Low frequencies require mass-spring systems in which the walls are decoupled.
Sound absorption panels don't do anything about insulation. They just condition the sound inside the room or make it less "echoy".
DIY Sound isolation is very, very difficult. If you want to do it, call an acoustic company that knows what they are doing. Not a generic construction company.
But then there are even lower frequencies. They go through everything - they are shaking it.. thunder/rumble. A huge mass works, but i don't know if it's only way.
For example, find a hill/ridge that has the city on one side, and nothing/wilderness on other side, go on top of it. You will hear whole city - mostly low freqs. Go a bit further in the "nothingness" direction. Then a bit more. And listen.. the feeling is like your ears are being unplugged - it's that sound disappears - and you are so get used to it..
most running engines produce some low freqs, and also slow-rotational things.. like cars' wheels thumping on streets and roughnesses there.. esp. thousands of those. And then combinations of almost same freqs produce very low differentials - something on 50hz and another on 53hz will yield some 3hz. Which cannot be heard, it's to be felt.
Another similar silence happens if one is in a street/ suburb/ block-of-flats full of airconditioners-on-walls when the power goes off.
Mind you, it's fine (for me) most of the time, it's only really an issue if someone starts drilling / does anything in direct contact with the floors / walls.
A thin strip of foliage does (basically) nothing to reduce noise propagation. Dense foliage (meaning you can’t see anything through it or move through it) gets you about 1 dB reduction for every 10 feet of thickness.
as with most things relating to acoustics, the truth appears to be extremely complicated[0] and foliage has different effects at different frequencies including reflection (which may perceived as amplification in some scenarios)
0 https://sarantinosgeorge.com/2019/05/25/the-sound-absorption...
The implication is that we're talking about sound pressure level in air, therefore the reference pressure would be 20 µPa.
and for which frequencies?
Again, the implication is annoyance and in that context I'm looking at overall SPL in A-weighted decibels (A-weighted decibels, while not perfect, is reliably correlated with annoyance)
I think you don't really know
For the record I'm an expert [0] in acoustics and noise control. It's how I've made my living for the past 30 years. So yes, I really know.
or you would have specified
I wasn't trying to get into a detailed discussion here, but I'm happy to oblige for anyone that wants to learn.
as with most things relating to acoustics, the truth appears to be extremely complicated
Absolutely. That said, if you look at the link, the author mentions 8-9 dB of excess attenuation with 50 meters of intervening foliage. That correlates to about 1 dB of attenuation per 18 feet of foliage. Again, that demonstrates that a strip of foliage would do almost nothing to reduce sound levels. And for what it's worth, the phonemea the author is describing is not "absorption" - it's a combination of partial cancellation of the reflected/direct wave interaction in porous soil (same reason why snow covered ground makes things quieter) and refraction from leaves/trunks (which is why the foliage needs to be _dense_, otherwise soon waves travel through the gaps and provide no reduction).
[0] By "expert" I mean a) studied the subject as an undergrad at MIT b) worked for 30 years in the field, producing or contributing to several hundred Environmental Impact Statements in the USA, authoring/co-authoring a couple dozen papers and presentations including one peer-reviewed study, c) authored or contributed to acoustics guidance manuals for the U.S. Federal Transit Administration, Federal Aviation Administration and National Academies, d) have been admitted as an expert witness in acoustics/noise control in criminal and civil trials in seven states, e) have certification demonstrating noise control expertise [1], f) been recognized by my peers as having contributed to the field, g) have had research referenced by international researchers
[1] https://www.inceusa.org/board-certification/about/ (sample test questions available at https://www.inceusa.org/pub/?id=6FBAEF10-B2FE-1D7D-AFCA-55D5... if you want to see the type of acoustics knowledge that is tested.
It never ceases to amaze me that blocking noise/sound (one of the weakest forces) is very difficult, whereas blocking light (being fastest and more “powerful”) is very easy.
It might sound futuristic, but I expect noise canceling force fields to become an everyday household thing in a few years ;-)
Obviously, some things are just loud. My kids hate how loud the frogs are next to our house. And blowers will remain loud. As are fast cars.
But, I really believe the future will sound vastly different in most cities. Would be neat to hear the differences through the years. Moving from horses to pully based carriages to gas cars. Now to electric cars. We have moved really fast.
