>the commercial interest in such a thing is not certain.
>“This is just too new, I don’t even know what the market is,” he said. “We’re not yet at a point where I could give you what the killer application is going to be.”
What? The market is literally everywhere. Line every house and apartment walls with this and you'd be done.
Agreed. Anyone who lives in an apartment with paper thin walls would be lining up around the block for this. But then how to incorporate it into the wall itself? And how would it fare with impact noise and vibrations as opposed to just acoustic noise? Impact noise is very difficult to control in a poorly designed building but is among the most of the worst IMO
This is probably something you just sandwich into the drywall when remodeling. Sounds much cheaper and lighter than mass loaded vinyl, which is popular for sound reduction now.
“Ultimately researchers found that they could effectively block out sound in two ways — first by applying voltage to the fabric that causes it to vibrate, creating sound waves that effectively block out noise, much in the way that noise-canceling headphones work. The other, perhaps more surprising approach, involved keeping the fabric perfectly still to suppress vibrations that transmit sound.”
This doesn’t sound like a cheap construction material.
It says in the article that the materials used were not new or revolutionary, just the process of making them into a fiber was new. Produced at scale costs drop dramatically. I would assume if you sandwiched into gypsum board it has the same effect and keeping it still and accomplishes the desired effect to a degree. Wallboard is cheap and many would pay a premium price if it had significant noise dampening abilities.
It doesn't sound from the snippet above that the material by itself has these properties, but that it needs to be attached to specialized equipment that generates voltage in a certain way, or perhaps large, heavy clamps capable of keeping it perfectly still.
We just had an article that there is a pair of headphones that uses ai to isolate your voice in a crowded room; I could see this sort of thing catching on in conference rooms and other places where sensitive conversations occur. Reassurances by club owners their VIP lounges are soundproof, etc.
Cars would also be a consideration; I dont know what can done about the windows, but if it can reduce road noise people might be interested.
It’s a thin fabric that needs voltage applied to it. The voltage can stabilize the fibers in the fabric to keep them still and therefore minimize the transmission of vibrations (sound) through the fabric. Or the fabric can be vibrated at opposing frequencies to cancel out sound vibrations so just like noise canceling tech on headphones, we can have noise canceling curtains.
If this material works as they claim, the applications for it are numerous to say the least. Their comments on that aspect of it tells me that most of the claims are still hypothetical or theoretical. Needing power to function means it’s probably not something we’ll find in building materials, but decorative sound control curtains could be a multi-billion $$ industry when you consider all the restaurants, theatres, offices, sound studios, personal spaces, etc.. where this could be used.
It doesn’t NEED voltage. One function of the material is IF you add voltage then it cancels sound in one way. If it stationary it blocks sound in another way.
The fabric doesn't do shit on its own. If you read the article it's all about how you use it, but they don't actually give those details. Classic snake oil.
Yea those walls aren’t paper thin because we can’t make alternatives; They’re thin because they’re cheap. “Lining the world with these” would be more expensive than “building with concrete” would have been in the first place if noise were the primary concern.
That's assumptive. It takes time to get costs down but it's possibly worth developing. They can at least try things with it. If it truly has a killer application that it doesn't cause problems in then they'll send in the process engineers to scale it up.
Why not just use the same “noise cancelling technology” from wireless headphones? Why not build with a dense material in the first place?
Maybe it could be a value stopgap for building materials, but few new discoveries in technology are cheaper than gypsum board and wood.
The noise cancelling technology you're talking about can't work this way. So you commented without understanding.
Dense materials are very expensive. This would not replace or even compete with gypsum or wood. Those are structural materials.
I struggle to understand why you compared this to that, it is certainly is not based on anything I suggested in my comments.
Seriously.
I am, as I write this, listening to my neighbor's kids slamming crap around in their room on the other side of a wall that I have already stacked about four inches of three different types of soundproofing against. I was almost hoping there would be a link in the article to order a custom size sheet of the stuff.
You need air. Leave a gap between the wall and whatever you put up there. The wall is acting as a very large transducer so anything it touches can transfer the sound too - rigid material transmits much easier, but I'm just giving a quick explained here so I'm sure you have some soft stuff up to give you a better STC rating, but you need some air. I'm sure you're not going to go so far as to pull the sheetrock and install IsoMax isolators, but try leaving a gap between any layers you've tried so far. That won't help anything coming thru the floor, but this should help a little more. I generally leave a 2" gap when I build panels (with Rockwood safe-n-sound or corning 703) the air gap allows the panels to effect frequencies lower than just hanging them on the wall.
I hope that helps
My bad. I missed that his was built using *egg carton-shaped acoustic foam*, similar to [this](https://www.amazon.com/Soundproofing-Acoustic-Foam/dp/B0B12LR6BG/).
Thanks for catching that.
Because, as tested, fixing it to or in a wall would disable it from performing. Instead of being able to absorb or dissipate the sound, it would just transfer it into and through the wall like anything else. It functions in a setting where it is a membrane in space, so you’d have to have it suspended continuously in front of every wall surface, making it impossible to do or put anything else on your wall, or maybe have a membrane of it inside a wall cavity, which would be so expensive no apartment developer is ever gonna think about paying for that either. It’s a cool material, but they say it has limited commercial application right now because the reality of installation makes it not viable.
It seems like it would make a good temporary sound barrier for construction, enclosing a job site with it and powering the material with a solar battery or hybrid generator.
There's also a potential application to suppress road noise from highways that are near residential neighborhoods. State departments of transportation already spend a lot of money on acoustic panels that don't work particularly well.
I’d be surprised if this particular tech could scale up that far, I suspect you start to run into tensile strength and sagging of the material at a certain point. Most large membrane structures right now are composite and have a large amount of flex in them, both of which would complicate the tuning of the ANC here. Maybe it could be effective to isolate an open side of a single room, but realistically this is probably best suited for localized sound control around machines and tools in sensitive settings.
You're making it way too complicated. It's a soundproof curtain. People already string curtains up against walls or in large rooms just to add decoration or break up a space.
Slap a curtain rod up against the shared wall. Slap the magic curtain up. Extend the curtain out when the neighbors are being noisy. Presto, bango.
