99% of noise is cars and motorbikes. The correct approach is not to invent some high-tech workaround but to go after the source of the problem. Otherwise it's like spending time micro-optimising a program that solves the wrong problem.
We don't even need to do anything radical like getting rid of cars. They can be quiet. Just ban loud vehicles. Force the use of quiet tyres on the road. Do not allow modifications that remove silencers etc. to be used on the road. Race tracks already implement a SPL test for cars at the exhaust. It would be dead easy to implement this for road cars. Already you've probably eliminated the need for anything high-tech for most people.
Then, for the next level, we need to keep driving cars out of our living spaces. Considering the bicycle exists, there is no need for people to transport their bodies from the outside of town to the inside at an average speed of less than 15mph[0]. It's insane.
Very true. One of the remarkable things about Dutch cities is how quiet they are. Sometimes I step outside and just hear nothing and it's almost unsettling. Never experienced that in cities at home in Ireland were cars dominante, even in cities less than half the size.
Unfortunately that’s a social problem that one person can’t solve alone. Here in Brazil it seems to be a common problem that individuals looking for attention will modify their motorbikes to be extremely loud and I’ve never seen this kind of thing getting much outrage from other people. They treat it as normal and police seem to have more pressing things to worry about.
Just because there are bigger problems, it doesn't mean there isn't demand to solve smaller ones.
For example, most of the churches where I live have a big meeting room underneath their main worship space. This room has curtains to divide it into smaller spaces for a dozen or more different meetings, including Sunday school, where a dozen (often noisy) children might be in each room.
Having curtains that genuinely reduce the noise between the areas would make a huge difference! It would reduce the demand to build new buildings with separate walled rooms that wouldn't be used most of the time.
Adding flexibility of use to larger spaces with a variety of demands is a problem worth solving, even if it's not as big of a problem as motor vehicle noise in large cities.
It depends on where you live. My apartment building is older, built before acoustic norms came into effect. I can hear my neighbor two floors up wake up in the middle of the night to take a pee.
I have 0 issues with traffic or other city noise, even though I like having my windows open and live in Paris, one of the densest cities in the world.
I live atm in a place not too far from an airport: I see planes at a distance several times a day, big ones.
I cannot hear them: triple-glazed windows everywhere in the apartment. It works.
I hate noise: since forever I assemble (or have the shop assemble for me) PCs that are extremely quiet. Otherwise I will hear it. AMD 7700X CPU in "eco" mode (in the BIOS) and Noctua cooler/fan, Be Quiet! PSU, Be Quiet! tower. No GPU besides the CPU's iGPU (so it's fanless). I cannot hear that thing.
Then I love music. I'll hear that one loose bolt that did detach and is now vibrating in the system ceiling when I listen to music.
Noisy fridge, fans (there's one in one of the toilet), this or that device humming: there are many source of noise inside your place that can be really annoying when your place is quiet.
Besides the triple-glazed windows, the (small) building is well built: no common walls with neighbors on the same floor (it's the stairs and elevator that do separate the apartments). Only 8 apartments. Very smart architecture. Ultra quiet.
> The correct approach is not to invent some high-tech workaround but to go after the source of the problem.
You've never tried a place with properly installed triple-glazed windows: you'll be surprised. I'm not saying cars shouldn't be less noisy but making your living place quieter ain't that complicated: (quality and properly installed) triple-glazed windows and call it a day.
These are all valid points, I also very annoyed at noisy home appliances (fridges...), but I'm always shocked by how loud it is as soon as you step outside. I remember during the first lockdown I would take walks out in Paris and it was so quiet and peaceful; the sheer quantity of decibels originating from motorized vehicles is insane.
Happy for you, most houses I visited in Canada are so poorly insulated (noise and temperatures) that it's laughable and triple glased windows would just move the problem from windows to walls.
Asked a home building company if they build with concrete (not that you couldn't insulate a wood construction though) and they scoffed saying it would take 15 years to recoup the costs through energy savings... Which doesn't sound that long to me, it's a house not a car
Cars aren't the sort of noise that I primarily care about. Neighbors with their god-awful dogs and children that scream and hit the walls 24/7 are far worse.
If you live in the city, sure. But 99% of the noise I deal with is family members going about their lives. Would love a solution to help prevent sound transfer indoors, so that I can focus (and sleep) better.
I moved to a countryside 2 years ago, escaping from city noise. Now, I’m going back (although to the outer, more quiet side of the city) because I’m going mad - lawnmowers, dogs, tractors, diesel generators, dogs, dogs, lawnmowers, dogs, …
Already exists, same as is used for any other soundproofing. Rockwool insulation, resilient channels and a second layer of drywall, mass loaded vinyl, acoustic panels and tapestries (can hide some more mass loaded vinyl in there too), acoustic adhesive, scored screws to kill floor squeaks. They're all quite expensive but hey! Very DIY accessible.
For exterior noise the biggest bang for the buck is replacing windows. I had some soundproof windows put onto my previous house and you could close the door on a parade going by and not even know it was happening.
Curtains add a flexibility to the use of space that walls do not. If I only have overnight guests very occasionally, I don't want to wall in part of my living room to accommodate them, but I'd love to be able to hang a curtain from some removable hooks that would give them some real noise privacy.
Same here. Loudest noise is one of my servers, but after that is birds and cicadas. I wish I could make the birds shut the hell up, but that sounds like the start of a horror movie.
Could you expand on this? Above 20-30mph tire noise is the dominant noise from vehicles [1] and I haven't yet found a reference that shows significant reduction by choice of tires
Personally I think we need to put cars underground - without tunnels we'll be in traffic hell forever[2]. And imagine the quiet.
> Personally I think we need to put cars underground
Nope, unless drivers foot the bill entirely. Tunnels are horrendously expensive to build and maintain. Projects like Boston's Big Dig cost billions of dollars, went over budget, and move a smaller number of people than a proper subway train system.
> without tunnels we'll be in traffic hell forever
Also nope. Adding more lanes just induces more traffic demand. We will never solve traffic by building more car infrastructure. We can only solve traffic indirectly - by mixing residential and commercial building, by making streets safe to walk and bike, and by building a world-class mass-transit system.
We live on a semi-main road. Normal engines aren’t really noticeable or annoying. Nearly all of the road noise is generated by tires with a fraction coming from large truck engines and vehicles with broken exhausts.
Only at very low speeds, past 30km/h (18mph) the noise from the tyres starts to approach or surpass the noise from the engine so they're nearly equivalent.
Yes, but then there are few idiots with modified cars (or most motorbikes in general) that are orders of magnitudes louder and can be heard from kilometers away.
There are efforts to attack the car tyre noise problem by grinding groves into the surface of the road. it's called "Next Generation Concrete Surface" I remember hearing about it on the "Twenty Thousand Hertz" podcast [0]
[0] https://www.20k.org/episodes/sonicutopia
EVs are now required to make a noise at low speeds and at high speeds tires dominate. The best option is fewer cars, the second best option is lower speed limits (with enforcement!).
We don't even need to do anything radical like getting rid of cars. They can be quiet. Just ban loud vehicles. Force the use of quiet tyres on the road. Do not allow modifications that remove silencers etc. to be used on the road. Race tracks already implement a SPL test for cars at the exhaust. It would be dead easy to implement this for road cars. Already you've probably eliminated the need for anything high-tech for most people.
Then, for the next level, we need to keep driving cars out of our living spaces. Considering the bicycle exists, there is no need for people to transport their bodies from the outside of town to the inside at an average speed of less than 15mph[0]. It's insane.
[0] https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-do...