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Noise is all around us

thewalrus.ca

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Re: Noise is all around us

#91

Post by bonniemuffin »

Turskarama wrote: post #77
MH15 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm impressed that your buses are quiet. In SF, the city buses rattle my entire house when they pass by a half-block away. It's more "vibration" than "noise", but the whole house shakes and I hear clattering of little unbalanced objects in the cabinets and so on. In the last 5 years I've never experienced an earthquake that shook my house any more than the buses that pass by every 10 minutes.

Re: Noise is all around us

#94

Post by retrac »

totetsu wrote: post #79
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.

One interpretation is that nearly every person has some degree of tinnitus, but many are almost completely unaware of it - it's just perceived as silence under most circumstances.

I hit my head once, and lost all hearing on one side; some of it returned after a week or so. When it did, I was extremely aware of my pulse thumping through my head, bones crunching in my neck, as well as minor fluid whooshing sounds when I moved. Quite disorienting! We are always hearing that, but it is normally almost completely filtered out, imperceptible because it's always present.

It is my experience that absolute quiet is sometimes subjectively "louder" than very slight white noise, which can be perceived as true quiet. I also find I notice my tinnitus less under such conditions. This is analogous, in a rather deep way I suspect, to how most people perceive a perfectly dark visual field as grey noise [1], or amorphous slightly coloured blobs, or similar, but not a true black. A true, dark black can only be perceived in contrast to a lighter colour. Same with silence, perhaps.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigengrau

Re: Noise is all around us

#95

Post by wellthisisgreat »

Pandemic was an interesting moment re: noise. For the first time I started to call the cops on sociopathic neighbors who thought it’s ok to put stereo system into the window and blast their radio (literal radio, with ads) so that it was heard 2 blocks away.

I was hesitant to do it; also doubted that cops would deal with this thing. Yet I was proven wrong. Never heard the stereo since.

Noise pollution on that level should be enforced with fines, no reason not to.

Same for cars with music blasting at window-rattling levels

Re: Noise is all around us

#96

Post by mastercheif »

It pisses me off that NYC still allows through-wall PTAC units to be installed in new buildings.

PTACs are the combined heat/AC units you will find in cheaper hotels/motels. They are installed through giant 4ft x 2ft holes that are left in the exterior wall during construction.

Not only are they terrible for energy efficiency because they are impossible to seal correctly + result in a direct thermal coupling with the outdoors due to their sheet metal construction, they are also the #1 vector of outside noise getting into the apartment. You can hear whenever a truck drives by, even when your window is closed.

Also worth mentioning they universally use the cheapest compressors available with awful damping so they’re 70db or more when they’re running.

All in the name of saving a buck. People pay $5000 a month to be subjected to these things.

Re: Noise is all around us

#97

Post by JeremyNT »

kcb wrote: post #73
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.

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.

Re: Noise is all around us

#98

Post by ihateolives »

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…

> recreational gunfire

For someone living in Europe this is such a bizarre source of noise.

Re: Noise is all around us

#99

Post by flangola7 »

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…

If there are still lawns to mow you aren't rural yet. No one is mowing out here https://files.catbox.moe/f8tqeh.webp

Re: Noise is all around us

#100

Post by brewdad »

gonehome wrote: post #74
wrp wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You need to move to a suburb where your neighbors let the lawn grow a foot high. No problems with mower noise. :)
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