[neiman]

Where I was born it used to be dead silence at night till about a decade ago.

Then the buses started announcing station names outloud. As the announcement is loud and the bus windows are open, I get woken up from it almost every night.

Next street lights started to beep for blind people. While this is a great idea, in practice the level of sound they set makes sense for the day (when the street at busy), but for the night it is way too strong, going into people houses. I got used to sleep with a constant weak beeping sound.

Then the e-scooters came, and created three sources of new noise during the night. One when someone touches them ("stealing alert!"), one when someone is looking for them ("location beep") and the last when the van of the company comes to pick them up around 3-4 am.

sigh, I'm moving to a cabin in the desert.

[antfarm]

The article is about applying dynamic range compression and similiar techiques to increase audio levels in recorded music.

[neiman]

I know, I took the liberty of sharing in the comments a story of increasing audio level in society in general as I think these are connected social issues.

[ddingus]

I agree, nice comment.

Recently stayed in a recently modernized hotel room. Lots of beeps...

[stinos]

I totally get what you're saying, but there's some contradiction which I don't understand: you say a decade ago it was 'dead silence' but also that it ended when 'busses started announcing' which seems to imply the busses were there already before. So with 'dead silence' do you mean 'all the usual traffic noise' or ... ?

[mcny]

I think I tend to forgive noise that isn’t abrupt, gradually increases /decreases in loudness, and isn’t high pitched, and never gets too loud.

[5040]

The Roman philosopher Seneca made a similar point about non-continuous noise.

"Among the noises that sound around me but do not distract me, I count passing carriages, a carpenter somewhere in the building, a nearby saw grinder, and that fellow who demonstrates flutes and trumpets near the Meta Sudans, not so much playing them as bellowing. Even now I find noises that recur at intervals more bothersome than a continuous drone."

You can find more of his thoughts on the matter including his wonderful description of living above a bathhouse in Letter 56 to Lucilius.

[tobr]

That’s not strange at all. Most of the new noises you listed were specifically designed to catch your attention, while motor vehicles are constructed to be as quiet as it’s possible.

[dsfyu404ed]

>while motor vehicles are constructed to be as quiet as it’s possible.

And before anyone sails on in to try and win some free virtue points about how OEMs slap excessively loud exhausts on stuff because buyers prefer that I would just like to point out that we have had ever tightening standards for idle, drive-by and wide open acceleration noise a vehicle can make since the 1980s.

Buyers generally want their cars to make "some" discernible change in engine noise when they floor it but that's about it. Excessive noise is fatiguing whether people realize it or not and OEMs likewise try to avoid it because it makes ownership less pleasant. For this reason when they do slap "performance" exhausts on their sportier models it's a case of "how quiet can we get away with" (and many automakers use resonance tubes, engine sounds over speakers and other tricks in order to be quiet yet still provide noise when the driver floors it). The people designing tire treads, mirrors, the wheel well opening all have reducing noise as a priority. Reducing noise makes for an all around less fatiguing experience and has really turned into an arms race among the OEMs since the mid '00s or so.

[switch007]

> while motor vehicles are constructed to be as quiet as it’s possible.

The interior, perhaps.

I live on a street which has a relatively low limit (30 mph) but cars accelerate as if they were about to join a freeway...they are not quiet at all.

[cmrdporcupine]

Urban areas are going to be so much better once EVs are dominant.

Unfortunately I live near a highway, and the dominant noise isn't engine noise but tire/wind noise from the cars.

[neiman]

You're right. There were cars passing and pedestrians, but their noise didn't penetrate into the apartment. By "dead silence" I meant what's being heard from inside the house.

[Ma8ee]

In Sweden the street lights are rather tocking, which is much less disturbing, than beeping for the blind. And the sound level adapts to the surrounding noise level, so they are much less loud during the quiet of the night than during the busy hours.

[mcny]

Speaking of lights, are there no laws in the US about how bright headlights can be? At the risk of being too dramatic, I have had cars behind mine with their lights so bright I thought they had their high beams on.

[dingo454]

That's the idiocy in general of modern car design.

A bright-blue headlight of a modern car will actually make everything surrounding the headlights darker. A light which is slightly dimmer and more shifted towards red works much better for your peripheral vision. If you drive in rural areas the difference is very apparent.

Not only that, but street lights seem to be doing that as well.

Cross-walks here are now illuminated along the path with a strong shaped light. But the light is so bright that during night they just blind the observer: the pedestrian looks like ghost in a black background. IMHO this is even more dangerous, I frequently cannot see past the crosswalk, so a pedestrian which is passing behind it is risking much more than before. Go figure.