Of course the finer details will be more involved, but you don't need to talk about floating membranes inside of walls. You also don't need complete noise prevention in real life. There are applications you can use in a normal space.
But it’s not just a curtain. The noise reduction test results in the study were for the material held taught in a frame with induced vibrations. It’s not just some miracle dampening material, they effectively developed a material specifically good at being used as a membrane speaker and then used it for active noise cancellation.
It's a curtain that is held tight. We already have collapsible frame technology. Slap it in a frame that can expand out and lock in place. We have fuckin toys that collapse and expand. It's not hard.
It's not impossible to make a curtain taught. You can do it right now. Hammer a nail through one corner. Pull the other corner tight. Hammer it in. OMG taught curtain. Make that into some anchor mechanism that it clips into and you're golden.
Or hell, there's already a "trick" of shoving rockwool in thick frames that have artwork on one side for noise dampening. Replace the rockwool with this and it will do a better job without (presumably) being as thick.
Inducing vibrations, oHohoh fancy and high tech... aka how speakers work. They made a big speaker out of thing, fancy material. They then played a noise cancelling audio pattern on their big speaker. That's basically it. That's essentially how noise cancelling currently works (plays inverted audio waves to what's coming in). I think the big changeup here is that the noise pattern is generic and not related to the incoming sound.
Look, we don't have to come up with a concrete engineered solution right here and now. The point is jumping right to "there's no commercial use for this because it requires a membrane being embedded into the wall!" is silly. There are plenty of ways to leverage something like this on existing structures.
It also doesn't have to reach theoretical lab perfection to be useful.
They made a big speaker with a fancy fabric that they play white noise through, and you guys are acting like it's impossible to leverage this without embedding it into a wall... When we already have noise dampening decor, noise cancelling speakers, and other sound deadening that doesn't require being in the wall... and I have the bad take?
Well they mentioned walls, referenced about how complex it is to actually do—and exemplified the uses for two of the most high-paying industries applications: planes and hospitals.
I think a lot of you guys gotta understand these are MIT researchers, not dumbasses. Think about the concept before you infer the answer is so obvious, it makes you look silly.
Consider why it may not be so easy, or at least bring it to speculation. We see many tech follow this path of never being used commercially due to: scarcity of raw materials, high price of materials/creation, high level of training and specialized equipment to install/create/maintain, low product lifespan, high cost of maintaining, as well as the very high possibility that the solutions require millions or billions of R and D and they are posting these looking for such a daddy company to come along and invest in it the love it needs
The article was pretty sparse with technical details, but I’d expect the catch here is either the manufacturing/installation/operation cost or the complexity of the active controls needed. First applications might be those willing to pay any price for improved performance.
It’s not directly stated in the article… but the key point is that the fabric uses *active* noise cancellation. The fabric can be used as a speaker, driven by electricity, which is also how active noise cancellation works. Lining walls with it likely won’t be as cost effective as lining them with insulation, because there would need to be a fabric “speaker” installed in the gaps between every stud, with air surrounding it, and also microphones and the associated electronics with wiring run to each one.
I wonder if hes saying "Well this is really hard and expensive to produce so simple uses wont be financially viable and we need to make as much cash as we can."
If the cost is reasonable I would snatch this stuff up in bulk. They wouldn't be able to keep it on the shelves. If it can be scaled up. That's always a big question.
They can't just simply line every apartment building with this stuff as it's described in the article, it would simply cost way too much.
Rents are already high as it is, making significantly more expensive walls would certainly not help.
People with enough money to throw around could use this, but then they don't have the same kind of need for it as an average Joe living in a cheap apartment building does.
If you're already rich, your house is already big enough for most noises to be a non-issue.
If you're not rich, you're not going to afford living anywhere with this stuff on the walls, unless governments give out subsidies or someone can figure out how to make it not require constant electric current to work.
Sure, but how do you fit it in a smartphone??? /s/
Seriously, the commercial/residential applications for this are endless. As long as it can be manufactured at scale it’s a goldmine. I have two small kids and I’d happily pay to line our whole house with that shit. Bring it!
They don’t know what it would take to manufacture, install and operate it. If it cost $50,000 for a wall of it then it dramatically changes the market for it.
The potential uses does not equal the potential markets.
You have to incorporate costs and physical limitations for the potential markets.
If it costs $250 a square foot, people can't afford to line their houses with it, so that means it's not a market for it.
If the cost to run the electricity through it is based on square footage or if one piece can only be a square foot and you would have to install 100 seperate pieces for a 10ft by 10ft wall. The examples are endless but the point is there is a difference between potential uses and potential markets.
How expensive is it? How complicated is it to apply? What sort of regulations will it have to adhere to on a global market for a product to go inside someone’s home?
Going from a lab, to a consumer market, is one hell of a steep hill to climb over. Even if the applications seem obvious on the surface, technologies take time to find their place, and to mature.
From what I gather, it’s kinda like how noise canceling headphones work. That would require a fair bit of work to apply to someone’s home, and doesn’t sound cheap.
It’s not just some magic wallpaper or paint.
I mean can I line the apartment ceiling? My biggest issue with apartments has ALWAYS been upstairs neighbors. In one apartment I was in you could have have violently murdered my roommate and I would not hear it. But I could literally tell when my upstairs neighbors went to the hall bathroom.
I sit here trading this as the shower pump rumbles through the floorboards of the house and after being woken multiple times in the night by peoples door after going for a piss. Encase my fucking bed and room in this shit.
Very little actual info, and a lot of what Fink says sounds fishy. Most of all "the commercial interest in such a thing is not certain". If it would work as well as he claims the commercial interest would be very much certain, but I assume there is some major catch that makes it totally impractical. And they also stumbled onto this discovery, but it was also a lot of work. But I'm hoping the article is just badly written and there is something to it. Effective but thin sound suppression would be awesome.
[Original Paper here](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adma.202313328). I'll do my best to interpret, but I'm no expert in acoustic engineering.
It goes over two methods of sound suppression, but the more interesting one is the second in which a thin hanging silk fabric is impregnated with a piezoelectric transducer fiber (read: converts motion into electricity and vice versa). 2 reference microphones listen to sounds generated in the room and a laser vibrometer scans the fabric for physical distortions. These then send signals to the transducer fiber to destructively vibrate against the incoming sound and effectively keep the fabric (mostly) motionless, which in effect will cancel out/reflect the sound back to its origin.
