[HN Gopher] MyNoise - Background Sound Canceller
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MyNoise - Background Sound Canceller
Author : modinfo
Score : 263 points
Date : 2022-08-06 08:14 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mynoise.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (mynoise.net)
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| Is there any app that uses scripts to generate this sort of
| audio? I'd like to be able to download a script of a
| thunderstorm, that sounds different every play, or the script for
| a coffee shop complete with the lunch rush and afternoon lull.
| abetusk wrote:
| What kind of interface would you like for such a system?
|
| I created a FOSS alternative (that's not nearly as feature
| complete as mynoise.net) [0] but it has the benefit of being
| CC0 licensed including all of the samples.
|
| If you have features that you think would enhance the
| experience, please feel free to open an issue [1] or DM me.
|
| [0] https://abetusk.github.io/noixer/
|
| [1] https://github.com/abetusk/noixer/issues
| solarkraft wrote:
| It's a great app, but it doesn't cancel anything. It produces
| noise.
| ranguna wrote:
| Thought this was a realtime background noise removal tool for
| meetings and stuff. For anyone looking for one such tool, lookup
| noisetorch, it's pretty cool.
| rpgbr wrote:
| For years I relied on Noisli[1] -- high quality stuff there.
|
| Replaced it with iOS' built-in background sounds[2], a new
| feature in iOS 15.
|
| [1] https://www.noisli.com/ [2] https://support.apple.com/en-
| us/HT212775
| some-human wrote:
| It's a weird subtitle for the website, as the function isn't to
| cancel out background sound, but to add to it with other
| background sounds.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Love this site. I've been using it for years and this is a good
| reminder to re-up my donation.
| mimimi31 wrote:
| If you're just looking for white/pink/brown noise, you could
| alternatively generate it using ffmpeg. I like
| ffmpeg -f lavfi -i anoisesrc=color=brown:amplitude=0.4 -filter
| "lowpass=f=400" -f pulse -device playback-device "noise"
|
| for example.
| hrnnnnnn wrote:
| Is there anything ffmpeg _can 't_ do?
| mellosouls wrote:
| "Background Sound Canceller" - as several comments have noted
| (amid favourable reviews), it's not, and it's not the title of
| the page.
|
| It appears to be a noise _generator_ , like the brilliant
| RainyMood.
| austinjp wrote:
| I love this site and recently donated. As per another comment
| here, donate if you can!
| keyle wrote:
| Impressive! I am surprised by the amount of customization. Love
| the idea of the sliders moving by themselves slowly, and the
| bell, with the sheer amount of options.
|
| Japanese garden is a winner for me.
| mwidell wrote:
| This is my favorite background sound website for focused work.
| Been using it for years. I have my own custom brown noise, and I
| also like the various rain noises - so soothing! Perfect when you
| are in a noisy environment and want to focus.
| nathanasmith wrote:
| One thing I really like about the background noise feature on iOS
| is it actively mixes with whatever music you might happen to be
| listening to on the device so that when the music punches in, the
| background noise generator backs off and when there's a gap in
| music playback the background noise subtly goes back up. That's a
| feature I would sorely miss in noisy environments now that I'm
| used to it.
| ssl232 wrote:
| I expected a website offering to use your microphone to record,
| invert and cancel background noise via the speakers. Turns out
| the website is offering prerecorded sounds instead, not really
| cancelling anything. Still though, surely someone has tried my
| idea? It would likely need some adjustability to match the phase
| delay between microphone and ears-via-speakers but I guess it
| could work.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Try the app.
|
| That is generating neverending background noises in a certain
| selected theme (forest, rain, ocean, zen garden, white noise,
| ...) and the components can be tuned to our liking (i.e forest,
| with the amount of wind and bird and other effects one likes).
|
| Quite good! I use that.
|
| (noise cancelling term is misleading btw. More like covering
| noise with another noise. : ) )
| mrtksn wrote:
| > Still though, surely someone has tried my idea
|
| Well, AFAIK some cars have active noise cancelation. I wonder
| why we don't have it at homes, after all they are both confined
| spaces. If general purpose computation and software wouldn't
| cut it, why we don't have whatever they have in those cars? A
| lot of money is spent on noise insulation on buildings, so the
| demand and the money must be there.
