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Sound-suppressing silk can create quiet spaces
- class3shock 3y agoIf you came looking for actual numbers the closest they come is saying "in vibration-mediated suppression mode it could reduce sound transmission up to 75%".
- iamkonstantin 3y agoI would love to have something like this. Even better if it comes in a portable form for the occasional visit to the office.
- Terr_ 3y agoI'm chuckling imagining a bunch of office-workers walking around with anachronistic silk head-veils and wimples.
- BizarroLand 3y agoAnd CEOs with $18,000 egg chairs lined with this.
- Klaster_1 3y agoSecond this, I totally can imagine buying a bead or windows curtain made out of material so I won't have to use ear plugs every night to stop hearing dog barks.
- oulipo 3y agoOr for snoring reduction
- shmageggy 3y agoJudging by the figures in the paper, it appears to attenuate low frequencies better than high frequencies, which is perhaps to be expected judging by experience with noise-cancelling headphones. This could be a game-changing complement to traditional acoustic treatment for recording studios and other acoustic spaces, where low frequencies are traditionally much harder to treat, requiring much larger and more expensive panels.
- whydid 3y agoI'm a mix/master engineer, and I just skimmed the paper to look for attenuation potential of this new material. It looks like they only tested above 100 HZ, which is still alright for conversation, but not for professional recording studios. As you can imagine, the low frequency attenuation isn't great. But the performance of higher frequency attenuation is pretty good. I think this material would work well for meeting rooms, and perhaps restaurants. Not for recording studios.
- aldanor 3y agoUse this silk material as a cover for bass traps? Win-win
- throwaway290 3y agoBass traps do little under 40 Hz where waves are feet long so good luck if you have a noisy HVAC, elevator or whatever running the vibrations
- Wohlf 3y agoLow frequencies travel further, in my house high frequency road noise is annoying but tends to come and go quickly but low frequency road noise I can often hear from literally miles away.
- hinkley 3y ago"Farther" not just in a straight line but also around corners and through structures.
- greenhearth 3y agoI would buy a carpet made of this to not hear the downstairs people.
- rendall 3y agoYour downstairs neighbors would probably also appreciate it!
- nwellinghoff 3y agoCan’t get to market fast enough. They are absolutely right that applying this technology to silencing noise it sorely needed.
- mixedbit 3y agoI would love if advances in material technologies would allow to design a window glass-like material that would let outside air in, but would cancel exterior sounds.
- ghusbands 3y agoI have seen such a thing in an article, though I don't know how to find it. It was a window with a square grid of circular holes in it - air could flow through, but sound waves were dissipated.
- dest 3y agoThis maybe https://www.ntu.edu.sg/eee/news-events/news/detail/-noise-cancelling-device-by-ntu-eee-scientists-halves-noise-pollution-through-open-windows https://www.ntu.edu.sg/eee/news-events/news/detail/-noise-ca...
- ghusbands 3y agoThat's active electronic noise cancellation - there have been many of those described and very few delivered over the past thirty years. Presumably because it's the sort of thing that is angle-sensitive and hard to set up and maintain. The thing I saw was just a pane of glass or plastic with large round holes in it to attenuate/dissipate sound waves while allowing significant airflow.
- BHSPitMonkey 3y agoThat would be nice. The next best thing is probably a regular (shut) window with an ERV/HRV somewhere.
- thfuran 3y agoIsn't that just better all around? Though a regular shut window isn't actually all that good at blocking sound.
- squarefoot 3y agoI'd be curious to know how would it damp lower frequencies that travel also by contact. Sound proofing for mid-high frequencies is easy if one doesn't aim at studio quality: just use wood and foam panels, break facing walls and angles with acoustic absorbing objects and cover every window or mirror (read: glass) with a thick curtain, add carpets on the floor and panels on the ceiling, and you're done. (hint: a $5 foam panel glued on a thin OSB board makes a quite effective, still light and cheap absorbing panel for mid-high frequencies) However, bass frequencies will be only marginally affected by that, and depending on what the room is used for, the above treatment might turn out as insufficient: probably overkill for recording a podcast, still not enough for recording music at higher volumes like when miking a band. Treatments for lower frequencies are expensive because of the necessity to literally prevent walls, floor and ceiling from vibrating, which invariably requires them to be weighed down adding concrete layers to further lower down their resonance frequency, before adding soundproofing. Sometimes the best approach is to build a drywall room into the room, which of course is more expensive and space constraining than the wood+foam panels solution.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Tom3849 3y agoActive noise cancellation speakers. You can create small quiet bubble for your head, where you sleep.
- michaelbuckbee 3y agoYou mentioned building drywall room - a neat building technique I only learned about recently that's along these lines (but a huge space and cost savings) is a "staggered stud" wall. https://www.reddit.com/r/Carpentry/comments/13j7o4u/staggered_stud_soundproofing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Carpentry/comments/13j7o4u/staggere...