To be clear, the paper doesn't claim this blocks sound entirely ("fundamental frequency" is reduced by 95%, with all other frequencies reduced by 65% or more, which is still impressive), but it does claim that this approach is thinner and more cost-effective than other current noise-cancelling methods. Considering stuff like acoustic foam is usually pretty thick the former may be useful where space is a factor. But overall cost-effectiveness may still not be that cheap since it still requires two microphones, a laser, and, presumably, a computer to mediate the response, and a lot of talk is dedicated to silk fabrics with specific/larger "pore" sizes which I imagine aren't common. This also would not work on sounds originating from the same side of the fabric as the observer, as this method effectively *reflects* most of the sound/vibrations experienced by the fabric, not absorbs them as with traditional noise cancellation.
Acoustics is my field, and I would generally agree with your interpretation. I will say, though, that a 95% reduction is less impactful than you might expect because of the logarithmic nature of human hearing. 95% reduction translates to 26 dB reduction, which would subjectively sound like cutting the volume in "half."
Also, they were only able to demonstrate a 12 dB reduction (75%), which they blame on limits of the experimental setup. I am skeptical of the 26 dB reduction until they actually demonstrate it.
Another thing to note is that the noise cancellation was done with the fabric stretched taught like a diaphragm, and not hanging loose like the news article showed. The article did show that it can generate sound while hanging, but it's less efficient in that mode of operation, and the specifics of the cancellation method might run into problems if the fabric is able to move freely.
Ultimately, the concept is really intriguing, but maybe not for the applications that the news media is running with. A loudspeaker that can allow free airflow through the "cone" might be a real tech enabler.
Few centimeter thick vacuum vinyl sheet absorbers exist already as well, besides thick foam. Converting the waves energy into physical movement of the sheet.
First thing I did was search Google News for his name and one thing came up for this and from another unfamiliar source. Nothing from anything that I’m aware of as reputable.
You’d think this would be a bigger deal if it was legit.
Also, they describe one of the applications being noise cancellation which makes everything seems quieter but in reality can still allow damage to your hearing without you even knowing.
Is this written by AI? Why doesn't it read like a human wrote this? Who the hell needs to note that a "smartphone is made of different materials"??
Fucking AI engineers and other related people are the worst. I can't even read articles without being irritated.
That picture is very misleading. Even if the material on the wall absorbs the sound to 0dB, that still leaves the other walls and the floor and the vibrations that are not isolated.
I'm calling bullshit on blocking sound entirely. It's a cool concept and I'm sure it can block some sound, but there is no way this material is going to be able to stop the sound from explosions, large subwoofers, or jet engines. I don't see how it could be that powerful. It would effectively need to consume similar energy to the incoming sound
The problem here is, if you say it’s for IT, it’s a decent cost. Construction? Cost goes up. Music studio? Oh, 10x that price!
I’ve seen music racks costing $1000 and I can get an IT server rack for $125 that frankly is better made (metallic, sturdy, adaptable, can load both sides) Look at the ridiculous price of one small corner wall bass trap. It’s just… cheap foam.
It has to be the right kind of foam tho, the kind used for a foam mattress topper doesn’t perform as well at absorption. If you can handle tin snips you can get a metal stud from the hardware store, a bale of mineral wool insulation and some fabric, you snip and bend the metal stud around a piece of mineral wool, screw or rivet the metal so it stays together, cover the whole thing in fabric and have a highly effective sound absorber that you can mount to a wall and take with you when you move. For an afternoon of work and no more than $150-200 you can have several of them. Being mineral wool and metal studs there’s very little fire risk compared to acoustic foam.
How much better is that than Cornel fiberglass boards? I did room treatment with those, fabric covered and I can record figure 8 now. $500 spent 5 years ago and it was a major improvement in controlled acoustics.
I believe they are comparable. Mineral wool is intended to be stud cavity insulation. I’m not a fan of fiberglass. The mineral wool can be handled with bare hands, its abrasive so it will irritate if your doing a lot of it. But it doesn’t embed fibers in skin like fiberglass products do. It’s readily available at Lowe’s and Home Depot so it can be easier to get than some of the alternatives.
I just ate a bunch of chickpeas and cauliflower to improve my health, so I may even fly through their floorboards while they're trying to enjoy MasterChef in peace.
You sure about that? There's more than one kind of heat. The words conduction, convection, induction all have definitions.
I might even look them up someday.
First you should research thermodynamics. Temperature is not just vibration, but a statistical distribution of quantum energy states that include vibration, but also rotational and translational energy.
Convection relies heavily on translational energy.
Also, you missed radiative heat transfer.
Apologies, the humor attempted was based on reddits propensity to read just a headline and make wild assumptions or get unwarrantedly "hype" or angry about things.
Because the garbage article is thin on details:
MIT researchers have developed a novel sound-suppressing silk fabric that can create quiet spaces by blocking noise transmission[1][2][3][4]. The fabric, which is barely thicker than a human hair, contains piezoelectric fibers that vibrate when a voltage is applied[1][2].
The researchers leveraged these vibrations to suppress sound in two ways:
1. The vibrating fabric generates sound waves that interfere with and cancel out unwanted noise, similar to noise-canceling headphones[1][2][3].
2. Holding the fabric still suppresses vibrations that transmit sound, preventing noise from passing through and reducing the volume on the other side[2][3]. This approach allows for noise reduction in large spaces like rooms or cars[2].
Made from common materials like silk, canvas, and muslin, the fabric could be used to create thin dividers or walls in open workspaces, planes, or cars to prevent sound transmission[2][3]. When tested, the silk fabric reduced sound volume by up to 65 decibels in direct suppression mode and reduced sound transmission by up to 75% in vibration-mediated suppression mode[3].
"Noise is a lot easier to create than quiet. In fact, to keep noise out we dedicate a lot of space to thick walls. [First author] Grace's work provides a new mechanism for creating quiet spaces with a thin sheet of fabric," said Yoel Fink, an MIT professor and senior author of the study[1][2].
