| ▲ | atonse 4 days ago |
| Only slightly off topic but I sincerely wish Noctua was everywhere else in my life. Like I’d love for them to make my HVAC system quieter. Or table fans. Or car air conditioners. Just about every fan in my life would be better if Noctua redesigned it. They’d be like Dolby, but for making LESS noise. |
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| ▲ | darkamaul 4 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| We tolerate way too much noise in our daily lives, especially in dense cities. It’s a hidden tax on our health. Constant low-level noise has been linked to stress, sleep disruption, and even cardiovascular issues. What bothers me is that we only regulate the loudest offenders (cars, motorcycles, construction), while the residual of everything else is just accepted as background. But that background adds up. I wish we had stricter regulations not only for peak noise but also for the residual noise emitted by everyday objects. If reducing a few decibels here and there became a design goal across the board, the cumulative effect on quality of life in cities would be enormous. |
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| ▲ | port11 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Some years ago I had my first panic attack at work. Walking home was an atrocity; and since then I'm much more aware of how noisy a city can be. Now I have a kid I often walk around. You're even more sensitive to city noises when you're desperately trying to keep your baby asleep! The two big offenders where we live are a) drunk students partying outside; b) motorcycles (which are somehow allowed to be this noisy?). It's a pedestrian-focused city mostly car-free, but motorcycles and young drunkards more than compensate. Another source of annoyance are the beeps and boops that every household appliance thinks they need to have. The microwave's song when it finishes, the water boiler's super loud beep, the washing machine's stupid jingle at start and end of a cycle, etc. | |
| ▲ | iknowstuff 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Going to Shanghai (FFC) and seeing a bus driver flashing headlights instead of honking at a green light laggard was eye opening. All the electric cars and mopeds too of course. Coming back to NYC afterwards was wild. The fucking food stand generators. AC vents. The cars. The buses. | | |
| ▲ | raddan 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I live out in the country now where it is nice and quiet but when I was in grad school I worked for a summer in NYC and had an apartment in midtown. One of the many delights was having an apartment whose sole window opened into an interior courtyard that was maybe 10’ wide x 10’ long. Despite the fact that it did not directly open to the street, the noise from the window was so intense that I basically never opened it. I eventually came to appreciate that the noise level (and god, trash odors) were tolerable as long as you either never went outside, or you limited your exposure to the few modestly quiet places or times in the city. Weekend noise level could be pleasant at times but holy Christ… do the sirens ever stop?!!! |
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| ▲ | wildrhythms 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is why I wear earplugs when I commute on the NYC subway which is notoriously loud. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2707461/ | |
| ▲ | carlosjobim 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > I wish we had stricter regulations By now HN should have a bot to automatically post the above quote in every new thread created, because someone will always make that comment. There are very quiet places you can move to, so quiet that you can hear your own blood vessels. | | |
| ▲ | foobarchu 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Dealing with a constant level of background noise should not be a mandatory fee to participate in society, particularly when there are very clear ways to drastically reduce that background noise (examples already listed in this thread). "Just move" is never a good suggestion when someone has real grievances with how their society is working. | | |
| ▲ | carlosjobim 3 days ago | parent [-] | | In cities - where we have a great number of other people around us - we have to accept the noise level which the majority deems tolerable. Most of the noise is from buses and lorries, which we cannot take away unless we want to make life impossible in the cities. But nobody disagrees that excessive noise is intolerable, such as modified motorcycle exhausts, loud parties in a residential building etc. So I think in this case "just move" is appropriate advice. Or are you going to kick the asses of each and every person who lives in your city until you get your will through? |
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| ▲ | brokenmachine 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yet you participate in society! Curious. | | |
| ▲ | carlosjobim 2 days ago | parent [-] | | One persons "improvement of society" may be the opposite for another person. And if you share a small space (a city) with a lot of other people, you have to take that into account. Our physical world isn't the Arch Linux terminal, where a hacker is omnipotent and everything bends to his will. We have to take other people into consideration. And then the goal of reducing noise levels start to interfere with other important things, such as public transport, goods delivery, the ability for people to work, etc. |
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| ▲ | mcny 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | We don't even do a good enough job at regulating peak noise. There are asshats who have anti theft alarms on their cars that go off for what feels like hours and they don't stop by to check on their cars. Also there are idiots who deliberately destroy the silencers or mufflers on their bikes. I think these things are a higher priority. |
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| ▲ | samplatt 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| My brother's car/camping fridge's compressor fan died. He replaced it with a Noctua. It's 1/3rd the volume and actually has slightly MORE airlow than the 20c 90mm fan that was ziptied to it from the factory. |
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| ▲ | atonse 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Amazing. So even if Noctua themselves just made larger general purpose fans, we can add them to places ourselves. |
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| ▲ | Dennip 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You dont even notice it at first, but when I started wearing airpods pro at work, the NOISE of the aircon etc when you have to take them out is wild. |
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| ▲ | sneak 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I bought some custom molded earplugs recently and I got 3 sets - two are completely sealed off and are very nice for when I wish for peace and quiet and don’t need to hear or speak. I also use noise canceling mode on my airpods pro quite often. The advantage is that it works even when I’m in an environment I can’t control, like an airport or waiting room. |
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| ▲ | lostlogin 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Could someone please fix hard drives. I’ve relegated the Synology to the basement. I can still hear it grinding at night. |
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| ▲ | adrian_b 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | There are special brackets for mounting HDDs, where there are rubber rings interposed between the mounting screws and the bracket, in order to prevent the transmission of the HDD vibrations to the chassis, which usually greatly amplifies the HDD noise. With such brackets the noise is usually reduced a lot. There are some computer cases that are advertised as silent cases and which include such brackets by default (e.g. from Fractal Design). | |
| ▲ | OneOffAsk 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Someone did, but they're still slightly more expensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive | | | |
| ▲ | wkjagt 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I found that putting them on something soft helps a lot. It seems to be mostly vibrations that are transferred to whatever it's sitting on. | | |
| ▲ | rollcat 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Try styrofoam, a couple layers of soft packaging wrap, thick cloth, etc. My other hack is WOL + auto-suspend for my NAS. Wakes up for backup jobs, goes back to sleep when done (and there are no SSH sessions left open). Very hacky but works flawlessly. (Usually.) |
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| ▲ | myself248 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's probably coupling the vibration into whatever shelf it's sitting on, which then transduces it to the air. Set the unit on some foam, it helps a lot. | |
| ▲ | trq01758 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | In your case I would probably buy a couple of floral or similar foam bricks and try to decouple device from whatever surface it is standing on. |
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