7 ms·
I learned the other day my office building has hidden speakers dispersed throughout each floor which blast synthetic white noise. It's quite loud, I had assume
by willquack 1y ago
I learned the other day my office building has hidden speakers dispersed throughout each floor which blast synthetic white noise.
It's quite loud, I had assumed it was an improperly installed HVAC system...
- crazygringo 1y agoThis is extremely common and is a feature. Without it, suddenly you can hear every conversation happening all the way on the other side of your open plan office. It becomes extremely distracting.
- speed_spread 1y agoIt's a cost saving measure warranted by open spaces. We used to have walls and closed offices instead.
- crazygringo 1y agoOpen plan vs private office is a totally different conversation. Adding the white noise isn't cost-saving, it costs money to install.
- mdavidn 1y agoMy building has this too. I wear noise cancelling headphones with no music to eliminate the white noise.
- teach 1y agoI have bad news for you -- those noise-cancelling headphones are "eliminating" the white noise by bombarding your ears with an equal and opposite white noise
- pavon 1y agoThere is nothing bad about that. The opposite phased sounds it plays genuinely do cancel out the vibrations from the original noise, decreasing the magnitude of the vibrations hitting your ear drum.
- mdavidn 1y agoRight. I know how they work. The fact of the matter is that the work space sounds significantly quieter when I enable that “bombardment.”
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoThe HVAC system occasionally stops at my work, in the rare occasion I'm working late in the office, and the silence is profound and divine. It only lasts a couple of minutes, and it's a frustrating reminder of how fucking loud the baseline office noise is as a result of just the air movement of the HVAC.