Has the World Gotten Louder?

[Paisley]

If you want to get someone's attention, whisper!

Good comments all. Maybe some sponsors of Classic Style will read this.

Mysterygal, I'm glad to hear you and your husband have the same taste in volume. The men I've dated had the TV or radio on all the time.

Some restaurants are still quiet, especially restaurants that have been around for decades.

Maj. Danger, you make a good point about people being prompted to be assertive. There's a time for that, but it isn't all the time.

Lizziemaine, I think you hit the nail on the head about lack of subtlety in our culture.

And LadyDay, strangely enough, the mechanical noise you mentioned doesn't bother me much. I live within a mile of the firehouse, police station and two hospitals, and two blocks from the main drag. I don't even notice the noise from the street.

Scotrace, homo sapien isn't the only species designed for quiet. The dog is also. Once when a kid was riding a motorcycle up and down the alley (which was loud enough to bother me, too), my dog kept running back and forth, barking, and finally came up and put his paws in my lap--something he hardly ever does--as if to say, "Can't you do something about this?"

Sorry I repeated myself about the polo match. I had looked forward to seeing a polo match for the first time, and to seeing the person I invited; we rarely get to visit. The noise took away from the experience.

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago about music helping us in athletic performance, but not helping us to think. It certainly doesn't help us converse.

 

[Sefton]

I agree on all fronts,but I'd add to the list; Cafes (sorry if I missed it before). I love to go to good cafe and enjoy a cup of coffee and something sweet and perhaps read or converse with a friend. Just about every cafe you go to has blaring music. You can't read or talk at a normal level anymore. Maybe part of the reason is that almost all young (and some not so young) people seem to always have those white headphone wires coming out of their ears...everywhere and all the time! 5 or 10 years from now the doctors who specialize in hearing loss are going to find business is booming.

 

[mysterygal]

Is there a pill I can take for that???

lol there's a pill for everything!

 

[Andykev]

Silence is LOUD

I think that the inconsiderate is thriving amonst us...the cell phone, the music, the rude behavior. We are slowly (or have lost) the consideration for the other person. Restaurants generally do have their ambient noise levels commensurate to what the "theme" of the establishment is. That is, the white table cloths and candle light places are very quite, and appropriate to the special occasion type of dinners. Often you only hear a slight murmor of conversation, and the "oh Miss Manners" clang of a knife on a plate. Then there are the "hoppin" places that as mentioned before, cater to the "twenty something" crowd..and they do seem to gauge the success of a party or event by the loudness of the music.

I just think that I am getting older, and less tolerant of the audio assaut on my already deaf ears.

Go sit in a nice redwood forrest in the Humbold Coast and you suddenly hear just how LOUD the silence is. I have done that. Silence, true silence, is very loud.

 

[Samsa]

Go sit in a nice redwood forrest in the Humbold Coast and you suddenly hear just how LOUD the silence is. I have done that. Silence, true silence, is very loud.

This whole discussion reminds me of a sermon I heard a year or so back. The priest suggested that modern man always needs some kind of music buzzing in his ears, the TV on, etc., to distract him from the promptings of his conscience. That is, if there wasn't always music on or a flashing screen in front of people, they would be forced to look inward at their souls - and they wouldn't be happy with what they saw.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with him, but it's an interesting idea...

 

[Katt in Hat]

It's just You...NOT!___ Polo very big one County North in Palm Beach

Is it just me, or are movies, conversations, sporting events, etc. louder now than they were 20 or so years ago?
Anyone else wish things were a little quieter?

I walked out on a Rock concert at the NY Palladium about 20 years ago after a 1/2 hour because of the dB level. I had a seat in the first row of the mezzanine and later found out that the band was among the loudest ever to perform. Even so my ears were still ringing when I awoke the next morning. I never subjected myself to such auditory abuse again. As a consequence, my hearing is pretty good, very good for a Katt pushing 70.

Over the years, the younger crowd has been losing
their hearing acuity earlier and earlier. Our vaunted information technology; iPods, cell phones and the like and before them, Boom Boxes and such, have been hurting our/their ears.

Economics has been mentioned as reason to make less comfortable public place and we must not forget the decline in numbers of those who know the meaning of mannerly behavior.

The growing ranks of the "Me" thugs has been watched with ever increasing sorrow and horror...

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Imagine what it was like in the pre-industrial era, when the loudest everyday sounds were the clip-clops of horses' hooves, the cries of men and animals, the felling of a tree, the clanging of a hammer upon an anvil, and the occasional thunderstorm.

