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Noise is all around us

thewalrus.ca

121–130 of 169 posts

Re: Noise is all around us

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engine noise is due to fuel injection. Not sure how that’s illegal.

We have been able to make very quiet engines for decades, noisy ones only exist to please people who need to feel the power of their car

I'd bet these sort of people derive their pleasure almost exclusively by knowingly annoying others. Power and speed are just bonuses. The main thing is annoying everyone else.

Re: Noise is all around us

#122

In suburban London and the surrounding countryside, so much of the noise is caused by a handful of motorbikes that have been made deliberately, I think usually illegally, noisy. Stopping noisy vehicles would improve millions of people's lives and moderately upset a few thousand bikers. I have no idea why it isn't a more popular cause. One person doing laps of a built up area in their modified car is likely waking up…

Been in the Cotswolds for a week and the arseholes revving their modified shitty old cars as they ride through these small towns is quite horrible.

Re: Noise is all around us

#123
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…

I moved to the Irish countryside for the quiet. On the other hand, I found my former situation with the Swiss regulations around noise, including mandated, legally-backed, police-enforced quiet from 12:00-13:00, 22:00-07:00 M-Sa and the entirety of Sunday a source of continual angst. (Of course, the church bells which bang every 15 minutes 7x24 are exempted from these strictures.) On balance, I think I'd rather take…

But was it quiet in Switzerland? I read a lot about the poor quality of their apartment blocks, to the extent that one could hear their neighbours just talking.

Re: Noise is all around us

#124

In suburban London and the surrounding countryside, so much of the noise is caused by a handful of motorbikes that have been made deliberately, I think usually illegally, noisy. Stopping noisy vehicles would improve millions of people's lives and moderately upset a few thousand bikers. I have no idea why it isn't a more popular cause. One person doing laps of a built up area in their modified car is likely waking up…

I think there’s often a belief that louder motorcycles are safer because cars will be more likely to notice them. Though I think the small cheap engines in scoters or small bikes are loud because making them quieter would be more expensive.

This would hold more ground if the people who say that wore full gear and full face helmets. They tend not to.

Re: Noise is all around us

#125
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…

I recently moved to a more rural place (which in my coutry means: The neighbours are at least 20 meters away in separated houses instead of 5 and the houses are attached to each other), I though it would be more quiet but indeed: No.

In the city people listened to music in their yard, but here, people have leaf blowers, big lawnmowers, large dogs, large heat pumps (for home and pool), roasters, complete bars in their yard, there are festivals in summer that push sound for kilometers over the acres.

Strange thing is, I hate the music and the leaf blowers, don’t mind the dogs or screaming kids at all. Also, when busy I don’t notice the sounds, but then the moment comes where I listen intently and get very annoyed. So I feel the answer to my peaceful life must be in me. I must be like Seneca, accept how it is. I won’t move yet again and my wife does not want to live in the middle of nowhere, just so that all I hear is birds.

I wish I was more like the people that just blow leaves for 5 hours a day and don’t care. I guess for some, noise really is no problem.

Re: Noise is all around us

#126
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…

We already have noise ordinances but police don’t enforce them. It is really hard to prove a person was making a noise I guess. Maybe with the right motivation they could just make certain vehicle modifications entirely illegal. Loud cars and leaf blowers are the bane of my existence.

For vehicles, at least in France, the law says how the noise should be measured, and it doesn't seem that complicated. But, in practice, it's basically never enforced.

Recently, they've started deploying a few "noise radars". I don't know how well they work, since I haven't seen much talk about those since the initial announcement.

Re: Noise is all around us

#127
post #8

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…

More modern trucks use white noise instead of a beep anyway, it's both much easier to tell direction from a broad spectrum sound, and significantly less annoying at the same time.

I'm not sure about that. I used to live in an apartment building in front of a cement factory where trucks would back up all day long. They mostly had that white-noise thing instead of the beeping. Yet, I could still hear them from the 11th floor through double-paned windows, even though my building was in front of the trucks as they were backing up.

Re: Noise is all around us

#128
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…

Ditch the fossil-powered lawn mower. Get a robotic electric one. And reduce your trimmed lawn area so that there is more wild meadow-like area for insects.

Re: Noise is all around us

#129

In suburban London and the surrounding countryside, so much of the noise is caused by a handful of motorbikes that have been made deliberately, I think usually illegally, noisy. Stopping noisy vehicles would improve millions of people's lives and moderately upset a few thousand bikers. I have no idea why it isn't a more popular cause. One person doing laps of a built up area in their modified car is likely waking up…

Engine noise is due to fuel injection. Not sure how that’s illegal.

why would fuel injection cause noise?

Re: Noise is all around us

#130
post #50
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most semi horns are compressed air also, it’s just the train ones are bigger. Of course, if you are a Real Big Boy you get a horn off of an aircraft carrier.

Or a fog horn: https://www.sumburghhead.com/assets/images/enlargeable/Fogho...
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