In the US, at least, this means that the vast majority of streets will not see much benefit from EV transition, at least with regard to road noise. The quality of the noise will change, but not the total volume.
As an anecdotal reference point on road noise, I live within a couple miles of an interstate, and the noise I tend to hear does not have discernible engine noise. This is, of course, from vehicles moving at a very different speed than any within a neighborhood.
Engine noise always dominates, because 1% of cars are simply purposefully obnoxiously loud, and you need to be powerful and well connected to get enforcement of existing laws about vehicle noise in your neighborhood.
For me, while I find the 1% of purposefully obnoxious engines to be annoying, the thing that grates on my nerves is anything more constant. So for me, road noise dominates in what gets under my skin, not engine noise.
I cannot speak for you or anyone else, except to say that you have no right to speak for anyone else, either, who has not granted such right to you.
Again, there will still be loud things. But a lot of the noise of the modern world will go away. It is kind of startling how much of the modern world is gas motors running.
or a revamp on aesthetics with gardens full of fruit trees and other cute flowers than a bunch o grass dating the time where lawns were a symbol of status [0]
And blowers remain hard to beat in clearing leaves. Not just from grass, but also drive ways and sidewalks.
To your point, with gas blowers, I know when one is in use in the street. With the electric, I tend to know if in the yard. So, huge improvement. I'd expect if you really hate the sound and are in an apartment complex, you will still hear them some.
This feels true to me, but I suspect it’s not. Victorian industry was _loud_, and cars now are quieter than ever.
But no one drives cars any more. They drive trucks. And motorcycles. And anything with engines designed to tell everyone how powerful they are.
I appreciate my friends/neighbors with electric cars. They do not offset the neighbors with F150s, Silverados, Tundras and other behemoths with v6/v8 gasoline engines.
Cars are a very big carrot for hard work. They are the modern status symbol and toy which is available for entry to all budgets. Generally, big cars are luxorious, loud cars are fast. No one is gonna work their ass off to move from a 2003 Prius to a 2025 Prius. Plenty of people work their ass off to get a sexy car and to keep it on the road.
Edit: Missed the status symbol itself being stressful. I don't think so. There's a lot of pride in just your status moving up. You get a 90s 7 series, you're happy as hell because it's yours. Moved from daddy's money to self sufficient. Your first car. Then you get a nice 00s 5 series, we moving up in the world. Then you get an old Jag as a weekend thing, oh shit, we getting fancy. It just gives you a pleasant feedback loop every year to couple years.
"Loud" can be defined as dB, perhaps a distance from the source of the sound or from a neighborhood/business etc. Ex. Any sound you produce much have adequate dampening or distance such that school zones and residential zones do not recieve greater than 75dB from any singular source, nor 90dB from the combination of all sources. Then legally concerts must use different venues, planes must take a more difficult path to avoid the nearby airport neighborhoods, etc. Maybe walls erected next to speedways.
"Big" would probably need greater specification. One that already exists is lane width, so you can base things off that. Ex. Single-axle vehicles may not have a height greater than its width, where width is measured as the distance between lugnuts in the tightened position of the left and right wheels, the greater distance if the front and back wheels are at different distances.
2. IT'S AMERICA!!!
/s
It's not a continual rise in noise levels – there are ups and downs – and for some things volume levels may decrease while for other things noise may increase. But by and large, there seems to have been an upward trend for quite a few decades now.
Possibly. But no cars, no AC, industry built away from housing. Of course there were horses, trains, loud people. One place that can be quite eye-opening in this regard is Venice. It's really quiet, even when you hear people talking, there are no cars at all and in the evening it's very peaceful, more than any other city I have visited.
Mind you, most suburbs are quiet.
How is sound weaker than light? Light is stopped by some thin cardboard, whereas sound will just breeze through walls.
1. We evolved to spend 50% of the time in the presence of a 1 kW/m^2 light source.
2. As per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_intensity, sound intensity is 10log₁₀(I/I₀) dB, where I₀ = 1 picowatt/m^2, which means 1 kW/m^2 is ~150 dB, which is about what you get from standing 1 meter away from a jet engine (Wikipedia cited a book for that claim, and doesn't itself say which jet engine).
