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Where I was born it used to be dead silence at night till about a decade ago. Then the buses started announcing station names outloud. As the announcement is l
by neiman 7y ago
Where I was born it used to be dead silence at night till about a decade ago.
Then the buses started announcing station names outloud. As the announcement is loud and the bus windows are open, I get woken up from it almost every night.
Next street lights started to beep for blind people. While this is a great idea, in practice the level of sound they set makes sense for the day (when the street at busy), but for the night it is way too strong, going into people houses. I got used to sleep with a constant weak beeping sound.
Then the e-scooters came, and created three sources of new noise during the night. One when someone touches them ("stealing alert!"), one when someone is looking for them ("location beep") and the last when the van of the company comes to pick them up around 3-4 am.
sigh, I'm moving to a cabin in the desert.
- stinos 7y agoI totally get what you're saying, but there's some contradiction which I don't understand: you say a decade ago it was 'dead silence' but also that it ended when 'busses started announcing' which seems to imply the busses were there already before. So with 'dead silence' do you mean 'all the usual traffic noise' or ... ?
- mcny 7y agoI think I tend to forgive noise that isn’t abrupt, gradually increases /decreases in loudness, and isn’t high pitched, and never gets too loud.
- tobr 7y agoThat’s not strange at all. Most of the new noises you listed were specifically designed to catch your attention, while motor vehicles are constructed to be as quiet as it’s possible.
- switch007 7y ago> while motor vehicles are constructed to be as quiet as it’s possible. The interior, perhaps. I live on a street which has a relatively low limit (30 mph) but cars accelerate as if they were about to join a freeway...they are not quiet at all.
- cmrdporcupine 7y agoUrban areas are going to be so much better once EVs are dominant. Unfortunately I live near a highway, and the dominant noise isn't engine noise but tire/wind noise from the cars.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago>while motor vehicles are constructed to be as quiet as it’s possible. And before anyone sails on in to try and win some free virtue points about how OEMs slap excessively loud exhausts on stuff because buyers prefer that I would just like to point out that we have had ever tightening standards for idle, drive-by and wide open acceleration noise a vehicle can make since the 1980s. Buyers generally want their cars to make "some" discernible change in engine noise when they floor it but that's about it. Excessive noise is fatiguing whether people realize it or not and OEMs likewise try to avoid it because it makes ownership less pleasant. For this reason when they do slap "performance" exhausts on their sportier models it's a case of "how quiet can we get away with" (and many automakers use resonance tubes, engine sounds over speakers and other tricks in order to be quiet yet still provide noise when the driver floors it). The people designing tire treads, mirrors, the wheel well opening all have reducing noise as a priority. Reducing noise makes for an all around less fatiguing experience and has really turned into an arms race among the OEMs since the mid '00s or so.
- 5040 7y agoThe Roman philosopher Seneca made a similar point about non-continuous noise. "Among the noises that sound around me but do not distract me, I count passing carriages, a carpenter somewhere in the building, a nearby saw grinder, and that fellow who demonstrates flutes and trumpets near the Meta Sudans, not so much playing them as bellowing. Even now I find noises that recur at intervals more bothersome than a continuous drone." You can find more of his thoughts on the matter including his wonderful description of living above a bathhouse in Letter 56 to Lucilius.
- neiman 7y agoYou're right. There were cars passing and pedestrians, but their noise didn't penetrate into the apartment. By "dead silence" I meant what's being heard from inside the house.
- mcny 7y agoSpeaking of lights, are there no laws in the US about how bright headlights can be? At the risk of being too dramatic, I have had cars behind mine with their lights so bright I thought they had their high beams on.
- stinos 7y agoOk I know this is totally off-topic, but recently it indeed seems as if something changed (and I'm in Europe). Either the newer LED (or whatever they use in cars) are brighter, or they are aimed differently (that makes a lot of difference), or the rules loosened, or a combination of those, or something else which I can't figure out. It's not normal to be blinded when looking in your rear mirror, right? Slightly related, still widely off-topic: lights on bicycles, same problem. I think e.g. Germany has rules for those, but in countries where there aren't and/or there's zero awareness being raised it's sad to see how many people ride around with LED headlights which are way stronger than required and aimed straight ahead instead of down, completely blinding opposite direction traffic including cars. Now on the commute I do I've made it a sport to (friendly) shout to them telling to put their light down and it seems to have effect. But there's still a long way to go.
- close04 7y agoHeadlights got brighter (no new car uses anything like a classic bulb, going for Xenon or LED most of the time) and cars got a lot taller on average (SUVs are more popular than ever) so you're getting more light even when the car is further away behind you. I don't think regulation changed much regarding this.
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoAlso on some of the cars with EU daytime running lamps, they put the LEDs really low, where only fog lights were once permitted (fog lamps were illegal to use when not foggy), presumably firing up or entirely non directional. These are surprisingly good at dazzling, especially when roads are wet. There's a few makes doing this, but a couple of models are particularly problematic.
- antfarm 7y agoThe article is about applying dynamic range compression and similiar techiques to increase audio levels in recorded music.
- Ma8ee 7y agoIn Sweden the street lights are rather tocking, which is much less disturbing, than beeping for the blind. And the sound level adapts to the surrounding noise level, so they are much less loud during the quiet of the night than during the busy hours.
- CalRobert 7y agoYou're probably losing your stars from encroaching light pollution (and your sleep due to blue-heavy LED's) as well.
- magduf 7y agoThe noisy things you're complaining about are mostly an American phenomenon.