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Noise

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This article is about noise as in sound. For other uses, see Noise (disambiguation).

In common use, the word

noise

means unwanted sound or noise pollution

[1]

. Inelectronicsnoise can refer to the electronic signal corresponding to acoustic noise (in an audio system) or the electronic signal corresponding to the (visual) noise commonly seen as'snow'on a degradedtelevisionor video image. In signal processing or computing it can be considered datawithout meaning; that is, data that is not being used to transmit asignal

, but is simply produced as an unwanted by-product of other activities. InInformationTheory

, however, noise is still considered to be information. In a broader sense, film grain or even advertisements in web pages can be considered noise. Noise can block, distort, or change/interfere with the meaning of a message in both human and electronic communication.In many of these areas, the special case of thermal noisearises, which sets a fundamental lower limit to what can be measured or signaled and is related to basic physical processes at the molecular level described by well-established thermodynamics considerations, some of which are expressible by relatively well known simple formulae.

Acoustic noise

When speaking of noise in relation to sound, what is commonly meant is meaningless sound of greater than usual volume. Thus, aloud activity may be referred to as

noisy

. However, conversations of other people may be called noise for people not involved in anyof them, and noise can be any unwanted sound such as the noise of dogs barking, neighbours playing loud music, road traffic sounds,chainsaws, or aircraft, spoiling the quiet of the countryside.

Regulation

Main article: Noise regulation Noise regulation includes statutes or guidelines relating to sound transmission established by national, state or provincial andmunicipal levels of government. After a watershed passage of the U.S. Noise Control Act of 1972[1], the program was abandoned atthe federal level, under President Ronald Reagan, in 1981 and the issue was left to local and state governments. Although the UK andJapan enacted national laws in 1960 and 1967 respectively, these laws were not at all comprehensive or fully enforceable as to address(a) generally rising ambient noise (b) enforceable numerical source limits on aircraft and motor vehicles or (c) comprehensivedirectives to local government.

Examples

Sounds that are generally regarded as acoustic noise include snoring.

In film sound

For film sound theorists and practitioners at the advent of talkies c.1928/1929, noise was non-speech sound or natural sound and for many of them noise (especially asynchronous use with image) was desired over the evils of dialogue synchronized to moving image.The director and critic René Clair writing in 1929 makes a clear distinction between film dialogue and film noise and very clearlysuggests that noise can have meaning and be interpreted: "...it is possible that an interpretation of noises may have more of a future init. Sound cartoons, using "real" noises, seem to point to interesting possibilities" ('The Art of Sound' (1929)). Alberto Cavalcanti usesnoise as a synonym for natural sound ('Sound in Films' (1939)) and as late as 1960, Siegfried Kracauer was referring to noise as non-speech sound ('Dialogue and Sound' (1960)).

Audio noise

Main article:Colors of noiseIn audio, recording, and broadcastsystems

audio noise

refers to the residual low level sound (usually hiss and hum) that is heard inquiet periods of programme.Inaudio engineering it can also refer to the unwanted residualelectronic noisesignal that gives rise to acoustic noise heard as 'hiss'. This signal noiseis commonly measured using A-weighting or ITU-R 468 weighting

Electronic noise

Main article:Electronic noise