[tuby sound]

Hi all,
Just wondering if any of you knew the frequency response of rain dropping on a roof. Tried google but did not find many graphs

I'm using headphones mostly for watching movies late at night and would like to know how efficient noise-cancelling headphones would be at tackling the noise I get when it is raining heavily.
I see some headphones measurements on innerfidelity (isolation graphs) and would like to know if I'm better off finding a pair that attenuates the right frequency passively...

I have a Verum 1 for watching movies but when it's raining hard, it is useless

Thank you for your help,
Kelvin

PS: haven't measured it but I believe it should be between 250Hz and 4kHz, correct?

 

[bigshot]

Yeah, I would think so.

 

[castleofargh]

Hi all,
Just wondering if any of you knew the frequency response of rain dropping on a roof. Tried google but did not find many graphs

I'm using headphones mostly for watching movies late at night and would like to know how efficient noise-cancelling headphones would be at tackling the noise I get when it is raining heavily.
I see some headphones measurements on innerfidelity (isolation graphs) and would like to know if I'm better off finding a pair that attenuates the right frequency passively...

I have a Verum 1 for watching movies but when it's raining hard, it is useless

Thank you for your help,
Kelvin

PS: haven't measured it but I believe it should be between 250Hz and 4kHz, correct?

it's inevitably going to depend on the roof itself(material, how much isolation you have from outside).
I tried to be a smart ass and checked rain on roof on youtube but it's not much help:







most sounded like the recording was through an open window or even actually from outside on the roof, so I would expect a significant high frequency attenuation from inside the house(but how much depends on the house).
as for the obvious changes in low frequencies on those different recordings, I can't really say if it's showing the difference from the roof's material, or just how bad some of the microphones used actually were? so as I said it's not much help.

but taking the problem from the other side, what you most need in a movie is to get intelligible voices and that would be mostly in the 200Hz-4kHz. if we miss the lowest frequencies, we usually still make up what is being said. so perhaps look up gears with isolation that seem to isolate best in that range. beside innerfidelity that's not adding anything new(probably ever), you can check https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews where they also measure isolation.

 

[bigshot]

My experience is that noise cancelling works remarkably well with constant sounds, but not at all with instantaneous sound. It's less a factor of the frequency range as it is the massing of the sound into a constant thing. I'm sure some of it would sneak through, but it would probably get rid of a great deal of it. See if you have any friends with noise cancelling cans and try them. Or order from Amazon where you can return them for a full refund if it doesn't work well enough.

 

[tuby sound]

it's inevitably going to depend on the roof itself(material, how much isolation you have from outside).
I tried to be a smart ass and checked rain on roof on youtube but it's not much help:







most sounded like the recording was through an open window or even actually from outside on the roof, so I would expect a significant high frequency attenuation from inside the house(but how much depends on the house).
as for the obvious changes in low frequencies on those different recordings, I can't really say if it's showing the difference from the roof's material, or just how bad some of the microphones used actually were? so as I said it's not much help.

but taking the problem from the other side, what you most need in a movie is to get intelligible voices and that would be mostly in the 200Hz-4kHz. if we miss the lowest frequencies, we usually still make up what is being said. so perhaps look up gears with isolation that seem to isolate best in that range. beside innerfidelity that's not adding anything new(probably ever), you can check https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews where they also measure isolation.

Thank you for this. I then remembered what heavy rainfall sounds like...
In my house, it sounds a bit like brown noise



Searching for brown noise, I see that the spectral density is higher in power at lower frequencies and that it lowers in intensity every octave by 6dB

So I guess I do need isolation and attenuation at lower frequencies and for the bulk of the human vocal range in order to have intelligible dialogue.

Kelvin

PS: thank you for the website, did not know about it

 

[tuby sound]

My experience is that noise cancelling works remarkably well with constant sounds, but not at all with instantaneous sound. It's less a factor of the frequency range as it is the massing of the sound into a constant thing. I'm sure some of it would sneak through, but it would probably get rid of a great deal of it. See if you have any friends with noise cancelling cans and try them. Or order from Amazon where you can return them for a full refund if it doesn't work well enough.

I do have one, although it is not a state of the art one : Audio-Technica ANC-7b

To be honest, it doesn't do that much.

Kelvin

 

[gregorio]

Interesting question and one I sometimes have to directly deal with.

