Noise is at once basic and devilishly complex. By definition, noise is simply unwanted sound. But to the community of experts who attempt to measure it, control it, and hunt it down in the products we use every day, noise can be a problem that requires extraordinary engineering diligence, sophisticated instruments, and, occasionally, a bit of imagination.
John Galeotafiore, the engineer who oversees Consumer Reports’ testing of outdoor power equipment, has spent a considerable amount of time rigging up sound meters in interesting ways to simulate the position of the human ear. “We clip a microphone to a baseball cap when we’re testing lawn mowers,” he says. “That’s important because it captures what the consumer will experience in their own backyard.”
The New York Times adds how music has progressively become "louder"
"In the predigital era, compression required a mastering engineer whose job is to create the physical master for the manufacturing process, to employ restraint and finesse. With digital audio, a few mouse clicks can compress the dynamic range with brute force. The result is music that sounds more aurally aggressive — like the television commercial.
During the 1990s, as digital technology infiltrated the recording process, some mastering engineers wielded compression like a cudgel, competing to produce the loudest recordings. This recording industry “loudness war” was driven by linked aesthetic and economic imperatives. A louder record grabs your attention — and will often be perceived, at least at first, to have better sound quality than a less compressed album — and musicians didn’t want their product to sound weak by comparison. Maximum loudness, it was thought, was a prerequisite for commercial success."
To supplement his old-school hearing aid, he favors a $350 iPhone-linked earpiece made by Sound World Solutions, a hearing-hardware maker in Park Ridge, Ill., for whom he’s begun to consult. With the Sound World device on, he can amplify phone calls and streaming music as well as his surroundings. A third, $500 earpiece was custom-made by Ultimate Ears in Irvine, Calif., to help him detect a wider range of musical tones while composing. For restaurants and theaters, he has a $45 directional microphone that pairs with a $5 app to isolate desired voices. And for especially cacophonous places, he has spare $700 microphones, made by Etymotic Research in Elk Grove Village, Ill., that he can strap to companions.
When viewers tune into the Academy Awards Sunday, they can be forgiven for thinking the swelling music is coming from an orchestra hidden somewhere inside the 3,400-seat Dolby Theatre. The truth is a little less glamorous - they are a mile away, playing live at Capitol Records.
The sound is then piped through fiber optic cables back to the theater - in only 2.7 milliseconds.
"We just keep trying to get that latency down as close to zero, so that performers can hear exactly what the orchestra's doing and the orchestra can respond,"
Dash, a pair of waterproof, wireless earbuds, can play music from its own hard drive or streamed from another device. It can also make phone calls and track the wearer’s fitness.
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