Sound, being a vibration of matter itself rather than an electromagnetic field, actually often travels better through matter, particularly those low frequencies which are transmitted through structures or the ground itself.
But yes, the far more energetically intense electromagnetic radiation is generally far more easily addressed than far weaker sound eminations.
In my mind I've got this "silly" analogy that noise is like the strong electromagnetic force, very powerful but only in relatively short distances ;-)
edit: yes, an explosion will expel matter through a vacuum, so in some sense enough noise will travel through a vacuum, but you are probably not going to be complaining about the "noise" if you are showered with enough matter to hear it from a massive explosion as your sudden disassembly will (briefly) capture your full attention. Whereas light trivially crosses the universe, as well as through some matter.
Maybe a result of human evolution? If our ears weren't as sensitive to sound as they are, we might not all be here discussing this.
Room acoustics is so complex that I doubt that a noise-cancelling force field is physically possible. ;)
Some sounds are loud enough to be impossible to block out. If police aren't interested in enforcing noise ordinances and your landlord isn't interested either because they're too busy trying not to repair the $12K a month water leak in the basement of the restaurant you live on top of, your only option is to move.
Likewise when ambient noise goes away though. There's a challenge in a sound studio somewhere that blocks out pretty much all sound, challenge being how long you can last in complete silence. Supposedly you can hear your own blood flowing in there.
It's also why people experience noise cancelling headphones as applying a 'pressure' when they first put them on; there is no pressure as such, but just the sudden absence of ambient noise their ears/brains are used to.
"Try a non-creative approach." -Albert Einstein
So much noise is utterly pointless. A symptom of wasted energy.
Soundproofing homes during renovations is stupidly hard to do. E.g. I can't soundproof a party wall without tearing down and replacing a staircase. I installed new windows which block a lot of sound (double glazing, where each pane is of a different thickness), but noise makes it way in through vents and cracks all the same.
Usually the planes were there first, though. Airports were built far away from population centers, but then the surrounding towns or cities expanded.
See https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-is-it-so-hard-to-...
My hometown is also an example of an airport built far form the city (in the 30s) only to have the city expand around it, but traffic has expanded massively since the early 00s (after the city expansions happened) with RyanAir traffic. Before that it was mostly a military airport with some limited regional passenger traffic.
As an additional point, the most noise isn't necessarily near the airport but sometimes dozens of kilometres from the airport. Sometimes this is because the airport changed flying routes due to noise complaints and/or expansions.
I get that it makes sense from a logistics point to keep airports close to people. But's incredibly disruptive to all the people who are impacted by frequent loud bursts of noise during landing & takeoff.
noise cancelling headphones are a godsend, making the noise level bearable so we react reasonably and kindly despite obnoxiously loud little people.
It's all subjective. To me the idea of living in a city and hearing your pulse sounds like living in the rubber room of an asylum. Going to great lengths to do so is weird to me. I do however find the sound of engines and cars/planes pleasant so I'm probably lucky.
I like the sounds of cars, and cars can absolutely have their sound tuned to be pleasant. Famously, Lexus for the LFA had Yamaha (yes the piano people) tune the sound of the engine and exhaust, which sounds absolutely lovely. Even far more mundane vehicles (not supercars) can sound quite nice. For instance, while I generally don't think positively about Ford, this last generation of Mustang GT had a wonderful exhaust note from the factory with the cutouts open, it was throaty and loud without being full of drone.
Nobody wants to hear an Aliexpress exhaust or the kid with the beater BMW leaking oil that they put a popcorn tune on.
Motorcycles are a different story, but motorcycle riders are also a different sort of asshole.
And sure, cars and planes are the best case scenario! Oh how I wish cars and planes would crash in great numbers into every asshole blasting vaguely music-adjacent crap at 1 AM in my area. That would make for a beautiful soundscape.
Seriously though, it's just very individual. Unfortunate people who are sensitive to noises can't ever prove to a person who isn't that it's a huge problem causing actual suffering.
Obviously it's marginally more safe than not having a beep! So, you know, ancillary impacts be damned...
Tesco delivery trucks have them here in Ireland; it's pretty good stuff. Still quite loud/noticeable when you're up close, while at the same time not being completely obnoxious to everyone in a kilometre radius.
Looking at their website it mentions several patents, so perhaps that's one reason it's not more widely used.
