Products, machines, buildings, and industrial facilities are often designed without giving particular thought to noise emission and it’s impact on people. This sometimes works out, usually because of favorable circumstances or just plain luck. But we’re all familiar with situations where “what has always worked” suddenly starts generating noise complaints. Fortunately, these noise control debacles are usually foreseeable and often avoidable.
Yet myths, misunderstandings, and magical thinking are all around us, and they mislead folks into taking risky gambles with their projects. A typical engineering education doesn’t provide adequate preparation. Internet sources can be incomplete, confusing, wrong, or may even promote myths of their own. Our experience of sound in everyday life is simply not an effective guide to understanding how noise gets created, how it moves from one location to another, or how it affects bystanders and neighbors. You need an effective guide.
Nelson Acoustics uses highly specialized knowledge and extensive experience to cut through the confusion, and to help you successfully integrate quiet-by-design principles into your engineering and design processes.
This article is the root of a series covering some of the most unhelpful myths, misunderstandings, and magical thinking that I have encountered in my 35-year career in acoustics.
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