What about those noise cancelling thingies?

El Tigo · Post by **El Tigo** » Sat Jan 11, 2003 12:36 am

You know those lil do-dads that sample an incoming noise signal, then invert and transmit the inverted signal to cancel the original noise? Anyone tried one of those to silence a PC?? Or can remember what the correct name for one is???

Also please reply if you think I've just broken the Geneva Convention article inhibiting overuse of question marks.

Taa

Gandalf · Post by **Gandalf** » Sat Jan 11, 2003 2:30 am

That's not too bad an idea actually. But imagine listening to music or something while being in front of your pc, wouldn't it attempt to cancel out *all* the noise?
Inverting the whirring and buzzing noise of a pc shouldn't be too hard considering it's pretty much monotonous though.

El Tigo · Post by **El Tigo** » Sat Jan 11, 2003 5:58 am

Just an obtuse thought I had whilst looking at all the DIY silencing projects on the site. Maybe I'll do some research on the practicalities.

Alicey · Post by **Alicey** » Sat Jan 11, 2003 6:08 am

I think potentially it could be great. If you've got Barracuda IV or V hard drives and no thermatically-controlled fans, the only other noise should be consistent whirring/buzzing/whining that doesn't change, which would cancel out nicely. I think for other applications of noise-cancelling you need to have the speaker in the same place as the noise, or it's out of sync and doubles (!), but with something that's a consistent noise I think just playing would be enough. But this really is something I know nothing about and have done no research into, so don't take my word on it...

Lards · Post by **Lards** » Sat Jan 11, 2003 4:35 pm

Saw an article on headphones which do noise-cancelling, they were primarily targetted towards ppl who do a lot of flying, to drop the noise of the engines. Aparently they are smart enough to only drop background noise, and say for example the person next to you is speaking to you, you could hear them perfectly.

That said, they are headphones, not some general noise-cancelling system which you could attach to anything. I don't know if such devices are available.

El Tigo · Post by **El Tigo** » Sat Jan 11, 2003 6:51 pm

Hmmm, I'm having trouble locating anything on the standalone devices. Wish I could remember where I heard about them. The headphones, like Lards mentioned, are pretty interesting though

Maybe I'll just buy a pair of the headphones and rig them up somehow.
More than likely I'll just find out they're expensive and procrastinate about it.

Post by **Rusty075** » Sat Jan 11, 2003 7:29 pm

This topic has been discussed here pretty recently:

http://forums.silentpcreview.com//viewt ... ncellation

To sum it up: Good in theory, but very difficult in practice.

(Try the "search" function, it works great)