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Big fan of quiet. My home environment sits at about 30dB as measured by NIOSH’s sound level monitoring app, 32 during fridge cycle, 35dB when I have air conditi
by fwlr 3y ago
Big fan of quiet. My home environment sits at about 30dB as measured by NIOSH’s sound level monitoring app, 32 during fridge cycle, 35dB when I have air conditioning running. In previous places I wasn’t able to control external noise as much and I had to use earplugs to focus; I tried half a dozen and found Etymotic’s earplugs to be by far the best (they claim to designed to reduce sound by approximately 20dB at all frequencies, which really feels miraculous compared to most ear plugs - they were at their best on long flights, where I could hear flight attendants and announcements just as easily with them in or out; if you are like me and more sensitive to noise than most people, these feel like a way to increase your threshold by 20dB, I can’t speak highly enough of them).
Two things in the article do jump out at me, though. One is that it talks about active noise cancellation - people do find this helpful, but there’s also a smaller community who find it causes problems for them, including worsening tinnitus. All else equal I would say it’s probably safer to reduce incoming sound as much as possible before using noise cancellation -it fundamentally involves “detecting noise and making more noise in a specific way such that the noises cancels out”. The theory is very sound (heh), I’m not suggesting it doesn’t cancel out, but there may be some very weird edge cases or subtle effects we don’t understand there.
The other thing is more of a nitpick, it mentions truck horns can be as loud as 150dB. That’s “standing 25 meters away from a jet engine at takeoff” level, like we’re talking “immediate rupture of eardrums” intensity here. I don’t doubt that you can buy truck horns that have “150dB” printed on their box, but I really doubt they’re actually that loud. And yes, looking at someone who’s done the research, only the very loudest of full size train horns that fill up a tank of compressed air get to just barely below 150dB - at 3ft away. At 100ft they all drop below 120dB. https://www.djdlabs.com/horns/ https://www.djdlabs.com/horns/
- bombcar 3y agoBadly measuring is a pastime of horn manufacturers but people do mount train horns on trucks. I had one in an old car, and it was certainly loud as blazes, but once you were some tens of feet it was dropping off. It does carry for miles in a way that’s hard to explain.
- fwlr 3y agoThey do get closer to their rated volume than I expected, that’s true - I honestly expected the best would top out at 120dB even close up, just because these things are necessarily mounted within a few feet of the truck cabin and that would be physically painful already. But at least some truck horn manufacturers are almost living up to their claims (sadly). “Super bright” flashlight manufacturers still take the trophy for bad measurement. It also seems like “train horn” doesn’t really mean “a horn mounted on a train”, it means a horn that uses compressed air, so you will see train horns on trucks and cars.
- bombcar 3y agoMost semi horns are compressed air also, it’s just the train ones are bigger. Of course, if you are a Real Big Boy you get a horn off of an aircraft carrier.
- julian_t 3y agoOr a fog horn: https://www.sumburghhead.com/assets/images/enlargeable/Foghorn/foghorn_image.jpg https://www.sumburghhead.com/assets/images/enlargeable/Fogho...
- fnord77 3y agohttps://youtu.be/RYN8F4D_lUo?t=271 https://youtu.be/RYN8F4D_lUo?t=271
- blueridge 3y agoThanks for the earplug recommendation—just purchased! I have to bring earplugs to the movies now. Maybe it's me, but the audio in some movies is so absurdly loud that I want to just get up and walk out.
- cableshaft 3y agoI just bought some earplugs for that same reason (In the DnD movie I was like "That's it, I need to get earplugs"). The ones I'm trying are not supposed to block noise necessarily, just dampen and take the harshness out of the sound. Going to take them to the next movie or bar I go to and see if it makes it more manageable, because my ears can't really take the noise anymore.
- weswilson 3y agoI second the Etymotic's earplugs suggestion. They are really great to have and pretty inexpensive. For around $20 you can get hearing protection that is great for cutting the grass, going to concerts, or just getting some peace and quiet around the house. Plus they're not the cheap disposable kind, so it's not a recurring purchase. You can just toss them in the carrying case and take them where you need them.