- johnvanommen 3y agoThe silk sheet from the article is a loudspeaker. The solution proposed in the article requires a microphone, and would have a tough time dealing with multiple sources. It basically records the room, then plays the room back via the silk sheet, but out-of-phase. Because it's out of phase, it cancels out.
- TazeTSchnitzel 3y agoAnother thing textiles can do is block wind: https://research.chalmers.se/en/publication/534412 https://research.chalmers.se/en/publication/534412
- sheepenumerator 3y agoThis is interesting! As someone who often struggles with noise from my environment, I'd love to have something like a mosquito net that can be put around my bed to keep the noise out.
- xlii 3y agoHaving sound sensitivity I’ll buy this the moment it comes out. I’ve lost countless nights of sleep only because neighbors behind the walls had normal meet conversations past 12am. I really try to not be PITA but it’s my wellbeing vs theirs in the end. It’s a rental apartment so some are sympathetic and some are not. In case you wonder why not ear plugs could help: they don’t work because I can hear my blood flow and heart beat and it’s even worse.
- reportgunner 3y agoYou think this curtain will help ? Article says it vibrates when it's working so that will probably disturb you as well.
- thfuran 3y agoHow so?
- Reubachi 3y agoIt's give and take, it will help more than bare hard wall. Heavy curtains are the cheapest/easiest way to "sound deaden" a normal room. Their fabric surface area is greater than the bare wall, and the weight helps isolate vibration. Thinner ones will be less effective. Never effective as foam, and no method is as effective as actual mechanical isolation (IE a room suspended in a room)
- taraparo 3y agoTry Mack's silicon earplugs. they are not to be placed inside the ear canal but only to cover the entrance from the outside. so no unpleasant pressure, no heart beating etc. using them for years.
- avidiax 3y agoYou can also get custom fitted earplugs from an audiologist. They are wonderful. Extremely comfortable and they don't press on your ear canal, so you don't have any pain or hear your heartbeat, etc.
- oulipo 3y agoThis could be great to remove snoring noise for couples, instant seller haha
- johnvanommen 3y agoIt's kinda surprising that nobody has made a product for that, because it COULD be done with a plain ol' loudspeaker playing out of phase. Basically: 1) put a mic above one person's head, in the headboard or somewhere near there 2) record the room 3) play the room back from the same location, but out of phase voila! Snoring cancellation. One unfortunate side effect is that it might be quite loud for other people in the home! Because the cancellation will only work well at a single point in space; get a few feet away and it will sound like TWO people snoring. (The snorer, and the loudspeaker.)
- jstummbillig 3y agoI really, really hope the space of acoustic room treatment is incredibly inefficient and somebody can 10x a solution at some point. There is a lot of good that could be done by establishing acoustic treatment and managing noise (transmission) as a requirement for any type of indoor and outdoor construction.
- logtempo 3y agothe problem in buildings is the building transmitting vibrations. That's why it's hard to find a solution afterward.
- ben_w 3y agoIndeed. Anecdotal example: I'm currently living above a cafe, with an entire floor (with an office in it) between us and them. When they drag the tables and chairs around, we can hear it easily, because it sets up a vibration through the structure of the building. Took us a long time to realise where the noise came from — it sounds like it comes from above, but the flat above us has been unoccupied on some of the occasions we heard the noise, and we were only able to confirm the real origin by me being outside the cafe watching them while my partner was inside, and with the two of us on a call so we could directly observe that what the cafe staff were doing correlated with the noises he was hearing.
- prox 3y agoIs this a “we didn’t consider it” problem, or a “it’s part of how we build these days” problem?
- logtempo 3y agoBoth I'd say. We consider it less than the thermal problem since there is less regulations about noise, and it's also part of how we build today since there is a tradeoff between price, sound isolation and even thermal isolation. But we do have good techniques.
- jstummbillig 3y ago
- konschubert 3y agoI bet you that they wanted to do the nose cancelling method and then discovered they applying a static voltage worked much better. I am still bit sure how well it really works.
- thfuran 3y agoI don't think applying a static voltage would do much. But as to how well it works, > In vibration-mediated suppression mode, the fabric could reduce sound transmission up to 75 percent. So about 6 dB reduction.
- konschubert 3y agoThanks For pointing out that number. I didn’t see that somehow. I was referring to this: > In the other, more surprising technique, the fabric is held still to suppress vibrations that are key to the transmission of sound. This prevents noise from being transmitted through the fabric and quiets the volume beyond. This second approach allows for noise reduction in much larger spaces like rooms or cars.
- thfuran 3y agoYeah, but I don't think that can be achieved by applying a static voltage. I think it'd operate pretty similarly to regular nose cancelling where it requires a dynamic signal, but the goal to is keep the fabric stationary rather than to produce a vibration that negates some incident sound at some position. Although maybe that really is as easy as hooking the piezo fibers up to a low-impedance constant voltage source?
- AltruisticGapHN 3y agoÀ quieter world would be life changing. It’s incredible how low tech we are in regard to sound.