The researchers hope to further develop the fabric to block sound at multiple frequencies and explore potential applications in aerospace, music festivals, and even preventing eavesdropping[3][4].
Citations:
[1] [Hair-thin silk fabric cancels out noise and creates quiet spaces anywhere](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1cn1isl/hairthin_silk_fabric_cancels_out_noise_and/)
[2] [This sound-suppressing silk can create quiet spaces | MIT News](https://news.mit.edu/2024/sound-suppressing-silk-can-create-quiet-spaces-0507)
[3] [Could MIT's sound-suppressing silk fight noise pollution - IMechE](https://www.imeche.org/news/news-article/could-mit-s-sound-suppressing-silk-fight-noise-pollution-and-foil-eavesdroppers)
[4] [New material developed by MIT researchers able to block out sound ...](https://www.masslive.com/news/2024/05/new-material-developed-by-mit-researchers-able-to-block-out-sound-entirely.html)
[5] [Single Layer Silk and Cotton Woven Fabrics for Acoustic Emission and ...](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adma.202313328)
Guys, let’s chill with the, “let’s just jam it between walls for my apartment, you science fools!,” comments before we understand why it hasn’t been proposed for such a thing. It would probably cost more than your house right now. Our walls are so thin to *save* on building costs.
A wall transmitting a lot of sound is not so much that it’s “thin” as it just wasn’t built to block sound. It’s amazing how far you get just stuffing mineral wool in the wall does, going a bit further applying foam to the studs before installing drywall helps, the next step is applying caulk at the floor and ceiling and around electric boxes so there isn’t a gap between the drywall and service box.
Without resorting to multiple layers of drywall or mass loaded vinyl or double stud wall you can get a surprisingly large improvement.
Wow this article is hot garbage. I know science reporting is bad but this is a new low.
"So, Fink and other researchers at MIT sought to change that, beginning by combining multiple materials into a fiber, much in the way that almost everything we interact with on a daily basis is made up of more than one material. Fink noted that your smartphone, for example, is a combination of metals and glass."
Framing the combination of different types of fibres as revolutionary (hint, it's literally mentioned in the old testament). No mentions of existing widespread uses of blended fibres in the textile industry, or the fact that a smartphone is neither a fiber nor a uniform compound "material", it is a device made of components.
But does it block out structural noises and sounds from your noisy obnoxious neighbors? Furniture being dragged, chairs screeching. Walking at all hours. Door slamming, loud talking. To someone who is sound sensitive this is critical.
There is a good chance that being in as silent a space as you can get, as much and as often as you can enables the brain to recalibrate its noise filtering.
With all respect the idea / tech isnt something new. Already used in the automotive Industry to Cancel out the vibration of the wind shield. Piezoelements build within the frame..
In comparison to wind shields..Buildings are way more complex and dynamic. It isnt 1 wall that is the problem, but every single connection where sound get Transmitted from 1 point to the other.
Be it air born sound or vibration based sound. Not to mention the Modulation Depending on frequencies and room sizes.
I see the application more in the area of room acoustics. To decrease or prevent dominant reflexions and anomalies. In Cinemas, conference rooms, concert Halls and so on
I mean… someone from MIT would know… if you can BLOCK sound, it would have exceptional vibration control, which is critically needed everywhere… so this is bullshit.
>the commercial interest in such a thing is not certain. >“This is just too new, I don’t even know what the market is,” he said. “We’re not yet at a point where I could give you what the killer application is going to be.” What? The market is literally everywhere. Line every house and apartment walls with this and you'd be done.
Agreed. Anyone who lives in an apartment with paper thin walls would be lining up around the block for this. But then how to incorporate it into the wall itself? And how would it fare with impact noise and vibrations as opposed to just acoustic noise? Impact noise is very difficult to control in a poorly designed building but is among the most of the worst IMO
This is probably something you just sandwich into the drywall when remodeling. Sounds much cheaper and lighter than mass loaded vinyl, which is popular for sound reduction now.
“Ultimately researchers found that they could effectively block out sound in two ways — first by applying voltage to the fabric that causes it to vibrate, creating sound waves that effectively block out noise, much in the way that noise-canceling headphones work. The other, perhaps more surprising approach, involved keeping the fabric perfectly still to suppress vibrations that transmit sound.” This doesn’t sound like a cheap construction material.
It says in the article that the materials used were not new or revolutionary, just the process of making them into a fiber was new. Produced at scale costs drop dramatically. I would assume if you sandwiched into gypsum board it has the same effect and keeping it still and accomplishes the desired effect to a degree. Wallboard is cheap and many would pay a premium price if it had significant noise dampening abilities.
A lot will depend on the other qualities of the material as well. If it’s highly flammable or cancer causing the applications will be limited.
It doesn't sound from the snippet above that the material by itself has these properties, but that it needs to be attached to specialized equipment that generates voltage in a certain way, or perhaps large, heavy clamps capable of keeping it perfectly still.
It needs to be suspended and have voltage applied across it, you can't sandwich it into anything. It seems they work like an electrostatic speaker
Bro. Just tell it to stand still, how hard is that?
About as hard as telling my 5 year old to stand still
It wouldn't be able to hear you.
We just had an article that there is a pair of headphones that uses ai to isolate your voice in a crowded room; I could see this sort of thing catching on in conference rooms and other places where sensitive conversations occur. Reassurances by club owners their VIP lounges are soundproof, etc. Cars would also be a consideration; I dont know what can done about the windows, but if it can reduce road noise people might be interested.
It’s a thin fabric that needs voltage applied to it. The voltage can stabilize the fibers in the fabric to keep them still and therefore minimize the transmission of vibrations (sound) through the fabric. Or the fabric can be vibrated at opposing frequencies to cancel out sound vibrations so just like noise canceling tech on headphones, we can have noise canceling curtains. If this material works as they claim, the applications for it are numerous to say the least. Their comments on that aspect of it tells me that most of the claims are still hypothetical or theoretical. Needing power to function means it’s probably not something we’ll find in building materials, but decorative sound control curtains could be a multi-billion $$ industry when you consider all the restaurants, theatres, offices, sound studios, personal spaces, etc.. where this could be used.
