Talking about noise-cancelling fabric, I recently wondered:
Is it possible to noise-isolate my bed?
I live in a beautiful apartment in my favorite part of the city. But the neighbors on some nights are extremely noisy.
If I could noise-isolate my bed, that would be a huge quality of life improvement.
I was thinking about putting some noise absorbing material under the bed feet and a large noise blocking curtain over it. Like a baldachin or canopy bed.
Do you guys think that would work?
Try the Ozlo sleep buds, from folks who didn't want Bose sleep buds to disappear:
Consider the sound Crimson Cloak for city masking. These are not cancelling, they are masking, but reasonably effective as well as portable.
As for the rest of your piece, if you don't want to spend too much, look to recording studio sound baffling and absorption for your room's sound reflective surfaces, or theater drapery for your windows and if you need more a canopy bed or hospital bed curtain tracks to enclose you in damping.
If you are willing to spend more, NYC and similarly dense cities (1 in 50 Americans live in NYC) have specialty home builders that can make music rooms, piano practice rooms, neighbor noise blocking rooms, etc., using box within a box construction techniques to separate your space from the spaces around you with sound dampening. (Think like vacuum bottle, but for acoustic waves instead of cold/heat.)
Here are many approaches between these paths:
It's probably not going to be possible to completely silence your neighbors, but I'm sure there are a few things you can do to make a difference.
If noise is transmitted through the floor, add thick carpet and support your bed with a vibration deadening material, e.g. something viscoelastic. Sorbothane is popular for this but you'll need to spread the load out or pick a high durometer (stiff) rubber.
For the walls, hang up some carpets or similar, and/or hang heavy material around your bed as a canopy as you suggest. What you want is a material that's heavy enough that the energy in the sound waves is dissipated trying to move it around. Maybe a weighted blanket, or a duvet cover stuffed with mass loaded vinyl (used in cars for sound deadening).
As the other commenters mention, the answer is likely no, unless new tech like the OP becomes practical
The best thing I have found is to play thunderstorm sounds with earphones. Thunderstorm sounds are inoffensive (unless you happen to be afraid of them) and intrusive noises are camouflaged within the variability of the storm noises. It is thus capable of deflecting your attention from louder sounds than white noise (which basically needs to be a lot louder than the intrusive sound)
I've looked into this before and unfortunately it is quite difficult to get good sound isolation and the answer is basically no. The really effective stuff is mass vinyl and as the name suggests it is quite heavy (and expensive). There are even some tents that musicians sometimes use for a few people to play together in a noisy environment that are hundreds of pounds without even being large enough for a bed. As I understand it, the mass is necessary for the best sound dampening. Also, once you get non-trivial sound dampening the way you let air in tends to be the easiest way for sound to get in. Even the heaviest cloth curtains would mostly help with any echos in your room rather than the initial sound itself. Maybe in some circumstances even minimal sound reduction would be helpful but you may also do a bunch of work and find it ends up making no difference.
Noise generators seem like the better way to start if you aren't using one already. I haven't tried many options but from the reviews I've seen fans are the best at this. In my experience ceiling fans do help quite a bit and there are some bedside noise generators that are fans but enclosed to limit the external air movement if the noise happens in colder weather. There are also some with speakers that play recorded fan noise, although beware of ones where the sample loops too quickly (I'm not sure what the best option to use your own recording would be). Unfortunately even getting to the point where you don't wake up (at least not enough to notice) may not fully remove the impact but it would still help quite a bit.
As a musician who plays the drum set, the typical wisdom is that noise isolation is basically impossible unless you're willing to build a "room within a room" that allows you to construct a heavy, physical insulating barrier between the inner and outer room.
Some noise dampening could work but probably won't get rid of all of the noise. You might want to look at a white-noise generator of some sort - I've recently discovered such a function on my (smart-but-now-antiquated) clock/radio. I use a rain sound but there are plenty of options out there. It does wonders for my sleep when there's a party in the neighbourhood or the pigeons are partying on my roof.
Get a good quality earplugs, but these real ones, made for musicians, not the single-use foam crap.
Musicians’ ear plugs are designed to let music go through, just not dangerous levels of pressure. I am very sensitive to sounds and I have tried many earplugs. Foam single-use plugs are the best.
> Musicians’ ear plugs are designed to let music go through
Technically true, but more accurately, they are basically a physical EQ filter, that (at least in perfect world) ducks down every frequency a similar amount of dB, to not alter the music too much except the level, so the music on stage still sounds the same, but quieter. You can find frequency graphs in the manual (disclaimer: I have bought the Alpine ones and they are good).
Some companies that make custom ones also make ones for sleep
https://acscustom.com/uk/products/other-products/sleep-sound
But yeah even they say that for maximum noise cancelling you want foam. These are better for comfort.