- piva00 3y agoFrom my own experience, it is life changing. I grew up in São Paulo, Brazil, an extremely noisy city mostly due to traffic: old vehicles, motorbikes with open exhausts, cars honking, noisy trucks passing by residential neighbourhoods, an airport inside the city (with take-off and landing ramps over major residential neighbourhoods, including one I lived at), etc. Moved to Sweden more than a decade ago and lived in very quiet places here, nowadays right in front of a forest with a couple of lakes nearby, and I simply cannot spend more than a few weeks back in São Paulo after getting used to the quietness. I feel much, much more stressed just existing there, even inside apartments on the 20th floor, even on the "quieter" parts of the city, it's a physical feeling that I do not shake off until I'm back home in Sweden. One can get "used" to noisy environments but the difference it is to live in quieter areas is really hard to describe, I don't think I can tolerate living in noisy environments after seeing how life is on the other end of the spectrum...
- soneca 3y agoI live in São Paulo and I noticed that contrast when I visited the central area of Kopenhagen. It was impressive and delightful how quiet that neighborhood (without cars) is. Of course I still can tolerate the noise, since I still live here. I am used to it and, most of the times, I don’t consciously care. But I do appreciate and miss the quietness.
- throwaway13337 3y agoI had a similar experience when I moved to a very rural house for a couple of years. It was extremely comfortable. Whenever I got back to the city, I felt overwhelmed. I ended up living in the city and getting used to the noise again. I made the conscious decision to do so because I felt like I limited myself a lot in the places that were acceptable. Comfort is it's own prison. I wonder, though, if there is some kind of gain I miss out on by getting used to discomfort.
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- Tom3849 3y ago[flagged]
- rolandog 3y ago> The sound-suppressing silk builds off the group’s prior work to create fabric microphones. >In that research, they sewed a single strand of piezoelectric fiber into fabric. Piezoelectric materials produce an electrical signal when squeezed or bent. When a nearby noise causes the fabric to vibrate, the piezoelectric fiber converts those vibrations into an electrical signal, which can capture the sound. Well, that is ... disconcerting. A slightly funny and dystopian future comes to mind of world leaders having to get naked to ensure they're not being spied on by the possibly nation-state-hacked ad-tracker-subsidized clothes.
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- olleromam91 3y agoCool research. The assessed conditions are very tightly controlled, and I wish they better described the sensing mechanism used for the feedback in the “vibration mediated suppression” method. but the new material approach is promising however, as it’s much less intrusive than other approaches.
- Jailbird 3y agoMy first thought was that airplanes need noise canceling for the engine sounds. There's a real difference in a long flight with and without noise canceling headphones. Effective (better?) noise cancelation for the whole cabin would be impactful.
- johnvanommen 3y agoIt's difficult if not impossible to do active noise cancellation for multiple people simultaneously.
- sheepscreek 3y agoWhat a time to be alive! Excited at the prospect of quieter cars, better noise cancelling headphones, quieter airplanes… My only wish is for a fabric that doesn’t involve poor silkworms.
- nashashmi 3y agoQuestion for research: Do these sound absorbing properties also exist in plant leafs?
- prepend 3y agoWould this work with fabrics so we have clothes that give us quiet zones around us?
- smolder 3y agoReading the comments here seems to indicate to me people don't know a lot about the subject areas surrounding noise like acoustics and building construction, but I think that just reflects society more broadly. The amount of investment in mitigating noise pollution is pretty underwhelming, partly because it's expensive, I think, but largely from ignorance. I tried to get a former general manager to acoustically treat a big obnoxiously echoey open floor space and their solution was to ignore everything I said and buy some annoying white noise generators, which misunderstands the problem we had with the space. Tons of apartment buildings cheap out on isolation in a really tragic way, where the difference to quality of life could be big with only minor adjustments to plans. The most tragic from my experience: when some builder decided to skip putting a real wall between neighboring apartments' bedrooms. Instead there were closets constructed from a single 3/4" layer. That "wall" couldn't stop a snore.
- llsf 3y agoThe particularly frustrating part is that is usually way cheaper to put sound barriers during construction, than retrofitting later on. We have been discussing this with my neighbors. We are both committed to eventually pull the trigger to retrofit, but the initial estimate is $70K and one apartment being under heavy construction for months...
- hinkley 3y agoMaybe you should arrange to do it at the same time and get temporary rentals somewhere else. Presumably you're doing a shared wall, but having the plumber or electrician out for two jobs is probably cheaper than having them out twice, right? Especially since there will be similarities in the levels of stupid they find in the walls.
- llsf 3y agoIt is a floor/ceiling situation. But the floor as a nice old intricate hardwood floor, and ripping it off would be a shame. Looks like we can do the sound insulation fro the ceiling of the apartment downstairs, but 1. It requires the occupants to vacate 2. It is expensive 3. It is difficult to estimate the change it would actually provide
- theGnuMe 3y agoAwesome. I’ll buy the curtains or piezo electric fiber windows
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