In Julia has ruined my work experience - #67 by kapple, @kapple posted:
This generated an engaging discussion on noise and work, enough so that I figured it’d be worth splitting the topic to have a dedicated place for the noise discussion here:
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My sister also has ADHD, and some level of misophonia.
I recently encouraged her to buy some adjustable Loop earplugs: https://us.loopearplugs.com/products/switch
She can dial in the sound reduction level she wants, helps her at work, helps her at concerts, helps her when hanging out with friends in a noisy restaurant… etc.
I might not recommend them for driving as you probably need to hear what’s going on around you, but for many tasks they can be amazing.
Please buy a better carrying case for them though. Hers opened up and she lost one of the plugs, and now needs to buy a new set.
If she really needs QUIET she’ll put on some over-the-ear industrial muffs, but the plugs are great for just everyday usage.
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I’ve never been to a concert. My ex loves concerts and invited me to them. We never got the chance to go for various reasons, but she encouraged me to buy special headphones for the same purpose that your sister has Loop earplugs. I never got around to it. Some combination of procrastination and executive dysfunction I guess. But also, I hate the feeling of earplugs and earphones in my ears, so I have headphones. And I don’t hate all sounds, in fact I find comfort in ambience, from the sound of rain to distant light traffic, and the wind through the trees. It feels disconcerting when I use headphones for the purpose of blocking out loud sounds, when all that ambience disappears and the loud and repetitive sounds only dampen. Maybe their volume is reduced which is nice, but their repetition still bothers me.
Thanks for recommending noise-cancelling, specialised hearing-controlling equipment!
I feel bad that so many people are giving me wonderful suggestions, but the actual specific problems I have are somewhat adjacent to the suggestion’s applications. The discussing between me and you guys is still helping a lot, I promise. And thank you again. That said, I’ve never tried industrial muffs, so I’ll add that to my list of things to try.
The nice thing about the loop switch plugs is you can adjust them and they’re fairly broad spectrum. Rather than getting rid of sounds they make them quieter, but you can make it not crazy quiet, just take the edge off… Might make things that would otherwise be foreground into “background” sounds. Anyway, think about it.
Industrial plugs + muffs together can knock sounds down by 35-40dB when you absolutely must have QUIET.
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Getting pretty far off topic here – but my ADHD brain loves my loops 
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Interesting discussion. I have a friend who has been involved in infrasonics. It turns out that something like wind in trees and the sound from Niagara Falls has lots of low frequency and infrasonics. All of this sound does not affect people. And it is all 1/f type of sound, meaning the amplitude increases as the frequency decreases. This is quite different from tonal infrasound. For example the blade pass frequency of industrial scale wind turbines is tonal, if I remember somewhere around 0.75 Hz.
In one particular case, a family living close to an IWT had to move out of their home when the wind was blowing because of health issues. Their 15 year old dog would get seizures when the wind was blowing when the dog tried to stand up. However when my friend turned on his infrasonic generating machine producing random infrasound the dog would no longer experience seizures when the wind was blowing.
It seems that this was a case where random infrasound produced a vastly different experience for the dog than tonal infrasound.
I am not at all sure how this relates to the discussion above but if it results in some experimentation that proves helpful it will have been worth it.
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That is so interesting. On rare but occasion, I do think about unseen (or in general, unsensed) things having an affect on us. Hidden variables in a way. Impacting our mood, our mentality, our effectiveness, etc.
I’ve tried having YouTube rain noises or the like as background noise. But I guess the coherent behaviour of noise addition doesn’t fully remove the neighbourhood dog’s barking.
On that note,
I’ve started trying to tolerate using my Sony XMHSDFSDFH12345 noise cancelling headphones (I can’t remember the label) as a blocker from neighbourhood noise. The pressure it induces is annoying, and the weight on my head not nice, but it’s still nicer than the irritation I feel from the barking dogs or neighbour’s washing machine vibrations. I can’t do earphones, the feeling of something in my earholes bothers me significantly. So, no Loops for me.
Still good to double check things we thought might’ve been unrelated. So still, thank you for bringing up your points you made.
In terms of fault, I agree. For the circumstances I’ve been struggling with, I’ve never attributed it to one person or one factor. Remove one factor, and the problem is gone, but remove a different factor, and the problem is also gone. Also, for some other factors, remove one and the problem is lessened but not gone. Either way large issues can commonly be multifaceted and multifactored.
Thank you. You also are just fine, have a great day! =)
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This is sometimes referred to as pink noise, I’ve found it oddly relaxing to listen to. Sometimes I put headphones on with this YouTube video of pink noise as a sort of “brain scrubber”, it works wonders!
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Do you have an experience sitting by a weir on a river? Pink noise is pretty much that (can you hear the “gurgling” in the sound?). Very relaxing, at least to me.
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What a weird 10-hour video!
FWIW, here is the FFT of its sound recording using the phone (edit: I used a slightly better speaker, but it still can’t deliver much below 60Hz):
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A colleague told me about this website a while back. It’s easy to mix-and-match sounds
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Another good source of background noises is the Android app “Noice” which is available on F-droid store as well as Google play.
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If I close my eyes and imagine hard enough, I can convince myself!
Oof, it looks like YouTube’s compressed it to oblivion! Still gets the job done
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The initial recording used the screen monitor speaker, but by using a better external speaker, the new FFT looks better (updated above).
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Not so much on work environment, but there’s this thing, i don’t know that its called in the US or the rest of the world, but here in Brazil we call it velcro, and every time i hear the sound of it opening i get a really strange feeling on my teeth, so much so that i cannot listen to it for more than a second, it really bothers me. Also the sound of clothes being ripped get me the same feeling. Maybe i have misophonia?
I’m really interested to know why this happens?
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sounds like it.
Velcro is annoying though, and yes that’s the brand name in the US as well.
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“One study has suggested that infrasound may cause feelings of awe or fear in humans. It has also been suggested that since it is not consciously perceived, it may make people feel vaguely that odd or supernatural events are taking place.”
There’s more at Infrasound - Wikipedia. It’s a super interesting topic.
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I believe misophonia can manifest in different ways. For example velcro is fine for me. Probably just below the line of satisfying (for clarification, not satisfying, but close). On the other hand, chalkboard scratching absolutely incinerates me. Though I am aware a sizeable proportion of humanity is bothered by it too. Grew over my University years of mathematician lecturers divulging complexities on said boards.
We may be using the term misophonia completely wrong (of which I’d have instigated) but I’m glad we’re having this interesting discussion, discovering and hypothesising things about ourselves through it. Regardless, whether it’s velcro or chalkboards, if it’s a deeply irritating experience, I’ll validate it either way independent of semantics.
Having YouTube presentations (yay for JuliaCon!) in the background helps me fall asleep, I might try pink or other categorised noise next.
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Tangent, but perhaps interesting: in an environment with low noise I have good hearing, and, on the other hand, loud and/or repetitive sounds are enjoyable; but when in a loud environment I have trouble focusing on, e.g., what one person is saying. Most people don’t seem to have this problem to the degree I have it.
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As a classically trained pianist (haven’t played for years now though), I would sometimes transcribe music I couldn’t find sheet music for. It was hard work at first, but I eventually developed the ability to zone in on specific instruments in an orchestral piece, or specific singers in a choir. And that helped with transcription.
The wiki article you linked says
Momentary intentions requiring a focused direction of attention rely on substantially more attention resources than enduring dispositions.
And I agree with that. But as I’ve experienced, training on such a sensory processing ability reduces the need for, and/or streamlines the “resources” used for such a task.
That said, now I am too sensitive: with my developed misophonia I now have the opposite challenge haha.
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