Your house is on fire? Fine, wake up the whole neighbourhood. You're in physical danger? Sure, emergency services can be as noisy as they need to be. Some of your stuff is in danger of being stolen? Meh, I don't want to get out of bed for that.
"A month in the laboratory can often save an hour in the library." -- Frank Westheimer
On the other hand though, which are the best noise-cancelling earphones or headphones? I've gone down this route, and haven't been satisfied with what was suggested. Airpods Pro 2 seems great at canceling noise, but sounds flat. Soundcore products have a phenomenal sound quality, but can't cancel noise as effectively.
Edit: I should also say that the tuning on the WH headphones is pretty bass-heavy (somewhat obnoxiously so), so make sure to use an equalizer to remove some of that.
Another neighbour has a gardener that spends half the day blowing leaves in his backyard every Saturday and it's making me hate living here. I like this house and neighbourhood, but the noise ruins it. I'm sick of people telling me I'm being facetious when I get upset about the noise.
I tried my shooting earmuffs, which do help a bit, but the annoying sounds come through. I finally resorted to noise-cancelling headphones, albeit cheap-ish ones from Sony and the past couple of days have been great. My focus has improved and I feel less exhausted. The headphones are the only thing I changed about my lifestyle.
I hope I can move out of the city in the future, the noise is really draining.
The usual failure mode on earmuffs is the cushion bit that seals around your ear drying out and getting brittle. Or the foam in the ear cushions getting hard or breaking down. When either of those things happens, it's time for new earmuffs (or ear cushions if you can find the parts).
These are the ones I use:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/3M-Pro-Grade-Earmuff-90565-4DC-P...
1) try noise cancelling headphones
NO: they have undefinable effects on your psyche. Maybe "pressure" or some sort of non-silent silence that your body still reacts to?
2) white noise, pink noise, music, classical music, new age music, atmospheric sounds, etc
NO: actually, these are similar to noise-cancelling headphones. Your brain is still reacting to the sound in a non-passive way.
3) giant earmuffs
NO: heavy, physical head pressure, etc
solution) 3M ear classic NRR 33 earplugs. when I need to concentrate. while sleeping. Keep a pair around for "that guy" playing videos on his phone in public. The BEST. I buy 200 at a time.
After reading this article, I wonder if noise-cancelling headphones + 3m earplugs might work together?
I trim the length to ~half to avoid sticking out, which causes them to catch and loosen. I also find that washing them first with an organic soap (Dr B) can reduce skin irritation during long-duration wear. When earplugs get wet they inflate almost comically, but after drying they shrink back down to regular size.
I use the rounded 3M EarSoft rather than the square-edge Ear Classic.[1] And actually, I just get the clone down at Harbor Fright...
Presumably this changes the attenuation somewhat (and voids the cert), but any difference isn't noticeable and it helps a lot for long-duration comfort and overall wearability.
(and yes, obviously I don't stick them in too far :D )
[1] https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/c/ppe/hearing-protection/earpl...
Mind you, I really like listening to music so I never really have them on with nothing or white noise or whatever.
I understand the pressure comment. It does not bother me that much and it's wayyy worth getting used to. I have tried the Apple Airpods Max and QC45. I think QC45 is a little less on the pressure than the Apple noise cancelling. Just my 2c.
Sure, any closed back headphones work and cancel out noise very nicely — I tried Sony WH-1000XM4, and they weren't much more effective than a pair of much cheaper closed backs without ANC.
I've been living in this combo for many years (using ear plugs 24/7 and changing them as needed, headphones on top when not sleeping), and it's been really helpful in keeping me relatively sane.
If you don't care about the sound quality, just set the volume to the max so it can yell through the ear plugs, and you don't have to take them out even when listening to something.
It's frustrating that there's no solution to such a widespread problem. The only economical solution I can think of is building another layer of floor in the upstairs unit, but that's a solution that's unavailable to the person trying to solve the problem. And landlords have no incentive for that kind of work because most tenants endure the noise without complaint.
My previous neighbors were very cooperative when I talked to them and they got some rugs and indoor slippers. But the best solution is to just walk lightly. It's second-nature to me to not walk heavily when I'm in small indoor spaces, but a lot of people don't have any awareness of how they walk. I'm also very tall and I think bigger people have a better sense of their physical impact. I'll have small parties here and I'm always interested in who moves gently versus who stomps around my apartment (with apologies to my downstairs neighbor) and it's never the largest people stomping.