There are a couple of intersections which I pass frequently where the green light is too bright already during day. During the night, as soon as you get the green light you get blinded, which is _awesome_ since the light is guarding a cross-walk in this case as well. By night you cannot see pedestrians when you have the green.

[dsfyu404ed]

The police are the biggest offenders when it comes to unnecessarily blinding drivers at night.

The construction companies (who have to pay their own insurance premiums and generally avoid unnecessarily risking injury to people by blinding drivers) have long since toned down the lights they used (there was a short time period where they all had super bright lights because LEDs were new and cool so why not have a 1000W flasher), switched to the non-glaring light plants that use the canvas bags.

[stinos]

Ok I know this is totally off-topic, but recently it indeed seems as if something changed (and I'm in Europe). Either the newer LED (or whatever they use in cars) are brighter, or they are aimed differently (that makes a lot of difference), or the rules loosened, or a combination of those, or something else which I can't figure out. It's not normal to be blinded when looking in your rear mirror, right?

Slightly related, still widely off-topic: lights on bicycles, same problem. I think e.g. Germany has rules for those, but in countries where there aren't and/or there's zero awareness being raised it's sad to see how many people ride around with LED headlights which are way stronger than required and aimed straight ahead instead of down, completely blinding opposite direction traffic including cars. Now on the commute I do I've made it a sport to (friendly) shout to them telling to put their light down and it seems to have effect. But there's still a long way to go.

[close04]

Headlights got brighter (no new car uses anything like a classic bulb, going for Xenon or LED most of the time) and cars got a lot taller on average (SUVs are more popular than ever) so you're getting more light even when the car is further away behind you. I don't think regulation changed much regarding this.

[NeedMoreTea]

Also on some of the cars with EU daytime running lamps, they put the LEDs really low, where only fog lights were once permitted (fog lamps were illegal to use when not foggy), presumably firing up or entirely non directional. These are surprisingly good at dazzling, especially when roads are wet. There's a few makes doing this, but a couple of models are particularly problematic.

[close04]

All EU cars have DRL now. But the LEDs are basically what used to be the marker lights on any headlight (the first step in turning on the headlights). More commonly now they are overlapped with the signal lights so when signaling the LEDs just turn from white to yellow. But they're almost always still in the headlight block. When for some reason a manufacturer decides to put them in the fog lamps they run at reduced intensity. Just like when the fog light turn on towards the side you are cornering to help with more light.

[throw0101a]

> Speaking of lights, are there no laws in the US about how bright headlights can be?

See also bicyclists.

There is a general saying that there are two types of lighting: those that allow you to see, and those that allow to be seen. In most urban areas with street lamps, one simply needs to be seen. Too many of my fellow pedallers do not seem to understand this distinction, and do not realize that more lumens does not always been better: at some point you're simply blinding people, and they can no longer tell where you are.

A moderately (500 lm?) bright blinking light, with a simple on-off, non-random pattern seems to be best IMHO.

[GuB-42]

There are laws, but it doesn't mean they are properly enforced.

Chances are that the car behind you had misaligned headlights or some dubious aftermarket modification, like a HID conversion kit.

[dsfyu404ed]

Most vehicles will be born and die bone stock. The internet greatly over-estimates the number of vehicles that get aftermarket lights (LED dome light replacement bulbs from Autozone notwithstanding).

[GuB-42]

Badly adjusted headlights are very common though.

You are supposed to adjust them based on the weight distribution, but people tend to use the highest setting, because that's the best for them. But if they have a lot of weight on rear, the beams are too high and can dazzle other drivers.

And sometimes the optics are simply misaligned because of shock, wear, vibration, ... even dirt can change the beam shape and be problematic. This is especially true for HID lamps, which are closer to a point light source and require higher precision optics compared to halogen light bulbs. And because it mostly affect others, these problems tend to go unnoticed by the driver.

[vkou]

There are, but they regulated wattage, not luminosity.

An old crummy incandescent bulb in a 90s civic will produce a lot less light at the same wattage, than a new, super-bright LED.

[himlion]

That's stupid. I think when these laws were made wattage was a good proxy for luminosity. It should be updated.

[CalRobert]

You're probably losing your stars from encroaching light pollution (and your sleep due to blue-heavy LED's) as well.

[magduf]

The noisy things you're complaining about are mostly an American phenomenon.