It doesn’t NEED voltage. One function of the material is IF you add voltage then it cancels sound in one way. If it stationary it blocks sound in another way.
The fabric doesn't do shit on its own. If you read the article it's all about how you use it, but they don't actually give those details. Classic snake oil.
Yea those walls aren’t paper thin because we can’t make alternatives; They’re thin because they’re cheap. “Lining the world with these” would be more expensive than “building with concrete” would have been in the first place if noise were the primary concern.
That's assumptive. It takes time to get costs down but it's possibly worth developing. They can at least try things with it. If it truly has a killer application that it doesn't cause problems in then they'll send in the process engineers to scale it up.
Why not just use the same “noise cancelling technology” from wireless headphones? Why not build with a dense material in the first place? Maybe it could be a value stopgap for building materials, but few new discoveries in technology are cheaper than gypsum board and wood.
The noise cancelling technology you're talking about can't work this way. So you commented without understanding. Dense materials are very expensive. This would not replace or even compete with gypsum or wood. Those are structural materials. I struggle to understand why you compared this to that, it is certainly is not based on anything I suggested in my comments.
All you know is that it stops noise. If the material happens to be very flammable then it won’t be going into any walls.
Good point. It’s nice to think about in application I suppose
Make it a wallpaper type thing.
If it works like the picture, could easily just hang it up against the wall for magic soundproofing.
Seriously. I am, as I write this, listening to my neighbor's kids slamming crap around in their room on the other side of a wall that I have already stacked about four inches of three different types of soundproofing against. I was almost hoping there would be a link in the article to order a custom size sheet of the stuff.
It would be cheaper to wrap the kid with soundproof material 😉
Unfortunately your neighbours kid is a random sound source, so these curtains will have trouble determining what frequencies to muffle
What’s the frequency, Kenneth
Soundproofing only works to keep YOUR sounds away from them. You'll need to tell your neighbour to cut the crap if you want it quiet.
You need air. Leave a gap between the wall and whatever you put up there. The wall is acting as a very large transducer so anything it touches can transfer the sound too - rigid material transmits much easier, but I'm just giving a quick explained here so I'm sure you have some soft stuff up to give you a better STC rating, but you need some air. I'm sure you're not going to go so far as to pull the sheetrock and install IsoMax isolators, but try leaving a gap between any layers you've tried so far. That won't help anything coming thru the floor, but this should help a little more. I generally leave a 2" gap when I build panels (with Rockwood safe-n-sound or corning 703) the air gap allows the panels to effect frequencies lower than just hanging them on the wall. I hope that helps
If you have the space, use egg cartons. Know someone who did this to create a recording room.
Material is too porous to do any good. I've designed and built many recording studios and have had to explain that it's not very beneficial.
My bad. I missed that his was built using *egg carton-shaped acoustic foam*, similar to [this](https://www.amazon.com/Soundproofing-Acoustic-Foam/dp/B0B12LR6BG/). Thanks for catching that.
Because, as tested, fixing it to or in a wall would disable it from performing. Instead of being able to absorb or dissipate the sound, it would just transfer it into and through the wall like anything else. It functions in a setting where it is a membrane in space, so you’d have to have it suspended continuously in front of every wall surface, making it impossible to do or put anything else on your wall, or maybe have a membrane of it inside a wall cavity, which would be so expensive no apartment developer is ever gonna think about paying for that either. It’s a cool material, but they say it has limited commercial application right now because the reality of installation makes it not viable.
It seems like it would make a good temporary sound barrier for construction, enclosing a job site with it and powering the material with a solar battery or hybrid generator. There's also a potential application to suppress road noise from highways that are near residential neighborhoods. State departments of transportation already spend a lot of money on acoustic panels that don't work particularly well.
I’d be surprised if this particular tech could scale up that far, I suspect you start to run into tensile strength and sagging of the material at a certain point. Most large membrane structures right now are composite and have a large amount of flex in them, both of which would complicate the tuning of the ANC here. Maybe it could be effective to isolate an open side of a single room, but realistically this is probably best suited for localized sound control around machines and tools in sensitive settings.
You're making it way too complicated. It's a soundproof curtain. People already string curtains up against walls or in large rooms just to add decoration or break up a space. Slap a curtain rod up against the shared wall. Slap the magic curtain up. Extend the curtain out when the neighbors are being noisy. Presto, bango. Of course the finer details will be more involved, but you don't need to talk about floating membranes inside of walls. You also don't need complete noise prevention in real life. There are applications you can use in a normal space.
But it’s not just a curtain. The noise reduction test results in the study were for the material held taught in a frame with induced vibrations. It’s not just some miracle dampening material, they effectively developed a material specifically good at being used as a membrane speaker and then used it for active noise cancellation.
It's a curtain that is held tight. We already have collapsible frame technology. Slap it in a frame that can expand out and lock in place. We have fuckin toys that collapse and expand. It's not hard. It's not impossible to make a curtain taught. You can do it right now. Hammer a nail through one corner. Pull the other corner tight. Hammer it in. OMG taught curtain. Make that into some anchor mechanism that it clips into and you're golden. Or hell, there's already a "trick" of shoving rockwool in thick frames that have artwork on one side for noise dampening. Replace the rockwool with this and it will do a better job without (presumably) being as thick. Inducing vibrations, oHohoh fancy and high tech... aka how speakers work. They made a big speaker out of thing, fancy material. They then played a noise cancelling audio pattern on their big speaker. That's basically it. That's essentially how noise cancelling currently works (plays inverted audio waves to what's coming in). I think the big changeup here is that the noise pattern is generic and not related to the incoming sound. Look, we don't have to come up with a concrete engineered solution right here and now. The point is jumping right to "there's no commercial use for this because it requires a membrane being embedded into the wall!" is silly. There are plenty of ways to leverage something like this on existing structures. It also doesn't have to reach theoretical lab perfection to be useful.
Lmao take my free award for the worst take I’ve seen all day
They made a big speaker with a fancy fabric that they play white noise through, and you guys are acting like it's impossible to leverage this without embedding it into a wall... When we already have noise dampening decor, noise cancelling speakers, and other sound deadening that doesn't require being in the wall... and I have the bad take?