| swores wrote:
| I don't know anything about the car noise cancellation tech,
| but I would hazard a guess that instead of using microphones
| to pick up noises and generate counter-noises in real time,
| car manufacturers can just create the right anti-noise for
| their engine sounds, for the sounds of wind hitting the car
| body, etc. and use them without needing anything particularly
| clever going on?
| fencepost wrote:
| _Turns out the website is offering prerecorded sounds instead,
| not really cancelling anything._
|
| Kind of. Not full prerecorded like you'd get in a long audio
| track, but generators instead with multiple tracks each based
| on samples. This offers a huge range of customization ability,
| but also allows the amazing 'animate' feature that allows a
| constantly changing background.
|
| In the app if you tap where it says 'Default' on a sound you
| can also choose other preset 'scenes' using the same generators
| which can be very different - for example the Folk Trad sound
| set, which has scenes for Breathing Pipe, Calm Blow, Circular
| Breath, Harmony, Haunting Flutes, Highlander, The Drone and
| Throat Pipes.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| I don't think it can be done.. active noise cancellation needs
| to be really really fast and is done using dedicated hardware
| afaik.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Yea. Relatively straightforward on an MCU that supports
| audio, and running non-OS firmware. I think anything that
| runs through an OS or schedule would introduce too much
| latency.
|
| So, it can be on a generic MCU, but not one where the
| algorithm is competing for CPU time with other processes.
| [deleted]
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| you prolly need a dac or smth, because embedded devices
| usually don't have the compute needed for real time noise
| cancellation
| 6zPb8HBrz3ixFDw wrote:
| Supporting audio kinda implies having a DAC...
| bee_rider wrote:
| Unless you really like the sound of square waves I guess.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| You could do it on STM32H7, and probably slower ones too.
| taneq wrote:
| How fast can it need to be? The output frequency would be
| below 20kHz so latency of 50us or so, probably too fast for a
| userland app but I'd expect it to be doable in a driver or in
| the OS?
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| it effectively needs to be fatter than the speed of sound.
| sound needs to hit the mic of the noise cancelling device,
| its inverse needs to be found before the sound hits your
| ear drums so it can be played at exactly the same time. all
| this needs to happen in the time it takes for the sound to
| travel from the devide to your ears. super fucking fast.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I get a similar answer but through a wildly different path:
|
| I think you have to detect the sound with a microphone,
| then come up with the canceling waveform before the sound
| hits your headphone drivers (as they will be generating the
| canceling waveform). Given the typical size of headphones,
| it would be something like
|
| 2cm/(34300cm/s) ~ 60us
|
| Although, sound travels faster through solids, so might
| want to be a little quicker. And 2cm thick headphones would
| be pretty thick.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| wonder if there's some kind of "virtual microphone" like
| device that let's you hear sounds further away than a mic
| in the headset. Google fu showed some ultrasonic virtual
| microphone but idk if it is useful here..
| bee_rider wrote:
| Hmm, could be. I don't know much about this.
|
| I imagine you want a very good approximation of the
| soundwave that will hit the ear (so you can cancel it out
| very accurately). The farther that your 'virtual
| microphone' is from the ear, I guess the harder it will
| be to figure out exactly how the sounds it is picking up
| will combine to hit the ear.
|
| I mean, imagine the extreme case -- your 'virtual
| microphone' is (virtually) sitting in the path of some
| directed audio beam which won't hit the headphone wearer
| at all. Now you do the signal processing and generate a
| signal to cancel out that directed audio beam, which,
| because the user isn't in the path of it, causes them to
| hear it!
| wowokay wrote:
| And for some reason I thought it required triangulation, in
| that noise cancelation can't be done with sound in a space
| because the inverse of the sound you hear is relative
| compared to the person a foot or two away from you.
| hackerlight wrote:
| It does only if the microphone is far away from the ear
| canal.
|
| If it's close to the ear canal, all you need is low latency
| hardware (or hardware+software), responding in a few
| milliseconds thereabouts.
| nolok wrote:
| > is done using dedicated hardware afaik.
|
| Agree with the first part of your answer, but not sure what
| you mean by this second part.
|
| There is dedicated hardware for it, then there are solution
| using your generic gpu (ex Nvidia RTX Voice), then there are
| solution using your generic cpu (ex whatever the name of the
| one discord desktop client provides).
