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Noise is all around us

thewalrus.ca

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Re: Noise is all around us

#161

Post by jibbit »

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.

This is often repeated here, but from where I’m sitting it self evidently isn’t true. I wonder if it could be because in the US there are so many automatic transmissions, and hearing high revs is relatively rare.. but most cars here are manual and high revs (in traffic) is common place

Re: Noise is all around us

#162

Post by nayuki »

JeremyNT wrote: post #97
kcb wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I live in the southern US and these things with modified exhausts are everywhere. There's no car inspection and no regulations are enforced. You can hear them at all hours of the day even if you live several blocks from a major road. It honestly makes living here really annoying.

I live in Toronto and modified exhausts on motorcycles and cars are quite common and annoying. I don't see any enforcement action whatsoever.

Re: Noise is all around us

#163

Post by nayuki »

bpbp-mango wrote: post #147

Good article but where is the mention of the car? I don't mean cars with big engines and loud exhausts, just normal cars, doing normal things. Car noise from the tyres, wind and engines is deafening and always with us. You can barely talk to the person beside you on a moderately busy street and we just accept this. Imagine living on that street.

From the article:

> Some of those things include enforcing speed limits, limiting traffic within neighbourhoods, and regulating modified exhausts, the orientation of bedrooms, pavement type, tires, and so on.

Re: Noise is all around us

#164

Post by dan-robertson »

thunfischbrot wrote: post #156
dan-robertson wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you talk to responsible motorbike riders, you’ll easily find people who have had near or actual collisions because because a car didn’t see them and the driver wasn’t trying hard enough to check for the places a motorbike might be. It’s easy for a motorbike to be hidden behind the A-pillar of a car if that car is entering a roundabout and the bike is going round, for example, so if a driver isn’t paying en…

This happens regardless of the noise the motorcycle is emitting though. In slow traffic, the advantages of noise are low. At speed, you can't hear the engine of the bike before its too late. Cars are way too well isolated nowadays for the noise to be a major factor in collisions with bikes in my experience.

I’m not trying to claim that the loudness theory is correct. If I try to imagine what it’s like to be a biker who has had one or several near-misses/accidents due to careless drivers, whose biker friends espouse the loudness theory, it’s pretty easy for me to see that person feeling a louder bike would be better.

Re: Noise is all around us

#165

Post by GuB-42 »

shrx wrote: post #109
gpm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sufficiently low speeds, yes. The crossover point is not high. Something like 30km/h . Edit: Source https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Propulsion-noise-the-tyr...

That's why electric cars are required to emit an artificial noise when driving under 30 km/h to alert the visually impaired pedestrians. The Renault Zoe car makes a very strange noise, almost like an alien flying saucer from a 60s movie.

I understand the need for these noisemakers, having been startled a few times by electric cars moving at walking speeds as without a noisemaker, they are effectively silent.

But these weird spaceship noises, I hate them, and for some reason, dogs seem the hate them too. So unnatural. I much prefer more typical noise like white noise, like a fan running. I think that studies have shown that white noise is particularly good for that purpose as the source can be located easily.

Re: Noise is all around us

#166

Post by simonebrunozzi »

jimmytidey wrote: post #111

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…

And police sirens at 3am. One of the reasons I left San Francisco, and now live in Venice, Italy.

Re: Noise is all around us

#167

Post by lukas099 »

brickfaced wrote: post #23

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)

If you couldn't get good things (like quieter homes) by spending more money, what would be the point of money?

Re: Noise is all around us

#168

Post by theodric »

nymalt wrote: post #123
theodric wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The old buildings have the usual old building problems, including hearing when your upstairs neighbor has gas or is feeling amorous. The newer concrete ones are much better, but entirely devoid of character. If you have millions, you can buy 49% of a house and get away from it all.

On balance, my experience of Switzerland was not particularly quiet, but then I mostly worked in urbia and lived in suburbia. The mountains are lovely and still, but there's not much tech work going in the forest.

Re: Noise is all around us

#169

Post by enugu »

yshklarov wrote: post #108
enugu wrote: post #102

There is a yoga kriya I learnt called "Dura Shravana"(Far Hearing) which is meant to help one zone out of the surrounding sounds and maintain focus. What one does is to place attention on the farthest sound from one's self then successively move to closer sounds in order culminating in the sound of one's breathing. And then, mentally recall the sounds in order. (For example, ambient background subtle sounds, car on r…

I'd love to see the teaching video!

Here's the video, https://www.facebook.com/DattaKriyaYogaPage/videos/541068743... There is a Kriya Yoga app also for DKY.
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