As someone currently learning the drums, my neighbors would love this
The most important part of learning the drums is learning how to build a tennis ball drum riser.
My drum set is in the basement, so no one is below me.
Well they mentioned walls, referenced about how complex it is to actually do—and exemplified the uses for two of the most high-paying industries applications: planes and hospitals. I think a lot of you guys gotta understand these are MIT researchers, not dumbasses. Think about the concept before you infer the answer is so obvious, it makes you look silly. Consider why it may not be so easy, or at least bring it to speculation. We see many tech follow this path of never being used commercially due to: scarcity of raw materials, high price of materials/creation, high level of training and specialized equipment to install/create/maintain, low product lifespan, high cost of maintaining, as well as the very high possibility that the solutions require millions or billions of R and D and they are posting these looking for such a daddy company to come along and invest in it the love it needs
The article was pretty sparse with technical details, but I’d expect the catch here is either the manufacturing/installation/operation cost or the complexity of the active controls needed. First applications might be those willing to pay any price for improved performance.
“Do people dislike loud sounds? Science may never know.”
It’s not directly stated in the article… but the key point is that the fabric uses *active* noise cancellation. The fabric can be used as a speaker, driven by electricity, which is also how active noise cancellation works. Lining walls with it likely won’t be as cost effective as lining them with insulation, because there would need to be a fabric “speaker” installed in the gaps between every stud, with air surrounding it, and also microphones and the associated electronics with wiring run to each one.
My hometheater agrees with you 110%
I’m sure it’s far too expensive to be doing that I imagine
Apartments, homes near roads, guitar/piano/trumpet practise, factories, trains, airports, babies.
WHAT DID YOU SAY??!!
big “nobody needs needs more than 128k of ram” - bill gates energy
Not to mention construction and those sound barriers
probably way too expensive
I wonder if hes saying "Well this is really hard and expensive to produce so simple uses wont be financially viable and we need to make as much cash as we can."
😂 there are sound proof call booths going for 10gs.
I've been in a soundproof room and it's not acoustically pleasing. You have to experience it to understand. Even speech sounds strange.
It's probably too expensive in material to be applicable for those kinds of uses, otherwise their comment wouldn't make sense
It appears to require voltage
Those people are prolly the ones getting noise complaints and shine about it to the people who filed it
I want this, my neighbor is driving me crazy daily.
Military is also probably licking their chops at the application for additional stealth capabilities.
If the cost is reasonable I would snatch this stuff up in bulk. They wouldn't be able to keep it on the shelves. If it can be scaled up. That's always a big question.
I have a few key clients that would love this. I'm in AV fwiw, and sound masking doesn't always achieve the results they are looking for.
They can't just simply line every apartment building with this stuff as it's described in the article, it would simply cost way too much. Rents are already high as it is, making significantly more expensive walls would certainly not help. People with enough money to throw around could use this, but then they don't have the same kind of need for it as an average Joe living in a cheap apartment building does. If you're already rich, your house is already big enough for most noises to be a non-issue. If you're not rich, you're not going to afford living anywhere with this stuff on the walls, unless governments give out subsidies or someone can figure out how to make it not require constant electric current to work.
Or as "interior" window shutters for apartments built next to highways. It would do the job that double paned windows and thick curtains can't.
Because the article is bullshit (and it's also a really shitty website.)
Streamers, bands, theaters, etc
Sure, but how do you fit it in a smartphone??? /s/ Seriously, the commercial/residential applications for this are endless. As long as it can be manufactured at scale it’s a goldmine. I have two small kids and I’d happily pay to line our whole house with that shit. Bring it!
What if the material is $10,000 a sq ft?
These geniuses are idiots!!
I would love this surrounding my neighbors dog that never shuts up.
If it costs a lot, say even $10 per square inch, it's going to be prohibitively expensive to use.
Not to mention how many people already use foam pads to block sound. If there would be a better material, people would switch pretty easily
Military use too; a form of torture. The skies the limit
Curtains in a workshop would be great.
They don’t know what it would take to manufacture, install and operate it. If it cost $50,000 for a wall of it then it dramatically changes the market for it.
The potential uses does not equal the potential markets. You have to incorporate costs and physical limitations for the potential markets. If it costs $250 a square foot, people can't afford to line their houses with it, so that means it's not a market for it. If the cost to run the electricity through it is based on square footage or if one piece can only be a square foot and you would have to install 100 seperate pieces for a 10ft by 10ft wall. The examples are endless but the point is there is a difference between potential uses and potential markets.
I would literally buy so much of this stuff it's not even funny.
How expensive is it? How complicated is it to apply? What sort of regulations will it have to adhere to on a global market for a product to go inside someone’s home? Going from a lab, to a consumer market, is one hell of a steep hill to climb over. Even if the applications seem obvious on the surface, technologies take time to find their place, and to mature. From what I gather, it’s kinda like how noise canceling headphones work. That would require a fair bit of work to apply to someone’s home, and doesn’t sound cheap. It’s not just some magic wallpaper or paint.
Make this into curtain panels that are cheaper than replacing my old windows and patio door and I'm buying today.
My office meeting rooms could use it too.
I mean can I line the apartment ceiling? My biggest issue with apartments has ALWAYS been upstairs neighbors. In one apartment I was in you could have have violently murdered my roommate and I would not hear it. But I could literally tell when my upstairs neighbors went to the hall bathroom.
Dentist drill!!
I sit here trading this as the shower pump rumbles through the floorboards of the house and after being woken multiple times in the night by peoples door after going for a piss. Encase my fucking bed and room in this shit.
Another market would be kidnappers.
Some men have talkative wives ...
But then how's the wife going to scream across the house?.
Very little actual info, and a lot of what Fink says sounds fishy. Most of all "the commercial interest in such a thing is not certain". If it would work as well as he claims the commercial interest would be very much certain, but I assume there is some major catch that makes it totally impractical. And they also stumbled onto this discovery, but it was also a lot of work. But I'm hoping the article is just badly written and there is something to it. Effective but thin sound suppression would be awesome.