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| isn't that different? i thought that's noise isolation that
| runs using a Neural Net. i don't think it's as real time as
| you'd need for noise cancellation
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| I meant circuits specifically designed for noise
| cancellation. like in headphones
| distantsounds wrote:
| ASUS makes a noise canceling headphone adapter, and I
| have a chip built into my Asus motherboard that does it.
|
| https://shop.asus.com/us/90yh02l1-b2ua00-ai-noise-
| canceling-...
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| there's not too much detail on that page but what I see
| is that it "reduces EMI interference" from a mic. that's
| a different thing than noise cancellation (remove the
| noise from your background so that you hear the audio
| better)
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| That appears to be a "noise canceling" _microphone_
| adapter. It doesn 't even claim to offer headphone noise
| canceling, it's just for microphones. There are two dots
| that might possibly be microphones for active noise
| cancellation, but I suspect that they would be too far
| away from your face to be effective. Most likely there is
| just a DSP inside that tries to filter out background
| noise heuristically.
| Shorel wrote:
| True, and shows how far we have fallen in the war against
| latency.
|
| In theory it should be possible with a standard sound card,
| or a sound chip in the motherboard.
| ElemenoPicuares wrote:
| I'm neither a physics nor sound processing expert, but it
| seems like the microphone creates the signal to invert, and
| the speakers emit the inverted signal before the initial
| sound hits your ear. So I reckon the sound must first hit
| the microphone, then the speakers, then your ear. With
| headphones, the speakers cover your ears and the microphone
| is outside the enclosure, so that's easy. In a larger
| controlled environment with reliable sound dampening on 3
| sides, maybe? My inexpert intuition says that doesn't stand
| a chance of working in an open environment with one
| microphone and two speakers usually closer to each other
| than the user's ears. It seems like having a door on a
| building with no walls.
| naillo wrote:
| I suspect it could be done for sort of periodic noise (or
| possibly with a predictive net). I've always wanted to
| implement this on the web but never got around to it.
| bee_rider wrote:
| As far as I can remember, even some of the special-purpose-
| hardware based solution like you'd find in a pair of noise
| canceling headphones do better on periodic noises. Not
| needing to race the soundwave seems like it should make the
| latency problem much more forgiving.
|
| And the most annoying noises tend to be periodic anyway.
|
| I think you should give it a try... let us test it, if you
| can cancel out my air conditioner noise you'll be my
| favorite person...
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| Can't be done because the sound from source propagate as a
| spherical wave. To cancel it with destructive interference
| you would need to make a wave which focuses to the source and
| would only work if you are in between the noise source and
| the counter wave generator. Unfortunately to make a plane
| wave you would need infinite number of point sources or need
| the counter source further away. An alternative is to track
| listener and cancel the noise around that region but you
| would only be able to do that with very low frequencies with
| wavelength larger than distance between your two ears.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Could it work for cancelling tinnitus? Just have an inverse of
| that sound playing, with some controls for frequency adjustment
| for individuals.
| jpindar wrote:
| The Tinnitus Neuromodulator setting works AMAZINGLY well for
| me. It's effect even persists for some minutes after I turn
| it off.
| alexdbird wrote:
| I don't think so. Most tinnitus isn't an actual sound wave.
| It's coming from a glitch in the auditory system. Even if
| your input was mixing and could theoretically cancel it out,
| it would be impossible to lock the phase (without some
| feedback from deep inside your head!)
| clumsysmurf wrote:
| "I have tinnitus"
|
| Summer Night * As a change from loud white noise, try the sound
| of insects, singing at night. You're welcome!
|
| Interestingly, as someone with tinnitus, I found the sounds of
| cicadas to be very painful on my trail runs. I guess I am not
| alone:
|
| https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-05-experts-cicada-proble...
|
| Hopefully they are not in the sound clip :P
| brycewray wrote:
| For nearly eight years now, this coming through earbuds has been
| the only way I can sleep at night. Grateful customer of the iOS
| app.
| weekay wrote:
| On iOS you could also use the native built in background noise
| functionality which is good.
