Noise Cancelling CD Player

[Knipp]

Is there such a thing as a noise-cancelling CD player or other such device that will cancel out a lot of the background noise in a room?

I am thinking about noisy work environments or aviaries. Headphones aren't the answer. I mean something that will play music or generate some kind of noise to cancel out the background clutter.

[solarfox]

If you're hoping to accomplish something like a "cone of silence", or to achieve the same effect as a pair of noise-canceling headphones across an entire room, then in a word... no. No such thing exists.

In order for acoustic cancellation to work, the canceling waveform has to match the sound(s) you wish to cancel out precisely, in both amplitude and phase. Since your position relative to the various noise sources in the room will change their relative amplitudes and phases as they travel through the air to your ears, there's simply no way to do something like that over the space of an entire room with a couple of open-air speakers.

There's a reason why they use over-the-ear headphones for that kind of thing. Inside the headphone cups, the noise-canceling circuitry has a known, controlled acoustic environment, and can precisely analyse all of the the ambient noise's waveforms and frequencies as they arrive at your ear and then mix an appropriate opposing waveform of the exact amplitudes and phases required.

[gadgetguy]

Are you asking about a White Noise generator? This is often used in phone centers to dampen adjoining conversations. Do a google search on White Noise Generator to see if it's what you are looking for.

[Knipp]

Hmmm .... a white noise generator might work. We have very noisy parrots. When they hear strangers in another room, they become very noisy. I would like to either modify their room so that they do not hear the noises, or treat other areas of the house so that the bird screeches don't seem so loud.

Thanks!

[solarfox]

Hm... I'm not sure how well a white-noise generator would work for something like that, really... In my experience, they do pretty well at masking continuous low-level background noises -- a lot of people who work night shifts use them to help them sleep during the day by masking out the sounds of traffic outside, for example -- but loud, sharp sounds like parrots (and believe me, I know how loud those things can be; my dad used to have several of them! ) would tend to cut through, unless you cranked it up so loud that the white noise itself would become just as annoying...

I'm also not sure whether or not the parrots would appreciate the sound. Do they freak out at the hissing-static sound a TV set makes when tuned to an unused channel? If so, they won't like the white-noise generator, either.

[Knipp]

There is a relatively noisy air filter in their room, which blanks out a lot of noise from the rest of the house, and we have installed an insulated outside door - which helps as well.

I am currently looking at other ways to insulate or otherwise modify the room so that the noise is less of a disturbance. Normally they are pretty good - but they want to be front and center in the middle of all activity when we have company.

They have a small TV which is tuned to a kids' channel (Treehouse) during the day.

[greymalkin]

are you serious???

I know a very simple way to silence them forever, but if you're modifying your house and buying a TV for birds you probably don't want to hear about it.

[Knipp]

These guys have a lifespan possibly longer than a human - and one of them actually holds conversations with me. They are like kids - so no, your solution is unacceptable.

[Jeremiah58]

are you serious???
I know a very simple way to silence them forever, but if you're modifying your house and buying a TV for birds you probably don't want to hear about it.

Maybe they screech cause they want a remote to change a channel.

[Knipp]

LOL. They are all male birds. Maybe they're objecting because we don't have the Playboy channel.

Has anyone tried the Sonet system?

http://www.white-noise.biz/sonet_faq.htm

It is supposed to actively cancel out consonants to make speech unintelligable. Screeches might be interpreted as 'consonants'.

[dphirschler]

Playbird

[ozymango]

What a fascinating topic!

Well, white-noise might work for people, but what kind of frequencies can parrots hear? I dunno myself, but it might turn out that whatever white-noise generator is aimed at human hearing, and whatever sets off the parrots might be some audio range that we'd miss.

Me, I'd aim for a more mechanical approach, aka soundproofing. This assumes that you own your house, and your "parrot room" is gonna be a constant, i.e. we set one room aside for the birds (for the most part; of course they can come and go as you decide).

You can install either foam panels or rolled acoustic material (fairly thin but with high sound damping ability) onto your existing walls (I'm assuming you have drywall in that room), and if you don't mind the "unfinished" look, that's it, you're done, or you could put another layer of drywall on top of that, mud and paint, and you'd basically seal that room off, soundwise. I've had friends do this for "music rooms," like with loud guitars and drums inside, and it does a really amazing job of quieting things down.

This may be a bit much if you're not a handy person, but it's not that difficult; plus if you ever sell your house, you can boast that you've already got a music room!

[Knipp]

Thanks.

It's actually our ears (and those of our visitors) that I would like to protect.

Of course, on the other side of the coin, if the parrots don't hear us, they don't respond to the noise by making more themselves.

I might do some online investigation on music-room soundproofing. There are likely more websites on that topic than aviary soundproofing.

[Jeremiah58]

LOL. They are all male birds.

I bet screeches translate into :
"Fetch us some pusseeeee...Pleeease"
Get'em a female or two and they'll change a tune.

[adam]

White noise works very well at cancelling out background noises, but you still hear the white noise at first. It takes a while to get to the point where you don't notice it so it wouldn't work well in a location where there are people coming and going. Sure they won't hear the parrots, but they will hear the white noise.

We use white noise in the courtroom when we need to have discussions at the bench that the jury can't hear. We can talk as loud as we want with the jurors standing 10 feet away, and they can't hear a thing we say. But the jurors are very aware that the white noise is playing and it is described as irritating because it feels like your ears need to pop.