Interesting. I've used earbuds inside earmuffs quite a few times and not had this problem, except when the cord gets tugged.
I definitely agree with the principle that if the experiment is fast and cheap, just do it.
It works well - but have them in long enough, particularly when physically working and the earbuds will loosen and shift. The seal on the earbuds with your ear canal is important, especially with ANC buds. Removing face shields and ear muffs to re-adjust earbuds is frustrating.
It is strange that after relating all the dead ends in some detail and found his solution, he does not share it.
We experience sub frequencies with our whole body, certainly I seem to have a high sensitivity to the 5-30Hz stuff. So no amount of ear plugging will be really that effective.
My achilles heel, which is similar, but not the same, is attempting to over-optimise, to the detriment of myself and people around me. I have learnt that sometimes it is ok/best to act with little consideration. Usually it's worth quickly assessing what the worst case scenario is - if it's missing a flight, maybe it's good to apply some detailed analysis. If it's being 15 minutes late too the pub - maybe just get on with life and see what happens. It's a really difficult and pervasive behaviour though, which I find some people cannot understand. I can't go upstairs or downstairs at home without briefly wondering if there is some item that should be elsewhere (washing, scattered toys etc) that I could carry with me. I can't switch a light off without doing a quick evaluation of how long it will be until needs to be back on, and therefore whether or not it is in fact worth turning it off. Gah!
But i did compensate for 5 diopter relativly good.
I did learn plenty of that research, made me more aware of eye sight and because i was very young, hard to say that it was obvious to just accept it at that time.
In hindsight my school grades were definitly worste than they had to be...
And regarding noise: We have a wonderful big lake here in germany and small mountains around it, you can hear the autobahn (going around it) everywhere and we really do a shitty job with handling car noise. Even on the small mountain or in the nature area you hear cars.
I definitly will move out of the city in the next few years and in an area which does not have a autobahn close by. I'm happy driving 30-60 minutes to the autobahn.
Noise cancellers have made it so much easier for me to focus, they've lowered my stress levels, made me a more effective programmer and even made me a nicer person.
I also recently just shelled out $600CAD for a new pair of Bose noise cancellers and they were worth every single loonie!
There is a reason we rely on experts, a large part of which is that good experimental design, execution, sampling of test subjects, and interpretation is hard. That's not to say it's impossible, and it's not that conventional wisdom / received understanding isn't often wrong (and there's nothing quite so profound an impediment to discovery of truth than solidly-embedded wrong understandings, especially at the cultural level). But at a starting point at least checking to see if what "everyone" believes, claims, and/or recommends is of value is a reasonable possibility to verify or refute early in a search.
There's also the realisation that reasoning through a problem is almost always far less useful than actually trying the damned thing, which is to say experiment and empirical testing. This isn't completely contradictory to what I'd written above, as all the impediments to good experimentation apply many-fold to good Gedankenexperimenten, or thought experiments. A key difference between the two is that an actual experiment will tend to reveal your sloppy reasoning, rationale, and/or method in fairly short order, whilst thought experiments can lead you down the garden path. Kant critiqued pure reason for ... reasons.
And for all that ... the author did learn something, and did realise their mistakes, and probably learned a bit more in the process than if they'd simply followed the initial consensus advice. But a different and perhaps more methodological approach could have arrived there sooner.
Anyway, I've been in a real pickle for a few months now. Wondering if anyone else has the same problem?
I had to stifle a laugh multiple times reading it.
One of the highlights was definitely:
“I tried kits for making custom-molded earplugs. One hardly blocked any noise. Another had a small piece immediately break off deep inside my ear, resulting in legendary good times trying to remove it with a screw”
like, why a screw? not tweezers, not anything of that sort?
also the part about trying to have a conversation with the earmuffs on, lol.
I feel for you OOP but still, pretty funny.
Noise level risk is the #1 criteria I look at when purchasing real estate. You know you're getting close to the end game when the only thing you are frustrated with is infrequent, small aircraft noise.
However. Quiet and disconnected real estate is a premium commodity, either due to base costs, or because it's far removed from 'society' so getting anywhere costs money and time. It's a tradeoff.