If you think about a single drop of water, the sound it makes depends on what surface it drops onto, the force with which it impacts and the angle. So even with the same surface we can get somewhat different sounds (frequency content). In the case of rain though, we don't have a single drop of water, we have numerous drops of water, impacting a wet surface (say roof tiles) in different places, at different angles and each of those drops is somewhat different. The result is broadband noise, vaguely similar to white noise (although there can be more dominant frequencies). Of course, that white (ish) noise is then filtered by the isolation between you and the rain impacts, so a lot of the high frequency noise will be lost/absorbed. Unfortunately, there's not an easy way to eliminate this noise. It can be reduced a little but because it covers so many frequencies, you can't reduce it much with also removing the wanted frequencies. Our ears/brain have a clever trick of identifying the wanted patterns and reducing noise/other sounds but software it only just starting to attempt this same trick (with machine learning) and it's still not very good. This is sometimes a problem we face in the film sound world and commonly the only solution is to replace the dialogue (IE. Record it again at a later date in a studio). The only thing you can do is better isolate yourself from the rain noise.

G

 

[tuby sound]

Interesting question and one I sometimes have to directly deal with.

If you think about a single drop of water, the sound it makes depends on what surface it drops onto, the force with which it impacts and the angle. So even with the same surface we can get somewhat different sounds (frequency content). In the case of rain though, we don't have a single drop of water, we have numerous drops of water, impacting a wet surface (say roof tiles) in different places, at different angles and each of those drops is somewhat different. The result is broadband noise, vaguely similar to white noise (although there can be more dominant frequencies). Of course, that white (ish) noise is then filtered by the isolation between you and the rain impacts, so a lot of the high frequency noise will be lost/absorbed. Unfortunately, there's not an easy way to eliminate this noise. It can be reduced a little but because it covers so many frequencies, you can't reduce it much with also removing the wanted frequencies. Our ears/brain have a clever trick of identifying the wanted patterns and reducing noise/other sounds but software it only just starting to attempt this same trick (with machine learning) and it's still not very good. This is sometimes a problem we face in the film sound world and commonly the only solution is to replace the dialogue (IE. Record it again at a later date in a studio). The only thing you can do is better isolate yourself from the rain noise.

G

Thank you for your response... Understand your point of view regarding the importance of the surface the water drop bounces on.

Under heavy rain, unless you have a green roof, it will mostly sound like brown noise, although at a different intensity.

Based on my research on the rtings.com website, looks like what I need is a Sony WH-1000XM3 if I want to have an over-ear headphone - see attached
@ Castleofargh, thank you again for the website

Kelvin

 

[tuby sound]

 

[bigshot]

If you've already tried noise cancelling and it doesn't work, then your only option is isolation.

 

[gregorio]

[1] Under heavy rain, unless you have a green roof, it will mostly sound like brown noise, although at a different intensity.
[2] Based on my research on the rtings.com website, looks like what I need is a Sony WH-1000XM3 if I want to have an over-ear headphone ...

1. No, as I said and as castleofargh's plots show, the sound of rain will generally be more closely related to white noise. If anything, in the low freq range for example, rain noise is typically almost the opposite of brown noise, less energy in the lowest freqs. There are two problems: Firstly, there is really no such thing as a rain noise, it's very variable, depending on the variables mentioned previously and even within the same session of rain, where many/most of the variables appear to remain fairly constant. Although you generally wouldn't notice this consciously, when you have to analyse and work with recordings containing rain noise you realise that it's almost constantly subtly varying. Secondly, again as mentioned previously, the actual sound of rain that you're going to hear in your listening environment is also largely determined by what freqs are missing/reduced by absorption of the construction (and materials used) that are between you and the rain noise. For example, roof tiles, air gap, plywood loft floor, glass or rock based insulation and gypsum board between you and the rain falling on your roof and also, the nature of the windows/doors separating you from the rain falling on other surfaces, say pavement, road or whatever else is outside you house.

2. They may work out well for you but I would advise that you try before you buy. Indeterminate, fairly random noise (like white or pink noise) is usually the most difficult to isolate/remove.

G

 

[castleofargh]

1. No, as I said and as castleofargh's plots show, the sound of rain will generally be more closely related to white noise. If anything, in the low freq range for example, rain noise is typically almost the opposite of brown noise, less energy in the lowest freqs. There are two problems: Firstly, there is really no such thing as a rain noise, it's very variable, depending on the variables mentioned previously and even within the same session of rain, where many/most of the variables appear to remain fairly constant. Although you generally wouldn't notice this consciously, when you have to analyse and work with recordings containing rain noise you realise that it's almost constantly subtly varying. Secondly, again as mentioned previously, the actual sound of rain that you're going to hear in your listening environment is also largely determined by what freqs are missing/reduced by absorption of the construction (and materials used) that are between you and the rain noise. For example, roof tiles, air gap, plywood loft floor, glass or rock based insulation and gypsum board between you and the rain falling on your roof and also, the nature of the windows/doors separating you from the rain falling on other surfaces, say pavement, road or whatever else is outside you house.

2. They may work out well for you but I would advise that you try before you buy. Indeterminate, fairly random noise (like white or pink noise) is usually the most difficult to isolate/remove.

G

I think his description of brown noise was in reference to how he perceived rain from his room specifically.
but I do share your concern with very randomized noises like rain, and noise canceling. @tuby sound you should go to a topic for that headphone (like this one maybe https://www.head-fi.org/threads/sony-wh1000xm3-better-than-qc35-in-noise-cancelling.887797/ )and ask those how have it what is their experience with canceling rain.

 

[gregorio]

I think his description of brown noise was in reference to how he perceived rain from his room specifically.

Yes, brown noise can sound like heavy rain (from indoors) because our hearing is insensitive to all that low frequency energy in brown noise. The fact that brown noise isn't really like the sound that rain makes (but sounds like it is), doesn't make any difference to us but it can/does make a difference to noise removal/cancelling software that's looking at frequency content.

G

 

[tuby sound]

If you've already tried noise cancelling and it doesn't work, then your only option is isolation.

Well I tried one, the one I have is the AT ANC-7b see below:

Compared to the new Sony

16dB difference @ 30Hz
23dB difference @ 40Hz
15dB difference @ 60Hz
16dB difference @ 100Hz
200Hz-300Hz better but not by much
18dB difference @ 400Hz
19dB difference @ 500Hz
16dB difference @ 600Hz

15dB difference @ 1kHz

Knowing that to the human ear, 10dB difference translate to twice as loud, 15dB of noise reduction should be a quite significant difference

Kelvin

 

[tuby sound]

1. No, as I said and as castleofargh's plots show, the sound of rain will generally be more closely related to white noise. If anything, in the low freq range for example, rain noise is typically almost the opposite of brown noise, less energy in the lowest freqs. There are two problems: Firstly, there is really no such thing as a rain noise, it's very variable, depending on the variables mentioned previously and even within the same session of rain, where many/most of the variables appear to remain fairly constant. Although you generally wouldn't notice this consciously, when you have to analyse and work with recordings containing rain noise you realise that it's almost constantly subtly varying. Secondly, again as mentioned previously, the actual sound of rain that you're going to hear in your listening environment is also largely determined by what freqs are missing/reduced by absorption of the construction (and materials used) that are between you and the rain noise. For example, roof tiles, air gap, plywood loft floor, glass or rock based insulation and gypsum board between you and the rain falling on your roof and also, the nature of the windows/doors separating you from the rain falling on other surfaces, say pavement, road or whatever else is outside you house.

2. They may work out well for you but I would advise that you try before you buy. Indeterminate, fairly random noise (like white or pink noise) is usually the most difficult to isolate/remove.

G

I think his description of brown noise was in reference to how he perceived rain from his room specifically.
but I do share your concern with very randomized noises like rain, and noise canceling. @tuby sound you should go to a topic for that headphone (like this one maybe https://www.head-fi.org/threads/sony-wh1000xm3-better-than-qc35-in-noise-cancelling.887797/ )and ask those how have it what is their experience with canceling rain.

Glad the discussion is still going on I'm having fun

Yes, I think I should have been clearer... At home, under heavy rain, it does sound like brown noise to me. Meaning the roof and insulation absorbs more high frequencies and amplifies low frequencies (standing waves bouncing between roof and ceiling)
I live in Tahiti, French Polynesia (small island) - so trying before buying is quite difficult. Return policies are nothing like in the US

@ Castleofargh, that is a great idea, I'll try that thread and see if some have tried the efficiency of using that headphone under heavy rain

Kelvin