|
| Go to Settings > Accessibility > Audio/Visual > Background
| Sounds, then turn on Background Sounds.
|
| Rain , Stream and Ocean are my favourite while needing to focus
| brycewray wrote:
| True. I honestly don't remember whether those were available
| when I started using MyNoise (late 2014); but, in any event,
| I've paid for it already and have downloaded quite a few of
| the sound choices.
| prmoustache wrote:
| So basically this is for people who bought and use noise
| cancelling headphones and want to put back noise in their life.
|
| What about...removing said headphones and listening to the life
| around you? And even better, open the window?
| audiosampling wrote:
| Noise cancelling headphones still have a residual noise, that
| you will hear, because our hearing has an incredible dynamic
| range. Adding a faint background noise of your choice, to cover
| that residual noise, is a good idea.
|
| Then, these crafted noises do exist because of the exact nature
| of the life around you. For many people, the "life around you"
| is what they want to escape, exactly.
| [deleted]
| Tao3300 wrote:
| I know you're trying to be cute, but if you click through to
| the index it's a lot more than just noise. Most of the
| generators are specific environments, ambient music,
| experimental.
|
| > What about...removing said headphones and listening to the
| life around you? And even better, open the window?
|
| Because I'm trying to work and the life around me is too
| distracting. Because my noise-cancelling headphones aren't
| blocking voices. Because baby is trying to settle down and
| "white-ish" noise helps. Because I have a headache or an ear
| infection and this one frequency band feels good.
| [deleted]
| shipman05 wrote:
| YouTube Premium is great for this sort of thing. There are
| thousands of ambient noise and focus music playlists on there. No
| ads + music for a reasonable price.
|
| I've been a Google/YouTube Music subscriber for years. Every once
| in a while I think about switching to Spotify or Apple Music
| since most of my friends are on there, but for my usage, there is
| no feature parity.
| green-salt wrote:
| Do you stream your "background" audio every single time or do
| you save it locally?
| shipman05 wrote:
| I typically stream it and have a curated playlist that cycle
| through.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| YT premium can't be compared against this. mainly, because the
| presets are animatable. So you can generate a not repeating
| noise.
| audiosampling wrote:
| Exactly. Plus, creating your own "audible" comfort zone, is
| very tricky. A given sound that some people like, e.g. frogs
| in a nature soundscape, can be the sound other dislike, or
| are even afraid of. Offering level control over every audible
| elements in a soundscape is very important, and not available
| on YouTube.
| shipman05 wrote:
| It no doubt lacks the customization, but the overwhelming
| variety of options makes it likely that most people will find
| something to their liking. YMMV, of course.
|
| Personally I've used everything from Japanese-themed Lo-Fi to
| Skyrim soundtracks to nature sound to Starship Enterprise
| warp core background noise.
| bgro wrote:
| Reasonable price? Is paying more than a Netflix subscription
| reasonable to have no ads on content with no expanded content
| library?
| srean wrote:
| Apart from speed of response that many comments mention, isn't
| there a more fundamental issue with active suppression using wave
| interference in a 3D space. There will be places where the
| superposition of the amplitudes of the original wave and the
| active/added wave will cancel each other out but there will be
| places where they will superpose additively. Hypothetically one
| could position the source of the active suppressing waveform
| where the suppression target originates, but that would not be
| practical. Of course, with smart and speedy enough tech one could
| arrange the waves to cancel at a specific point.
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| Even if you could track the head of listener and send a counter
| wave to the particular position it would be limited to a very
| low frequency sounds with wavelength larger than distance
| between your two ears. Also neighbors wouldn't be happy hearing
| two times louder noise as it would be without cancellation.
| Claude_Shannon wrote:
| They are great, I recommend them. I also encourage to donate to
| them.
| Lapsa wrote:
| it's actually quite nice
| jwr wrote:
| If you're looking for other options: I've been using the "Iceland
| White" app and love it. Very high quality recordings of things
| that sound like white noice (waterfalls and sea coasts). A sister
| app of the also excellent "Naturespace" (best quality nature
| recordings I've listened to).
