Question about noise canceling technology and the restaurant industry

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Is there a product, similar to the headphones, that would be able to cancel out most noise in restaurants to make it more tolerable?

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Foam and more fabric

There are companies that specialize in Restaurant noise abatement. They do things like hidden fabric cells under chair bottoms, wall decor etc. It's a expensive service.

We have white noise sounds at work. Sounds like air blowing. You can see people talking about 20 ft away but not hear them. Mainly for a cubicle environment. But that might work in a restaurant.

Passive noise cancellation is WAAAAAY cheaper than active noise cancellation.

That place is notoriously bad. I went over a year ago and the server mentioned they were working on the acoustics. It has a ton of hard reflective surfaces.

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But why couldn’t you do it electronically like the headphones do.

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Because noise-canceling headphones only work because they completely cover your ear (or canal). They can't completely block all external sounds, so the "active" noise-canceling part (the electronics) means they "listen" to external sounds and generate a sound wave 180 degrees out of phase with it. This pretty much cancels out the sounds you don't want to hear.

To do this in a restaurant, the guests would have to wear headphones, or each table would have to be in a cubicle or something. Because there's no way to use some electronic device around the dining area to achieve the same thing that headphones do. There's just no way to cancel a sound going from point A to point B without something in between the two points. So putting sound-absorbing materials all over is pretty much the best way to reduce noise without completely changing the experience of eating at a restaurant.