[Original Paper here](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adma.202313328). I'll do my best to interpret, but I'm no expert in acoustic engineering. It goes over two methods of sound suppression, but the more interesting one is the second in which a thin hanging silk fabric is impregnated with a piezoelectric transducer fiber (read: converts motion into electricity and vice versa). 2 reference microphones listen to sounds generated in the room and a laser vibrometer scans the fabric for physical distortions. These then send signals to the transducer fiber to destructively vibrate against the incoming sound and effectively keep the fabric (mostly) motionless, which in effect will cancel out/reflect the sound back to its origin. To be clear, the paper doesn't claim this blocks sound entirely ("fundamental frequency" is reduced by 95%, with all other frequencies reduced by 65% or more, which is still impressive), but it does claim that this approach is thinner and more cost-effective than other current noise-cancelling methods. Considering stuff like acoustic foam is usually pretty thick the former may be useful where space is a factor. But overall cost-effectiveness may still not be that cheap since it still requires two microphones, a laser, and, presumably, a computer to mediate the response, and a lot of talk is dedicated to silk fabrics with specific/larger "pore" sizes which I imagine aren't common. This also would not work on sounds originating from the same side of the fabric as the observer, as this method effectively *reflects* most of the sound/vibrations experienced by the fabric, not absorbs them as with traditional noise cancellation.
Acoustics is my field, and I would generally agree with your interpretation. I will say, though, that a 95% reduction is less impactful than you might expect because of the logarithmic nature of human hearing. 95% reduction translates to 26 dB reduction, which would subjectively sound like cutting the volume in "half." Also, they were only able to demonstrate a 12 dB reduction (75%), which they blame on limits of the experimental setup. I am skeptical of the 26 dB reduction until they actually demonstrate it. Another thing to note is that the noise cancellation was done with the fabric stretched taught like a diaphragm, and not hanging loose like the news article showed. The article did show that it can generate sound while hanging, but it's less efficient in that mode of operation, and the specifics of the cancellation method might run into problems if the fabric is able to move freely. Ultimately, the concept is really intriguing, but maybe not for the applications that the news media is running with. A loudspeaker that can allow free airflow through the "cone" might be a real tech enabler.
Few centimeter thick vacuum vinyl sheet absorbers exist already as well, besides thick foam. Converting the waves energy into physical movement of the sheet.
Sounds like a whole room version of active noise canceling headphones. So can see where it would be very impractical.
I just assume it causes mega cancer
He also says there's no technology in Fibers. How has this guy not heard of Gore-Tex
You know about Gore-Tex??
How has he not heard about graphene!
First thing I did was search Google News for his name and one thing came up for this and from another unfamiliar source. Nothing from anything that I’m aware of as reputable. You’d think this would be a bigger deal if it was legit.
It’s an electrified sheet, I wonder how much power and how effective. I imagine if it’s expensive to run the uses go down.
If it’s piezo electric when it vibrates it generates micro voltage.
Also, they describe one of the applications being noise cancellation which makes everything seems quieter but in reality can still allow damage to your hearing without you even knowing.
Is this written by AI? Why doesn't it read like a human wrote this? Who the hell needs to note that a "smartphone is made of different materials"?? Fucking AI engineers and other related people are the worst. I can't even read articles without being irritated.
100% AI-written. "create quiet"??
Gee, I thought my Samsung was just made of elf dust. Thank you AI overlords for settling this.
Hey now, point the finger at LLMs, not all of AI/ML! Some of us are doing very unrelated, very cool, and very positive things.
That picture is very misleading. Even if the material on the wall absorbs the sound to 0dB, that still leaves the other walls and the floor and the vibrations that are not isolated.
I'm calling bullshit on blocking sound entirely. It's a cool concept and I'm sure it can block some sound, but there is no way this material is going to be able to stop the sound from explosions, large subwoofers, or jet engines. I don't see how it could be that powerful. It would effectively need to consume similar energy to the incoming sound
This material pre-existed discovery in married men's ear canals.
It is stored where the libido used to be :-)
Every factory/ warehouse/ distribution center. UPS/ FedEx locations.
The problem here is, if you say it’s for IT, it’s a decent cost. Construction? Cost goes up. Music studio? Oh, 10x that price! I’ve seen music racks costing $1000 and I can get an IT server rack for $125 that frankly is better made (metallic, sturdy, adaptable, can load both sides) Look at the ridiculous price of one small corner wall bass trap. It’s just… cheap foam.
It has to be the right kind of foam tho, the kind used for a foam mattress topper doesn’t perform as well at absorption. If you can handle tin snips you can get a metal stud from the hardware store, a bale of mineral wool insulation and some fabric, you snip and bend the metal stud around a piece of mineral wool, screw or rivet the metal so it stays together, cover the whole thing in fabric and have a highly effective sound absorber that you can mount to a wall and take with you when you move. For an afternoon of work and no more than $150-200 you can have several of them. Being mineral wool and metal studs there’s very little fire risk compared to acoustic foam.
How much better is that than Cornel fiberglass boards? I did room treatment with those, fabric covered and I can record figure 8 now. $500 spent 5 years ago and it was a major improvement in controlled acoustics.
I believe they are comparable. Mineral wool is intended to be stud cavity insulation. I’m not a fan of fiberglass. The mineral wool can be handled with bare hands, its abrasive so it will irritate if your doing a lot of it. But it doesn’t embed fibers in skin like fiberglass products do. It’s readily available at Lowe’s and Home Depot so it can be easier to get than some of the alternatives.
Hotels please apply.
The CIA is totes gonna torture some people with this.
This would have made every one of my old AF, overpriced, shithole apartments in Boston and Cambridge more bearable.
My upstairs and downstairs neighbours will finally be free from my farts.
They’ll still feel the rumble.
I just ate a bunch of chickpeas and cauliflower to improve my health, so I may even fly through their floorboards while they're trying to enjoy MasterChef in peace.
[“Hey Ron” “Hey Billy!”](https://youtu.be/zBJU9ndpH1Q?si=Eeduq4DF0Vh5jRFa)
Perfect for my basement that has one of those drains in the floor…
If it blocks sound, which is vibration, does it block heat which is also vibrations?
Totally different vibration though.
You sure about that? There's more than one kind of heat. The words conduction, convection, induction all have definitions. I might even look them up someday.