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| It makes me feel better to see lots of people using this. I
| thought there was something wrong with me for liking noises like
| this and using them to concentrate sometimes or just feel better.
| ashton314 wrote:
| This has helped me at so many points during my career and
| studies. I donate when I can and I recommend you do too--high-
| quality work like this deserves to be rewarded.
| WesternWind wrote:
| This site was useful enough for me that I got it for my phone.
| Some brown noise with ANC headphones and I don't have to hear
| other people.
| audiosampling wrote:
| Thanks for the kind mention!
|
| I am Stephane, the person behind that website/project. I see a
| lot of people having concerns about the title - Background Sound
| Canceller - and they are right. That title is not mine, but
| poster's own.
|
| I describe my project as "Background Noise Generators", or
| sometimes as as "Non-Distracting Noises and Music".
|
| They are not sound _cancellers_ but sound _maskers_.
|
| The idea is to create a noise you like, to mask a sound that you
| don't want to hear. Your colleagues, tinnitus, ... anything.
|
| Because these noise generators are designed to be non-
| distracting, there is a big chance that your brain will not even
| hear them after a couple of minutes... but they will keep masking
| the nuisance you wanted to het rid of in the first place. That is
| the magic exploited by the project. Create these sonic "focus
| bubbles".
|
| Happy listening.
| scanny wrote:
| Long time listener and patron, love your work Stephane! You're
| work is a blessing
| radar1310 wrote:
| It's amaing and great to experiment with. Have had the ios app
| for at least a year or more.
| xioxox wrote:
| Your app is also great to help get to sleep. I find if my
| thoughts are too active when I'm trying to sleep, then having
| some soothing sound like rain to focus on is a great help. It
| also has a stop timer so it won't go on all night.
| VladimirGolovin wrote:
| Thank you for MyNoise! It's a must-have homescreen app on all
| my phones. Works perfectly for me on planes and trains,
| especially in combination with noise-cancelling headphones.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Thank you for all you do. "Irish Coast" used to put baby no.3
| to sleep like a miracle. No.4 preferred "White Rain".
| nxpnsv wrote:
| I love this thing and have spent many hours making elaborate
| setups, wonderful work!
| jimmydddd wrote:
| As others have said, thanks for this project! This site is
| possibly the GOAT of the ambient background noise genre.
| elwell wrote:
| Thank you Stephane for MyNoise! Your site is very valuable to
| me. I hope it never disappears. I'll continue to donate
| periodically.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > I see a lot of people having concerns about the title
|
| The title, font choice, advert presence/absence and the
| incorrect monetisation choice are are going to come up.
|
| If you chuck in a gender neutral pronoun you might momentarily
| distract the pack.
| coreyisthename wrote:
| Thank you for the app! I use it every single night to drown out
| the POS bird that screams outside of my window as I'm trying to
| sleep.
| willjp wrote:
| I strongly empathize with you, this and the fast-and-furious
| truck drivers at 5am. I need to check this out.
| majso wrote:
| Thanks for the great masking rain album!
| i_like_apis wrote:
| Thanks for a great product! Have been using it for many years.
| forbin_meet_hal wrote:
| Huge fan since the beginning. Has gotten me through insomnia,
| high stress, and so much more.
| dmd wrote:
| Stephane is AMAZING. Years ago (2014) I noticed a point in one
| of the rain noise platters that had too much of an obvious
| pitch component, so that it was too easy to identify it when it
| repeated. Stephane edited the platter within a couple days to
| fix the problem!
| leviathant wrote:
| That's great! Reminds me of my own "random noise that isn't
| random" accidental fixation. There is a "water dripping"
| sound that I first noticed in Quake, no doubt sourced from a
| popular sound effects library, that I now hear television and
| movies all the time because of a pattern of pitches it uses.
| s0rce wrote:
| I find sleeping in a tent during the rain actually difficult and
| much prefer wearing earplugs for the quiet, although tent fabric
| also tends to flap in the wind which frequently accompanies rain.
| Do people enjoy the rainy tent noise for sleeping?
| ynac wrote:
| Don't forget Stephane's other project:
|
| https://brainaural.com
|
| Multitrack, knobbed, and high quality sound. Instantly installs a
| laser-guided focuser behind your eyes - unless you start playing
| with the settings. Haha.
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(page generated 2022-08-06 23:00 UTC)