Hard to imagine. If we were magically transported back to those times, I wonder if we'd miss noise?

.

 

[Lincsong]

Imagine what it was like in the pre-industrial era, when the loudest everyday sounds were the clip-clops of horses' hooves, the cries of men and animals, the felling of a tree, the clanging of a hammer upon an anvil, and the occasional thunderstorm.

Hard to imagine. If we were magically transported back to those times, I wonder if we'd miss noise?

.

Can you imagine how terrified the buffalo must have been at the sound of the great Iron Horse?

 

[Samsa]

Imagine what it was like in the pre-industrial era, when the loudest everyday sounds were the clip-clops of horses' hooves, the cries of men and animals, the felling of a tree, the clanging of a hammer upon an anvil, and the occasional thunderstorm.

Hard to imagine. If we were magically transported back to those times, I wonder if we'd miss noise?

.

I sort of doubt that I would miss noise. I've been able to approximate that kind of silence by backpacking and camping, and the silence was always one of the things I liked most: no cars, radios, cell-phones, etc.

 

[koopkooper]

I think most places have loud music now simply because people have nothing to talk about. The silence could actually force them to talk....heaven forbid we can't have discussions. Mind you if we (loungers) all got together we couldn't stop yaking!
Last weekend I was invited to a BBQ that was family based and I felt I had better do the right thing and go and man it was unbearable.....some people have no idea about conversation and all they want to talk about is the technology that they have in their house, and what car they want to buy next ..boring. I brought up the current middle east crisis and there was silence. Most had no idea about the creation of Israel in 1948 or had even heard about Hezbollah???? I'm sorry but I really don't want to talk about your damned ringtone or what Britney Spears is doing.

So I reckon it's the fact people don't want to converse they just want feel like they are doing something and having a good time

 

[Polyhistor]

I´d love it if there were some bars and restaurants without the omnipresent loud music playing. I find it very difficult and tiresome to follow a conversation (the more people there are talking, the worse it gets) when there´s too much noise around me.
Strangely, construction noise or similar doesn´t bother me at all.

Seems others don´t have that problem - or not to such an extent. Or they don´t really want to talk anymore. In these times, when it´s all about the looks of someone, a few words, shouted over the ear-piercing music, seem to suffice to get to know somebody...Not my cup of tea.

Regards, A.

 

[catsmeow]

Is it just me, or are movies, conversations, sporting events, etc. louder now than they were 20 or so years ago? I've been to movies that were nearly at the volume of a rock concert. At the polo match I attended last weekend, there was music playing between the chuckers (periods) that was so loud I could barely carry on a conversation. Even at dances, the crowd is sometimes so noisy that you have to shout just to be heard. And some of my coworkers tend to shout into the phone.

Anyone else wish things were a little quieter?

Maybe we are just getting older, but I must admit yes, some things are getting louder. I think its a sign of the times, especially movies of today in particularly "action".
What bugs me is when you are at a restaurant and you get people from other tables that are so noisy.

I don't know!! maybe everyone is going deaf!!

 

[Twitch]

Here's a cut & paste from a thread about rudeness in the theater. What really bugs me ain't the people but this-

The whole cinema experience from my perspective wil never be what it was when I was a kid in St. Louis in the 1950s. Why? Becaue back then you watched movies in REAL theaters that were either once used for live performances or were expressly constructed with acoustics in mind to be a movie theater.

There was a stretch of many years that I personally boycotted what passes for the theater today. Gone are the single theaters showing 2 movies. In their place is the ubiquitious Crapola 12 Cinema. Yeah, it's like taping a dozen shoe boxes together. Each viewing area is shaped the same. Being that they are smaller the screens are smaller than the old theaters but due to their relative size it's hard to find a good viewing position as you feel you are too close to the screen most of the time.

Acoustic are awful. During a quite moment in your film you can hear high points of audio from the adjacent cinemas sound track. And since the shoeboxes are completely dead acoustically the big time Dolby just blasts the hell outta everything and assaults your ears. Basically when some guy on screen farts it reverberates like a cannon shot. But when a muted conversation occurs the quality of sound is such that you can't hear it well.

Of course there's now every reason to pump up the volume of all sounds simply because they can. So you can go from straining to hear whispers to wincing from explosions, car motors, or just people laughing on screen.

Getting these movies on DVD presents the same deal. Every notice how you have to jack the sound up and down with your remote?

They have done this with every movie even those without action and explosions.:rage: