Office noise generator | Hacker News Reader

Office noise generator

imisstheoffice.eu

300 pointsbenolayinka145 comments

It needs an option to amplify the typing noises to "I work with developers who insist mechanical keyboards are better" levels.

You can't call yourself a tree geek unless you enjoy the sounds of keyboards :)

You are correct, however I also enjoy the sounds of motor head but I wouldn't work well right next to them practicing.

What's a tree geek?

It's a big plant that we get wood from.

Who are you calling geek?

You're really into this "tree thing", aren't you?

Geek is someone that has a special interest that goes up and beyond what is usual [1]. So a tree geek is someone that knows a lot about trees. Or there was a typo that was supposed to be "true" but I'm sure you know this already :-)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek

I'm going to make the guess that you meant "True" in the "no true scotsman" way of passing off outsiders.

Personally I find this kind dismissive commentary a little bit aggravating.

In my mind you're a "true" geek if you unashamedly enjoy the technicalities of something.

from Dungeons and Dragons to Train design.

The parent is also a little distasteful. If you don't like the noise of a mechanical keyboard consult your manager; the issue is with poor sound isolation not with mechanical keyboards. Typewriters were a thing for many decades and people managed.

Keyboards might be a preference but the fact is that we're all human and we have our "sound vices"; whether it be being too loud when chewing or yelling into a mic mere inches away from your face all the way to nervously clicking your tongue when lost in thought.

Don't excuse those who have designed offices to be very poor w.r.t. sound isolation by blaming those who dare make noise.

Come on, relax a bit! A little bit of humor is important, especially in these times. It's all for fun, none of the parents really meant being dismissive etc. We all need to cheer up a bit otherwise we'll get crazy!

> Typewriters were a thing for many decades and people managed.

Perhaps you weren't there. When typewriters were commonly used they were typically in the typing pool or in the secretary's own office and the noise didn't impinge on the rest of us. Of course it was different in offices where the principal activity was typing such as newspapers.

From '78 to '82 I worked as an electronics engineer in an open plan office that was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. None of us typed, instead we scrawled our documentation longhand and the department secretary typed it on an IBM Selectric in her own office next to the department manager's office. It sounds inefficient but in fact was not because revising documents was so time consuming that more effort went into keeping things simple and as far as practicable right first time.

If someone had made a lot of noise it would have been pointless complaining about the design of the office, the only practical remedy would be for them to stop being noisy.

Did you really turn that offhand comment into a rant about geek gatekeeping?

I started working in an era when electric typewriters were still common. They certainly were not used in the common areas in any place I worked because of the noise.

Just to be clear, if you make a ton of noise in a common environment it’s your job to find a way to reduce your impact. If we have to go to the manager to make you change your ways ... well that answers the AITA.

Didn't offices in that era have an area called a "typing pool" to confine the noise to a dedicated area to keep common areas quieter?

Two of my work places did. Others just had a layout where the people who typed were kept away from other employees, like small set of typing cubicles in the open area surrounded by offices or cubicles at the far end of the open area with an open space between typists and others.

One of my workplaces was a mainframe shop, some of the older devs still programmed their cobol/fortran iv code on sheets and took it to the data entry pool in another wing for input.

I wouldn't call them distasteful, just low-effort humorous posts.

I recall a story about a developer who brought his mechanical keyboard to a job interview, to check if it is acceptable to other people in the office. That's quite considerable gesture.

>Personally I find this kind dismissive commentary a little bit aggravating.

It was a short quip which ended with a ":)". I'm sure it wasn't meant so seriously.

I enjoy the sound of MY keyboard.

This is either sarcastic or (dismissive and gatekeeping-y).

Coworker with model-m who hunts and pecks: spacebar goes KERTHUNK

But it's such a satisfying sound, isn't it?

That's my microsoft ergo too. The giant spacebar is an echo chamber on its own.

Install a triggered directed boombox emitting a loud 'BANG' on registering that spacebar sound. Make it trigger only 35% of the time and with a variable 0-5 sec delay. I bet he stops using that spacebar by the end of the first day.

Ha! that's me but I play the spacebar like I'm slappin' a bass guitar. It sounds awesome in my head...

Chiclet FTW!

There are now quiet Cherry MX switches, dampened in both directions of travel: https://www.cherrymx.de/en/mx-original/mx-silent-red.html

They're no louder than a regular membrane keyboard, and much quieter than just using O-rings.

Reds aren't that new, they've been around for years. No tactile feedback, though, which is why many people (including me) don't prefer them.

No these are the "silent" reds. They don't make a sound when bottoming out and also not when coming back up.

Regular: https://www.cherrymx.de/en/mx-original/mx-red.html

Silent: https://www.cherrymx.de/en/mx-original/mx-silent-red.html

Oh huh, I hadn't noticed that, thank you.

They are still linear switches though. So silent in tactile feel as well

There are some silent, tactile switches, but I think they're a bit more obscure.

I made my ergonomic, split keyboards from a kit[1], and chose Aliaz Silent switches [2]. It's around the same noisiness as everyone else's keyboard (Apple, cheap Dell one etc).

(There are almost certainly other options — the choice was a bit overwhelming when I decided to buy a DIY keyboard — but I'm not in the hobby of collecting many different keyboards. Various Reddit groups can advise.)

[1] https://github.com/omkbd/ErgoDash

[2] https://kbdfans.com/products/pre-orderaliaz-silent-switch-ta...

Beautiful build! Those GMK caps look amazing.

I have these, for an office. Yes they are silent if you slowly push and release a key, but thumping away at 50-60 wpm still makes a huge amount of noise, even with o-rings installed (although a lot quieter than blue switches which I used to have).

I have topre switches, so a bit different experience, but a friend of mine had "shown off" that indeed, you can type silently on them. It's the art of not bottoming out which is something like 90% of the noise.

Check out Zilent switches, too. Quiet and tactile.

Sound test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWU9Sd_z9T0

Purchase: https://zealpc.net/products/zilents

Seconding this, I use Aqua Zilents from Zeal and they're perfect for meetings and work as they make very little noise.

But the sound is part of the better experience.

// sent from MX blue

clackity clackity clackity

This has been the biggest complaint from my wife since the "work from home" started.

car engine noise model: get an app that plays clicky sounds and headphones?

Emacs got selectric mode :)

About to say the same thing! I'm sure there are some people who use a mechnical keyboard to "show off", but for me (and I assume the vast majority) the noise you endure is pollution while I enjoy the tactile & audio dopamine hit.

I use Greens, which are even louder, but nothing compares to the volume of the buckling spring "PING" noise

I've got red silents - they're not as clacky but silent isn't quite right either

Linear switches are basically already silent compared to tactile or clicky switches. If Cherry starts making quiet blues or clears I'll start getting excited.

Honestly the biggest source of noise for basically all mechanical keys except buckling spring or cherry-blue style keys is the noise of the keycap or key stem hitting the bottom and subsequently the top of travel. Half of that is fixable with o-rings but that still leaves the noise at the top of travel which doesn't currently have any solutions as far as I know.

That is exactly what the Silent Reds (not regular Reds) fix! Seems their marketing and my comment above isn't clear enough.

They have built-in dampening for the top of travel and for bottoming out. It's far more effective than o-rings and has a much better feel to it.

Red are linear, though, so as a replacement for blue switches you may need brown or a hypothetical more silent version of them.

As such a nuisance, I insist we make this mandatory for all employees.

I had a coworker who insisted on mechanical keyboards and dvorak because it's more efficient (according to him). This guy was the most unproductive programmer I've ever known, you'd hardly hear his keyboard anyway.

Or someone that cuts his nails on his desk.

... that is not normal right? He was so casual about it ans no one seemed to be bithered which made me wonder if i am the weird one

App dev here: There' a starcraft generator in progress. Lots of mx browns, a topre, mouse clicks galore and even a "stim is OP" track :)

For realism, it should integrate people making their calls in the open space, the guy right next to you chewing loudly with an open mouth, the heated design debate occuring 3 desks from you and the salespeople celebrating their bonus with a lot of volume.

I do not miss the office.

How am I supposed to work without the guy next to me chewing the egg he just cracked with his mouth open, the guy behind me crunching chips and audibly burping, and the sales guy with a bluetooth earpiece and mechanical keyboard!?

I do not miss the office.

Where the hell do you people work lol :P I'm in an open plan office of 300 people and it's usually just as quiet if not quieter than this website.

Even in our company this is highly dependent.

I work in LiveOps and it gets very loud with even a low number of people in proximity.

Hey Dijit - are you sure? I've been to your "war room" a few times and it's like a crypt in there most of the time, you could hear a pin drop so to speak. Unless you mean some other area ;-)

I guess nobody was on a call then. :)

Everyone has a mechanical keyboard, and often 4-5 people are on skype calls. Some people are very loud when talking through the mic and they speak louder the more people are talking. It leads to a really obscene amplification of volume pretty quickly and tends to last until the lunch or the end of the day. But yes, I think you've seen my war room then :D

No, where the hell do you work? And are they hiring?

You forgot about the guy doing his kettle bell routine at his stand up desk.

And no, I'm not joking. It actually happened, for several days until enough people complained and he stopped doing it.

I think that's insane, but I also don't have a space to do any kind of workout at the office. When most people are gone for the day I try and use one of the empty meeting rooms for a few stretches and push-ups.

Don't forget the horribly loud air circulation system right above you, either.

Add the HVAC units making weird noises, smartphone notification sounds, and ringtones, fucking ringtones.

You know if the person uses a traditional phone ringtone that they're of the older echelons

Edit: a (traditional rotary phone) ringtone, not a "basic" ringtone. Though I'm satisfied with the stock choices of the recent Android phones, they start slowly and are not overwhelming.

These days I'm always surprised when I hear a phone make any audible alert sounds. It's always someone from a very different cultural group that mine.

edit: typo

Someone that I used to work with had a ringtone of a dog barking, he would leave the phone on his desk when doing stuff elsewhere in the building and his wife would call him several times a day.

We had a friendly deal in our office for those kind of disturbances.

If you leave your phone ringing at your desk, you pay a round of drinks for the team.

I used to have the 56K dial up ringtone for a while. I just went back to muting my ringer since I used to get weird stares constantly.

I recently had to change my ringtone because every dev in our office has the standard iphone ringtone so anytime someone's phone rings, you can hear everybody go to pick their phones up.

> integrate people making their calls in the open space

This could be done in a community/collaborative fashion, where the website allows people that are talking/having calls can connect to the website to share their noise with the people who need the noise in the background. Website would automatically adjust the volume based on the distance parameter you set.

It does do that. Maybe it changed since the link was posted but if you click the shapes/people they make noise. And the constant hum in the background is partly computers, partly AC ducts.

Office noise is horrible, one of the reasons I switched to WFH (before the corona issues happened).

Sounds like someone has a case of the mondays!

And non tech people coming up to me every 5 minutes to have a chat like 'I sent you an email 2 seconds ago, did you check it? Let's go over it!'.

> salespeople celebrating their bonus with a lot of volume

This.

The most (and least) challenging office I've ever worked in featured a large open plan that had the sales team adjacent to the engineering team. The sales team had a large ship's bell and not only would they ring it for every deal they closed, they would ring it once for every 10k of the deal! That plus they're general loudness drove the engineers crazy.

First they gave us all noise cancelling head phones but that didn't really help.

Finally they moved engineering to another office location down the street. Everything changed when we made the new space our own. Still an open plan but with plenty of cozy corners to sit with a laptop and a few well insulated meeting rooms for loud discussions. The big change tho was the atmosphere: nice and quiet!

Salespeople in my org have always been in a separate, though adjacent, building. I never knew that their noisy celebrations were a thing until I had to get on a same bus as some of them on 31st of a month.

The jubilation of those who had made the target... MY GOD!!

What kind of tone-deaf person made the original suggestion to colocate sales and engineering?!?! I prefer cubicles myself (or individual offices, but let's be realistic). But I can survive in an open floorplan provided it's reasonably quiet.

What kind of tone-deaf person made the original suggestion to colocate sales and engineering?!? "Agile"? :)

I had an internship in an investment company, the devs were in the same open space as the traders… At least it calmed down once the market were closed.

now all we need is the ability to generate smells on demand to experience the burnt popcorn and two pack a day smoker whose jacket has experience forty years of it

I should crack open a can of tuna at 10am and leave it at the end of the desk! (Yes, this happens on the desk next to me at work)

Toss it in the trash! Simple response, very defendable.

Have you tried asking them to not open it until they plan to eat it?

And the smell of fish casserole in the microwave.

All these things resonate with me. Brings back near murderous rage when I remember the colleagues hammering their shitty chunky keyboards, slurping tea and slamming the cup down, talking with a mouth full of food, sneezing so loud I can't believe they aren't deliberately doing it for attention, laughing so loud it must be forced, at non funny stuff, presumably to show everyone how in on some joke they are... I could go on and on. But I always thought I was the only person in my office bothered by it, as no one else seemed to notice, whereas I would be visibly annoyed. Maybe others are just good at hiding their frustration. I don't miss the office at all either.

You are forgetting the girls from HR turning the office into a socialite coffee shop.

Maybe the site was updated, but I definitely heard somebody chomping on celery without closing their mouth about 1 inch from the mic.

I hate chewing.

Clipping finger nails in public is my kryptonite.

It's a neat idea, but I can't stand the ~12 kHz noise in the background, it makes my head hurt.

For reference, here's a spectrograph: https://i.imgur.com/AmgaxPy.jpg

The presentation of this one is definitely more beautiful thant this one[0], that a friend of mine shared a days ago. The latter has more options and is more customizable tho.

[0] https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/openOfficeNoiseGenerator.p...

I don't know, the one you just posted is more "beautiful" to me. It's easy to control, the UI is intuitive (it took me a bit to understand the OP), and the sounds are both higher fidelity and more accurate. None of the noises in OP were ones that are regularly in my large (20-30 people) open office, while this link you've shared is significantly closer.

I came in here to mention myNoise too. I use it all the time for noise masking. The office noise generator isn't my thing, but there are numerous other sounds to choose from--white/brown/grey noise, rain, ocean waves, a purring cat, space(ship) sounds, and all kinds of other stuff.

https://mynoise.net/

Upvote for mynoise.net. This is a more accurate representation, in my opinion. They have a lot of high quality sounds, and we play the baby shush sounds for our infant almost everyday.

This is really beautiful.

I created something similar a while ago:

https://officenoise.cloud/

Same idea, less visually pleasing - but with the twist that all the sounds you hear are triggered by other visitors of that webpage.

Neat and nice but nope.

If you want good background noise, try this 10 hour clip of an icebreaker ship idling in the arctic.

https://youtu.be/Q_WKl5AkXFM

I work on the Starship Enterprise, but the pandemic is forcing me to work from home.

This helps a lot: https://youtu.be/UKBvaOLDem0

This one really sets me at ease. Very calming, to pretend to live on board a starship in a utopian future.

We need a facebook version of this where there's a guy practicing a guitar while another is trying not to fall off his unicycle [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMWJGs3CQ_Q&feature=youtu.be...

I did the same thing, a week-ago. The interface may be more spartan; all the efforts have been put in the sounds themselves. These sounds have been carefully designed to put the listener in the focus zone, for those who associate the noise of their office with focus (everyone is different; most people actually want to block open office sounds... but a minority is actually missing them, when their environment is too quiet).

Here is how it sounds like on myNoise : https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/openOfficeNoiseGenerator.p...

This is awesome and weirdly makes it easier for me to work. I need that constant stimulation. Total silence makes it difficult to focus (sometimes).

I don't miss the office noises. I do miss the random conversations that took place.

I've had to replace that with IRC (which isn't too bad!)

At my current workplace (we're 100% remote these days), we've instituted daily non-compulsory coffee meetings on Zoom, for the purpose of talking about something other than work and fostering random conversations.

It's not perfect, but it's something.

Maybe give this a try https://voice.tenxeng.com/, still early and we'd love feedback.

It's the low murmur of the office and clickity-clack of the keys that is missing. Also that loud woman and that dude with the cough.

Dude with the cough? Oh, my!

I always work with noise cancelling headphones and got so used to them that I now have to wear them at home as well as they help me to concentrate. Even though it's silent in here.

Nice you are now a Cyborg. I wonder how many others are dependant on similar ear augmentation devices.

Cyborg here. I can't stand being outside without my headphones. Too much noise.

I can't sleep without earplugs. The silence is amazing.

What I really need to complete the experience is olfactory.

Yeah - guy eating sardines at the next desk.

So cool website and interface LOL, really like it!

Someone posted https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/openOfficeNoiseGenerator.p...

days ago, I found its very funny when open both on different tabs hahaha.

Btw, this website lack repetitive settings? Why noise stop after seconds?

That’s honestly what I miss the least from the office. I don’t use it at all actually. The noise is the absolute worst part.

s/use/miss

Is there also a repository associated with this website? I'm a bit curious how the rendering on canvas code works.

I miss the sound of people muttering to themselves and breathing loudly while wearing noise cancelling headphones.

No, not really.

https://www.ambient-mixer.com/ has a ton of these types of background noises. All the sounds can be individually leveled and you can easily create your own from their audio library.

Apart from the loud fan noise on this simulation, I would be happy if my office was as quiet as this one...

I'll be happy if my office sounds like that! Find that one actually quite peaceful and relaxing.

Does not work on Firefox

Works here on Firefox 74.

74 here too. I thought it might be an adblocker issue, but does not seem so.

Same here. Ubuntu 18.04.4 + Firefox 74.0.1.

  THREE.WebGLRenderer: Error creating WebGL context.

Works on Firefox on Debian 10 just fine. I had to let media & scripts through uMatrix, but that was easy enough.

Works for me on Mac Firefox 75

Works on Firefox

osx 10.4 FFX 74

And for those who miss meetings, no more: http://conferencecall.biz/

Why does increasing the number of people increase the fan noises? Does everybody have their own AC or are they using PC towers from the 90's?

I think it's just volume - I couldn't notice anything else changing.

Ehhhh that hum/droning sound that's constant doesn't sound like any office I've ever worked in. Other than that, neat!

Maybe it's a white noise generator? Several (maybe all?) of my past offices have had white noise generators. One never notices them, but when they are off then suddenly one notices their absence.

I wonder if I should get one for home …

"Alexa, enable star trek bridge sounds."

one of the chair noises is clearly a fart covered up by the person readjusting as a cover up, 10/10 most realistic simulation

Very accurate simulation as in two minutes of trying it I'm already getting crazy with the whistling and typing.

Tried it and decided that the generated noise just isn't worth the trackers on this site. Your mileage may vary.

This has to be irony right? Not more than 10 seconds in I had the pleasure to hear loud, wet, chewing.

I seriously hate open plan. Which turkey came up with that idea?

I became one of the ahole's at one small office when I opened a brie and ate it at my desk. The guy next to me said that cheese made him vomit. Did he want me throw my brie away? I kept on eating but never brought in cheese again. That guy never said a word to me again :-(

> Did he want me throw my brie away?

No, he wanted you to fuck off and eat it somewhere that he didn't have to smell it.

Constantly having to be careful not to disturb others with little, normal things actually is one of the things I hate about open-plan offices. I think the stress and inconvenience of that is underrated compared with the being-annoyed aspect.

Ah, I can subtract all the way to 0 colleagues, I guess it works for me to. Thanks!

The 'colleague' scanning its butt on the photocopier is a nice touch.

Made my day! A nespresso machine would make it almost identical to our office.

I am so happy I always worked remotely and never heard that noise.

Red circle is having an episode in the copier room again.

...but who whistles inside the office?

Maybe Karl Pilkington works here [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4RvReL_4Zg

Silence is bliss.

Except for the music I pick of course.

wow, this made me appreciate working from home in an instant.

Not loud enough

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