly loud sirens, squeaky breaks that pierce the soul. I feel fairly certain you could make the case that many sounds we have grown to just accept in society are in fact at dangerous decibel levels.

There are ordinary household activities that reach dangerous decibel levels too. Stacking ceramic dishes, slamming the toilet seat, vacuuming in a tight space, etc. You will actually find that doing every day chores is much more pleasurable with hearing protection.

I now often put the dishes away with my noise cancelling headphones on, after accidentally doing it one day with them on and finding out how much less jarring it is. I wonder what the affect of this on age related hearing loss is - i.e how much of age related hearing loss is actually cumulative minor environmental toll.

Only problem with applying this strategy outside of domestic environments is safety.

Post reply on HN