xorgol

Last week, the Skoda ad about a bicycle bell that defeats noise canceling went viral: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDaVPfpQvPI

There are a lot of weird claims in this ad, which are not in the Salford University-authored report: https://cdn.skoda-storyboard.com/2026/04/Skoda-DuoBell-Research-final_cf127752.pdf

They depict this gap in noise cancelling effectiveness, but what the report actually says is "700-800 Hz (Suggested range for penetrating ANC passive isolation)" So it's insertion loss, not ANC at all!

#acoustics

Apr 13 at 2:32pmWeb
Show threadxorgol1d ago
The psychoacoustic testing described in the report is very interesting, but the conclusions are fairly obvious: headphones provide insulation, and active noise canceling doesn't affect transient sounds very much. The real problem is that people are not just wearing headphones, they're listening to stuff, which destroys the signal to noise ratio. #acoustics