Harnessing technology to shush the neighbors

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At home, whether you’re trying to work or to rest, noisy neighbors can be a real nuisance. Modern technologies can help.

Roughly a year ago, the COVID-19 pandemic and its lockdowns and self-isolation regimens turned our homes into offices and classrooms. The new work format has benefits, but it’s also brought problems, not the least of which is noise.

In that respect, remote workers find themselves under attack from all sides. Even at the best of times a neighbor with a drill or a screaming baby is a headache, but when you’re trying to work from home, simply having family members, roommates, pets, even washing machines and televisions around can be a lot.

Home noise doesn’t just interfere with work; it can affect mood and well-being. Among many studies we hardly need to confirm the obvious, a group of Danish researchers produced one finding that irritating sounds from neighbors can lead to physical and mental disorders. Fortunately, modern technology can help to combat this scourge.

How to get rid of noise: Passive soundproofing

You can use passive or active means to counter neighbor noise. Passive methods include soundproofing the home with special sound-absorbing panels on the walls and floor — a laborious and costly, albeit effective, choice.

For a more budget-friendly passive-protection option, try earplugs. The most common polypropylene type does not sit well in every ear. More expensive varieties — made of wax or silicone — tend to provide higher noise reduction and comfort.

In general, earplugs are very specific to the individual, and you may need to experiment to find the right ones for you. Once you’ve settled on yours, remember to replace or disinfect them regularly — and don’t wear them all the time; it’s not good for your ears.

Let’s not forget the main drawback of this inexpensive and easy choice for sound protection: Earplugs muffle not only unwanted noise, but also the sounds you need to hear, such as colleagues during a video call. For a more selective noise-control experience, we need to consider active methods.

How to get rid of noise: Active noise reduction

Active methods are intended not to shut out unwanted sounds, but to dampen or filter them. German scientist Paul Lueg, who patented a method for neutralizing noise using a sound signal, first proposed the idea of active noise reduction almost a century ago.

To understand how active noise reduction works, consider what sound is. Sound consists of vibrations that, for simplicity’s sake, we can represent as waves, or oscillations, that move from peaks to troughs in a cycle.

Lueg proposed generating a series of mirror-opposite oscillations such that the peaks of the suppressing noise would coincide with the troughs of the ambient noise, and vice versa. If the waves are perfectly symmetrical on reaching the ear, they cancel each other out. Essentially, by adding sound to sound, you can create total silence — although the hearer needs to stay in one place or the waves will fall out of sync.

Noise-canceling headsets

Noise-canceling headsets work according to Lueg’s method. They contain built-in microphones to pick up ambient sounds, in response to which the headset creates a counternoise. In addition to headsets, some smart earplugs now offer active noise canceling.

Such gadgets cannot, however, cancel all extraneous sounds and thus do not provide complete silence. They can dampen the monotonous hum of an airplane effectively, for example, but not the piercing bark of a dog.

If you decide to buy a noise-canceling headset or earphones, first read reviews and feedback, and then, if possible, test your choices in store to spare yourself expense and frustration.

Noise-canceling microphones for conference calls

If you often take part in online conferences, consider the people at the other end as well; they’re probably not any fonder of your neighbor’s drill than you are. Here, a noise-cancelling microphone can help.

Most often, such mikes use a second microphone. Both the main microphone and the secondary one pick up approximately the same ambient background noise, but the first microphone captures the valid signal — your human speech — much better. The device sifts out the overlapping sounds to produce noise-free speech.

If you don’t want to buy a new headset, consider attaching a noise-canceling adapter to the one you already use. Such adapters can be expensive, but they do make your voice much clearer at the other end of the line.

Noise reduction with operating system settings

You can instead try to remove extraneous sounds using regular computer tools. Your operating system settings, for example, may include noise reduction functions. As with a special microphone, OS-based settings are for others on a call, not for you.

The relevant settings in Windows may use different names depending on the sound card, and in some cases may not be available at all. But to give you an idea, using Realtek as an example, to adjust noise reduction, open the Control Panel, select the Sound tab, navigate to microphone properties and, in the Enhancements tab, enable noise cancellation and echo cancellation.

Under Levels, you may also want to lower the Microphone boost setting, which amplifies noises as well as the speaker’s voice.

Likewise, macOS has built-in noise cancellation. To enable it, open System Preferences, select Sound, go to the Input tab, select your microphone, and check the Use ambient noise reduction box.
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