I used to grow up fairly quiet, plenty of neighbourhood noises but otherwise quiet... except for the fighter jets from the local military airbase lmao.
(That's their "picks", but they have reviews and tests on a lot more models. I just can't find a good place to link to just "all of the noise cancelling headphones".)
Don't just skim the list, click in and take a look at the individual products. They do pretty extensive quantitative measurements of all of these headphones and provide useful commentary alongside (e.g., the Sony ones are shallower so if you have big ears they might get uncomfortable). They have full frequency response graphs for the noise isolation, recordings of how it fares against some test samples, etc.
They also measure some less typical stuff like "clamping force" and "ear breathability" that's hard to tell just from briefly putting them on in a store.
I've personally tried some (older) Sony against (older) Bose and I can't really comment on whether the ANC is better because they pushed on the arms of my glasses hard enough and the shape left them resting _on_ my ears instead of over them such that they hurt to wear after a little while. They could be head and shoulders above, but that would be worthless to me because I would never use them. So I'd mostly echo what the other commenter is saying--they're all pretty much "great" in passive/active noise cancellation and sound quality. Just get whichever feels best to you.
On the other hand, I don't mind the ANC from my sennheiser momentum.
https://www.rtings.com/discussions/adsg5oN7w-9Dgb3O/treadmil...
https://www.rtings.com/headphones/1-8/graph/25566/noise-isol...:
Sony and Apple AirPods Max are considered best-in-class.
Inherited some Sony WF-1000XM4 and can confirm that they're really good at noise cancelling. Plus they have an ambient mode (with optional "filter in voices") which is helpful when you need to interact briefly.
This is starting to sound like a sales pitch, but if anyone like me is on the fence, they're really an incredible product that has improved the quality of my life, which I don't say lightly.
The AirPods Max…get them on my ears correctly, and I’m in a forest. It’s uncanny. It was the most profound alteration to my experience there in years.
I have both noise cancelling "big" earphones and earbuds. I agree with you that the the "pressing on the ears" is annoying, so I usually wear the earbuds: the noise cancelling is slightly worse, but the latest noise cancelling technology is really good enough.
I don't know why this type of AuDHD drives us this way but Jesus Christ is it awful. I'd have saved so many years of suffering if I'd just listened to the good advice and reason I'm constantly showered in.
Best solution I've got is "suck it up and listen to someone you trust who isn't in your head". Still, that's really hard to do.
My favorite earplugs are Loop Quiet because foam earplugs make my ears sweaty and itchy. If foam earplugs work for you they can’t be beaten as far as noise reduction.
I sleep on my side so I wear the headphones backwards and position the bottom one so it’s not between my head and pillow.
I turn on the iOS background sounds dark noise and put on an audiobook to distract from my mind not turning off. Add in an eye mask and I sleep quite well.
Any particular questions, happy to answer.
Everything sound-related is always messy in many ways. I bet when we get high quality replacement digital ears you can mute, these will still have some stupid crap going on, like unstable device pairing.
https://www.soundcore.com/uk/products/sleep-a20-sleeping-ear...
I haven't tried them myself, but they come highly recommended.
Last night, I used them at a sporting event where loud techno music was playing, and I could hardly hear the music while clearly listening to my podcast.
Proper fit of the earbuds is absolutely key and AirPods don't match everyone's ear shape, so YMMV.
btw, you know in action movies when there's 10 people with automatic weapons shooting it out in a building and talking to each other? yeah.right. firearms are so unbelievable loud, there's no way any conversation is happening in that environment. further, video doesn't do the supersonic blast justice at all it's something you have to experience.
Additionally, because noise cancellation depends on the phase of the wave relative to the receivers (your ears) it really needs to be within ~1/4 wavelength of your ears, or 3" at 1kHz.
In gun ranges, what you would probably benefit most from is passive energy reduction, so ear protectors (already usually covered) and acoustical treatment. However, acoustical surface is very expensive where flat concrete is cheap, so you end up with gun ranges being big reverberative spaces instead.
You'd need to have lots of pre-recorded shots as I imagine there's some variation between guns, calibers, etc. but I wonder how well it could actually work.
