Noise control is an active or passive means of reducing sound emissions, often incentivised by personal comfort, environmental considerations or legal compliance. Practical and efficient noise control is wholly reliant on an accurate diagnosis of what is causing the noise, which first involves finding the source of noise. Once the source of noise has been found, the focus is reducing the noise at source by engineering means.
The most common noise sources can be divided into aerodynamic (fans, pneumatics, combustion, etc.) and mechanical (impacts, friction, etc.). Effective noise control focuses on reducing the noise from these sources as close to the source as possible. Noise control for aerodynamic sources include quiet air nozzles, pneumatic silencers and quiet fan technology.
In architectural acoustics and environmental acoustics, noise control refers to the set of practices employed for noise mitigation. Within architectural acoustics these practices include: interior sound reverberation reduction, inter-room noise transfer mitigation and exterior building skin augmentation. “More specific architectural noise control methods include the installation of thicker and/ or double-glazed windows,” acoustical gypsum, ceiling tiles, ceiling panels, carpet and draperies. In the field of environmental sound, common noise control practices include: design of noise barriers, development and enforcement of noise abatement legal codes and urban design.
Read more about Noise Control: Types, Materials Used in Architectural Acoustics
Famous quotes containing the words noise and/or control:
“While we were thus engaged in the twilight, we heard faintly, from far down the stream, what sounded like two strokes of a woodchopper’s axe, echoing dully through the grim solitude.... When we told Joe of this, he exclaimed, “By George, I’ll bet that was a moose! They make a noise like that.” These sounds affected us strangely, and by their very resemblance to a familiar one, where they probably had so different an origin, enhanced the impression of solitude and wildness.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Why wont they let a year die without bringing in a new one on the instant, cant they use birth control on time? I want an interregnum. The stupid years patter on with unrelenting feet, never stopping—rising to little monotonous peaks in our imaginations at festivals like New Year’s and Easter and Christmas—But, goodness, why need they do it?”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)