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A Better Way to Cancel Noise

nautil.us

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Re: A Better Way to Cancel Noise

#41

Post by mlevental »

raindropm wrote: post #7

That aside, I found that construction earmuff is quite good for blocking sound and gain focus — with just about 5% price of top noise canceling headphone in the market. It took a bit getting used to though(and took quite some times to 'stretch' the earmuff in order to make it not clamp too tight to your head, but it works quite well and very cheap alternative. It looks derpy though so I can't wear it in the office —…

the problem with these is that the tension on the spring (necessarily) is very high and they're painful to wear after a couple of hours.

Re: A Better Way to Cancel Noise

#42

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

raindropm wrote: post #7

That aside, I found that construction earmuff is quite good for blocking sound and gain focus — with just about 5% price of top noise canceling headphone in the market. It took a bit getting used to though(and took quite some times to 'stretch' the earmuff in order to make it not clamp too tight to your head, but it works quite well and very cheap alternative. It looks derpy though so I can't wear it in the office —…

Wearing it in the office - if you can get away with it - would also be a good way to make a point that the office environment is too damn loud to think.

Re: A Better Way to Cancel Noise

#43

Post by kardos »

Someone needs to invent an expanding foam that you spray in your ear and it solidifies in a few moments to form a perfect seal. It needs to somehow not go too deep and cause problems, and be easy to pull out and discard afterwards, ie, you can sell it forever like razor blades. Bonus points if it's biodegradable and can go in the compost.

Re: A Better Way to Cancel Noise

#44

Post by anonu »

odiroot wrote: post #31
anonu wrote: post #13

I live in NYC and I'm a longtime user of the Bose QC20s. They are probably the best commercial noise cancellation devices. I even sleep with them. The article promises some significant leaps in the technology. No doubt as processing gets faster and smaller we'll have even smarter noise cancellation. Looking forward to that...

Can't they stop human voice, music and children crying? These three are literally the only things I want to filter out while I'm focusing.

Noise cancellation is designed to cut out the ambient noise - which is mostly white - of which there is a lot in a big city. It does this with a phase cancellation of what is probably a fairly predictable waveform. Human voices I can imagine are not that predictable. Maybe advances in machine learnings and processing may be able to provide better cancellation techniques.

Re: A Better Way to Cancel Noise

#45

Post by mikhailfranco »

kardos wrote: post #43

Someone needs to invent an expanding foam that you spray in your ear and it solidifies in a few moments to form a perfect seal. It needs to somehow not go too deep and cause problems, and be easy to pull out and discard afterwards, ie, you can sell it forever like razor blades. Bonus points if it's biodegradable and can go in the compost.

Why would you want to take it out?

Perfect at work.

Perfect at the bar on the way home, to protect against the pub bore.

Perfect at home for the wife & babies, and a few years later ...

Perfect immunity from the acoustically-lethal menopausal wife & teens combo.

Re: A Better Way to Cancel Noise

#46

Post by mikhailfranco »

twtw wrote: post #18

i dream of cars with an array of speakers around the wheels to cancel the road noise.

The multi-channel case of using many anti-noise generators is much more complex than a simple single-channel.

I once proved a nice theorem about the multi-channel case, using Lagrangian multipliers and the theory of Gershgorin disks, which are what you get if someone upsets a Tower of Hanoi game all over your complex plane:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gershgorin_circle_theorem

Re: A Better Way to Cancel Noise

#48

Post by randyt »

Ricardus wrote: post #26

The MUTE solution sounds interesting, and is certainly worth some research, but I see it having some problems. One obvious one is that the receiver might stay in that guy's window, and you might be in the apartment, say 15 feet away, so within that distance you can overcome the latency issue that was mentioned (because radio waves travel faster than sound waves) but the fact remains you're 15 feet away from the micro…

The solution is to use adaptive filtering.

Re: A Better Way to Cancel Noise

#49

Post by randyt »

therein wrote: post #28
ape4 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a cool idea

I'm with the GP on this. It isn't that novel either because of a failed product trying a similar concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCW5HUkrr-o

No, these two are very different. The one in your YouTube link is absolutely a scam, because no one can do "remote" noise cancellation without feedback signals around human ears. But this work makes very much sense to me (as an audio engineer).

Re: A Better Way to Cancel Noise

#50

Post by steve19 »

puranjay wrote: post #17
steve19 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. My QC20s are probably hands down the best electronics purchase I have made. A gadget that has significantly increased my quality of life, and they last a long time.

I was on the fence about them. I had the Sennheiser BTNC 4.5 shortlisted since they're cheaper. Is Bose's noise canceling significantly better than Sennheiser's?

I have not used the Sony's, but the Bose QCs are absolutely fantastic. I think they a very safe bet.
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