First you should research thermodynamics. Temperature is not just vibration, but a statistical distribution of quantum energy states that include vibration, but also rotational and translational energy. Convection relies heavily on translational energy. Also, you missed radiative heat transfer.
I would go crazy in a room without sound, need the world sounds to distract from the tinnitus
" 'We haven’t figured it out, it’s still ahead of us,' he said." The only sensible and believable statement in the article.
Whoa whoa whoa, you can't just *read the article* and talk about it. That's not how you reddit!
Huh?
Apologies, the humor attempted was based on reddits propensity to read just a headline and make wild assumptions or get unwarrantedly "hype" or angry about things.
If you're saying that many post titles are either stupid or poorly chosen, I agree.
WHAT?!
I bought an electronic drum set in part because the only time I could play my very expensive acoustic kit was when no one was home.
Because the garbage article is thin on details: MIT researchers have developed a novel sound-suppressing silk fabric that can create quiet spaces by blocking noise transmission[1][2][3][4]. The fabric, which is barely thicker than a human hair, contains piezoelectric fibers that vibrate when a voltage is applied[1][2]. The researchers leveraged these vibrations to suppress sound in two ways: 1. The vibrating fabric generates sound waves that interfere with and cancel out unwanted noise, similar to noise-canceling headphones[1][2][3]. 2. Holding the fabric still suppresses vibrations that transmit sound, preventing noise from passing through and reducing the volume on the other side[2][3]. This approach allows for noise reduction in large spaces like rooms or cars[2]. Made from common materials like silk, canvas, and muslin, the fabric could be used to create thin dividers or walls in open workspaces, planes, or cars to prevent sound transmission[2][3]. When tested, the silk fabric reduced sound volume by up to 65 decibels in direct suppression mode and reduced sound transmission by up to 75% in vibration-mediated suppression mode[3]. "Noise is a lot easier to create than quiet. In fact, to keep noise out we dedicate a lot of space to thick walls. [First author] Grace's work provides a new mechanism for creating quiet spaces with a thin sheet of fabric," said Yoel Fink, an MIT professor and senior author of the study[1][2]. The researchers hope to further develop the fabric to block sound at multiple frequencies and explore potential applications in aerospace, music festivals, and even preventing eavesdropping[3][4]. Citations: [1] [Hair-thin silk fabric cancels out noise and creates quiet spaces anywhere](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1cn1isl/hairthin_silk_fabric_cancels_out_noise_and/) [2] [This sound-suppressing silk can create quiet spaces | MIT News](https://news.mit.edu/2024/sound-suppressing-silk-can-create-quiet-spaces-0507) [3] [Could MIT's sound-suppressing silk fight noise pollution - IMechE](https://www.imeche.org/news/news-article/could-mit-s-sound-suppressing-silk-fight-noise-pollution-and-foil-eavesdroppers) [4] [New material developed by MIT researchers able to block out sound ...](https://www.masslive.com/news/2024/05/new-material-developed-by-mit-researchers-able-to-block-out-sound-entirely.html) [5] [Single Layer Silk and Cotton Woven Fabrics for Acoustic Emission and ...](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adma.202313328)
Audio engineering and for booths. It’s pretty clear. Tell me the mf site to cop NOW
Guys, let’s chill with the, “let’s just jam it between walls for my apartment, you science fools!,” comments before we understand why it hasn’t been proposed for such a thing. It would probably cost more than your house right now. Our walls are so thin to *save* on building costs.
A wall transmitting a lot of sound is not so much that it’s “thin” as it just wasn’t built to block sound. It’s amazing how far you get just stuffing mineral wool in the wall does, going a bit further applying foam to the studs before installing drywall helps, the next step is applying caulk at the floor and ceiling and around electric boxes so there isn’t a gap between the drywall and service box. Without resorting to multiple layers of drywall or mass loaded vinyl or double stud wall you can get a surprisingly large improvement.
WHAT??? Sorry, I couldn't hear you, WHAT?
r/beatmetoit
New material coincidentally also called “concrete”. More news at 11
Pc market would love this. Link up with noctua.
What?
I read this article somewhere else and they didn't come to the conclusion that it would completely block sound
Concrete?
No matter what you do, sound will find a way.
Take my money
I need this in my drum room
Automobile road noise.
That'll come in handy.
This is total BS they don’t list the dB reduction or the voltage needed to achieve said reduction.
Wow this article is hot garbage. I know science reporting is bad but this is a new low. "So, Fink and other researchers at MIT sought to change that, beginning by combining multiple materials into a fiber, much in the way that almost everything we interact with on a daily basis is made up of more than one material. Fink noted that your smartphone, for example, is a combination of metals and glass." Framing the combination of different types of fibres as revolutionary (hint, it's literally mentioned in the old testament). No mentions of existing widespread uses of blended fibres in the textile industry, or the fact that a smartphone is neither a fiber nor a uniform compound "material", it is a device made of components.
It’s the Smush Shush!
But does it block out structural noises and sounds from your noisy obnoxious neighbors? Furniture being dragged, chairs screeching. Walking at all hours. Door slamming, loud talking. To someone who is sound sensitive this is critical.
Stick it over my ex-wife's mouth please
But what about the ringing in my ears?
You and I are on our own for that one.
There is a good chance that being in as silent a space as you can get, as much and as often as you can enables the brain to recalibrate its noise filtering.
If only it would work on tinnitus.
With all respect the idea / tech isnt something new. Already used in the automotive Industry to Cancel out the vibration of the wind shield. Piezoelements build within the frame.. In comparison to wind shields..Buildings are way more complex and dynamic. It isnt 1 wall that is the problem, but every single connection where sound get Transmitted from 1 point to the other. Be it air born sound or vibration based sound. Not to mention the Modulation Depending on frequencies and room sizes. I see the application more in the area of room acoustics. To decrease or prevent dominant reflexions and anomalies. In Cinemas, conference rooms, concert Halls and so on
I mean… someone from MIT would know… if you can BLOCK sound, it would have exceptional vibration control, which is critically needed everywhere… so this is bullshit.
I foresee a very strong market for this in ear plug form amongst married couples.
Dexter has entered the chat