Removing unwanted noise from the air?

CavLancer

CavLancer

This aint fertilizer
Joined
Jan 2, 2003
Messages
4,298
Location
Oregon or Philippines
Filipinos love to make noise. Sometimes its over the top sentimental karaoke, other times 70s hits for the millionth time. Regularly its small cc motorcycles with mufflers removed for maximum dramatic effect. Whatever makes these wonderful people happy is my take. Still, its a problem as I'm opening a bar/pizza place and have some hot Spanish guitar, old jazz, even a few Celtic CDs for the guests. I wanna make the other noise go away with sound canceling, but I know little about it.

What I want is a device that will determine the noises coming in and broadcast their negative or some such, thereby muting the sound.

Anyone know anything about such a thing?
 
That's impossible, but thanks Perfection. Everything is outside, its the tropics.
 
it being outside doesn't mean you can't do anything, you can for instance cover walls that reflect sounds on your customers with noise absorbing materials, or put an obstacle between your customers and common noise sources. It may also be possible to lower the noises at the source.
 
You mean with LAW rockets? I've actually considered a noise reflecting thing in the bar which would hopefully throw back motorcycle noise...
 
I could add noise absorbing foam to the structure... Thanks Perfection. :b:
 
You should also consider layout.
The nosiest places will be 1 or 2 metres from walls where you get direct and reflected sound.

Try to reflect sound upwards not back to the source. You don't want it coming back a second time.
If the layout of your walls tends to reflect the sound to one spot you may be able to do something about that.
A hard flat wall (or concave) will do this more than rough uneven walls which will spread some of the sound.

Not sure about foam, if it absorbs water it will smell.
The more light stuff like plants, soft furnishings etc the better.

Obviously you should also shield, reposition your own noise sources.
If you have music it may be better to put the speakers between you and the noise source so you here the noise more as background rather than in "stereo"
 
Silurian said:
You should also consider layout.
The nosiest places will be 1 or 2 metres from walls where you get direct and reflected sound.

Try to reflect sound upwards not back to the source. You don't want it coming back a second time.
If the layout of your walls tends to reflect the sound to one spot you may be able to do something about that.
A hard flat wall (or concave) will do this more than rough uneven walls which will spread some of the sound.

Not sure about foam, if it absorbs water it will smell.
The more light stuff like plants, soft furnishings etc the better.

Obviously you should also shield, reposition your own noise sources.
If you have music it may be better to put the speakers between you and the noise source so you here the noise more as background rather than in "stereo"
Click to expand...

Reflect sound upwards, got it. I'll try Silurian, but the sound in the case of the motorcycles comes up from 2.5 stories down. Don't know how I'd reflect it up from below us.

Perfection, behind my family and friends is a multicolored fence. Behind and below that is the circumference highway which contributes at least half the unwanted noise. There is a space below the fence where we could build a noise reflector which I'm ready to stuff with any kind of insulation is advisable. We have access to both perlite and rolled fiberglass as well as foam, double sided with foil.

 
Try earplugs.
 
Consult a sound engineer of you can. Or look up ideas. If you're in the open air near roads, you might try something like some posts between your area and the road that might be set up to break up the sound waves. I don't know that there's all that much you could do.
 
I misread the OP.

Do what Cutlass said.

If you don't know how to get in touch w/ acoustic engineers then call local recording studios to ask for a referral.
 
My friend studied that stuff in school and now works in a studio as a sound engineer/mixer/sound stuff guy. As far as I know he does the sound mixing for movies and TV shows. He's a rabid Arsenal fan, but the love of football keeps us as friends and talking every once in a while. I will ask him if he has any suggestions the next time I message him about his team sucking. He doesn't do any of this sort of stuff at work at all, but he might have in the past.
 
Thanks guys! I doubt there are any sound engineers around here though.

Great warpus, maybe your amigo knows something about sound to make up for his lack of football knowledge. ;) Thank you.
 
There's only one thing that effectively cancels out noise in an outdoor environment.

Louder noise that is closer.
 
There is I hope negative noise. That is a microphone takes in noise, analyzes it and a device broadcasts at the approaching sound waves their reverse, neutralizing them. I'd assume the microphone and device would have to have an instant or two to accomplish the task and rebroadcast so likely the microphone would have to be on a pole pointed roughly at the source.

In my imagination this thing is out there somewhere, but then so are skull sucking vulture aliens so...
 
Think of it like ripples on a pond. Your noise source makes concentric ripples from a certain point and your active noise control speaker makes concentric ripples from another point. While it's certainly feasible to adjust your speaker's ripples to cancel out ripples quite close to the speaker, getting it to cancel all the ripples in a wide nearby area isn't.
 
CavLancer said:
Regularly its small cc motorcycles with mufflers removed for maximum dramatic effect.
Click to expand...

This describes my brother in law(s) so well.
 
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