Originally Posted by
ryandelmundo
I don't want to say its impossible, but the whole reason noise canceling works with headphones is that it's able to work in a very small area (the ear canal) to cancel out frequencies going to just that ear.
You could come up with some interesting speakers to cause cancelation (known as destructive interference) but as you'd walk around the room you'd get different blasts of different frequencies. It'd be quite wild!
A good discussion of it here:
http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonso...w&ixPost=71391
Thanks for the link,
ryandelmundo; I understand the difficulties associated with it (being a physicist myself) and the impossibility of complete wave cancelation over a large volume. Using a set of speakers and microphones is the (basic, albeit imperfect) idea; I was just trying to know if there was some commercial, more-or-less off-the-shelf version of it.
Originally Posted by
Need
Sounds like Manhattan! The solution is ear plugs! I also heard there are some sound proof window curtains that work fairly well but not as good as ear plugs.
Originally Posted by
soarer
the foam earplugs have a -DB rating , I buy the industrial ones with a cord between them , it really cuts down the background noise when flying , you could double up and put on hard "ear muff" to further cut the sound.
is the sound thru the walls or the windows ?
Double glazed windows are used around the airport areas , or heavy curtains !
Earplugs get very uncorfortable after some time (at least for some people); she has heavy curtains installed - it helps; the construction is made of bricks and mortar, and the window frames are aluminum, both unfortunately are good at propagating sounds, and there is not much of a culture of sound proofing in Rio de Janeiro, so it is very expensive.
Originally Posted by
slawecki
amar bose worked on this problem before he started selling headphones and speakers. contact his company and see if he has anything. there are a lot of products out there to kill noise. we put some inside our compressor room to pretty much eliminate the noise.
in dc, and in london, there are laws in place that require busses to shut off their engines(no engine idling). passing trucks at night, in particular in nyc are a different matter.
I will contact the Bose company, thanks,
slawecki. Unfortunately, we are not in London (one of my favorite cities, by the way) but in Rio de Janeiro. There are lots of laws and regulations here, but they are selectively applied. These busses are quasi-governmental, so hard to have some accountability here. There has been lots of complaints about the noise; they just said they will continue to operate as they do now and that is it . . .