I'm changing jobs and going from having my own office to hoteling desks, so I imagine I'll be wearing the Sony's a lot more and I'm not sure if they'll be comfortable enough for all day use. At home or on a plane, I usually need to give my ears a rest every hour or so. I'll give one of the Bose a shot if I can't deal with the Sony's all day.
Apple is also very popular. I haven't tried the new AirPods with ANC, but I love the Pros. I have to fuss with them a bit to get a good seal, and they don't stand up to city or airplane use, but they're fine in a relatively quiet environment, and they're so small I pretty much always have them on me. I have no experience with the Max, but from what I've read they can be uncomfortable for some people.
I had bose nc700s, I slept with loop quiets. I tried airpod pros, moving the furniture around but it seemed my bedroom was a bass resonator.
Moved to a semi detached house, it's so quiet.
Love that. I seriously considered making a periscope to stick out the window and find out WTF my upstairs neighbors were doing. The whole building shook.
So now I have a house, in a relatively quiet area. My girlfriend does voiceover, and built herself a sound booth in a tiny closet that's perfect for it.
Except we have a next-door neighbor who inexplicably starts his truck pretty much every hour and... sits in it? He just lets it run and run. I have no idea WTF this guy is doing. Sometimes he pulls out of his driveway and goes around the block and comes back. His windshield is plastered with a sticker that says, "Runs on liberal tears." I'm not sure if we've met him or not, because I don't know which of the people he is among two houses.
And I wouldn't normally give a rat's ass about his weird behavior. But the low-frequency engine noise can't be blocked by sound-deadening treatment. It basically means my girlfriend can't work in her own home. This guy has to live next to probably the ONE person in the neighborhood who's trying to record for a livelihood.
Is that airpods, or Bose something, or Sony something?
I don’t believe I’ve ever heard the AirPods Max called the best on any of those fundamentals, only on the Apple ecosystem integration and the spatial audio. (The tuning is also ostensibly less plebeian than on Bose or Sony, but if you care for sound enough to be willing to spend AirPods Max money you’re probably getting the Focal Bathys instead anyway.)
> Hyundai’s World’s First Road‒Noise Active Noise Control, RANC
There are certain activities that humanity needs to do that need to produce noise, that's just how it is (e.g. building houses). We as a society have acknowledged this and that's why we have laws that restrict the activities to certain hours (e.g. 6:00 to 22:00 in my country.
I also can hear the noises and they are also not pleasant to me, but I have learned to deal with it mentally or physically (leave while the noise is being made until it's illegal to make it).
I see it as an XY problem because it seems that the people who mind the noise think that they can make it go away by "muting" or "ignoring" the noise instead of accepting that the noise is inevitable and learning to deal with it.
When it's a dog barking multiple times per second, in that deep boomy hound voice that is impossible to cancel in any way shape or form, for the 6th straight hour... I see red.
One of these things is reasonable. One of these things is not. When someone is driven to extreme lengths to try to block out the sound, it's somewhere in their personal second category of noises, and it's often *persistent.* In my case, I'm reasonably convinced that the only true solution will be to move, as I'm a musician and need actual quiet. Sometimes the damned dogs take away entire days.
You say you physically leave your house to escape the noise sometimes - getting a pair of noise-cancelling is significantly less disruptive to one's activities in comparison.
By physically leaving the house I was slightly hinting at the occurence where some of the buildings were not expected to be used for home working (or "being in use" during working hours) and therefore the construction and standards couldn't have considered that this might be a problem. (the rest of the time is covered by laws mandating no noise during night).
I feel extremely priviledged to appear to not be bothered by noise, although that's who I have always been - just as the people who are bothered by it.
Often times writing an e-mail in silence can be objectively less important for the society than someone building or maintaining a house. Other times people do make unnecessary noise or they make it at a time where it's expectably inconvenient to others around them - see germans not recycling glass at certain times of the week or not running a washing machine during late hours.
All in all it's a complex problem of society vs individual (vs another individual)
When some dog starts losing it for 6 hours straight though I still reach for my shop earmuffs and wax plugs over regular plugs. The trifecta. It's literally like being at the bottom of the ocean. I should do it more, my efficiency at work or on personal projects jumps up an order of magnitude. It's seriously like a super power everyone should try it.
PS would really love to see this entire post as an amazon review for Sony 1000XM4s. Just saying.