- in Acoustics by Bobby Owsinski
Sound Eclipse Might Be The Answer To Annoying Neighbors
We all have home studios these days, but that also means that most of us have isolation problems as well. True acoustic isolation comes from mass, which means some heavy construction is in order to keep your sounds in and outside noises out. Most people are not able to go that far since isolation also carries a big price, takes up room, and requires permits, all which won’t work in a rental space, for instance. There might be a way to inexpensively get rid of the some of that outside noise with a new device called Sound Eclipse, which can do it electronically.
The device is the brainchild of Moscow design company Kristil&Shamina, where the creators took their experience living in the city to make audible improvements of their living environment. When the weather is nice we’d all like to keep the windows open, but that also means that outside noises can become a problem. Sound Eclipse allows you to keep the windows open yet attenuate the noise of the outside world by 15dB or so, which is about what you’ll get from noise cancelling headphones.
The device uses noise cancelling technology on a much larger scale than headphones, but it does require a bit of preliminary work. Several microphones are first placed in the room to take some acoustic measurements (just like when electronically calibrating your listening environment) and then machine learning algorithms calculate the sound wave propagation and adjust the noise canceling to work properly in your space. Most of the noise reduction is in the low-frequency range where traffic noise and ambient city buzz typically sits.
There’s no price on the device yet as it’s just a prototype, but it’s now a finalist for the Lexus Design Award, which means it’s a good ways along towards manufacturing.
Will Sound Eclipse be enough to allow you to record with the windows open? My guess would be no, but if it can reduce the noise level down to where we can still work in a somewhat quiet environment, and that’s still a big win.
