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Similarly the 87% is impressive, but that translates to a difference of "only" 9 dB. The way our ears work makes me wonder if that is enough to make a difference for noise reduction (my earplugs say on the package they reduce sound by 32 dB, for example)

edit: of course, worst case it would still contribute passively to noise reduction



Yesterday I walked along a busy road with a decibel meter app and as I went behind a sound-absorbing wall, the level went down around 10dB.

The difference was significant and it felt as if the road was one block away.


Right, so it would still be less stress-inducing at least.


Worst case you just add more layers, like we do with sound absorbers now.

If some kind of moth wing inspired metamaterial can shrink the width of broadband sound absorbing panels by 10x that would be quite useful still.


Good points, it hopefully will lead to metamaterials that are at least better than currents solutions


Decibel is a logarithmic scale


Yes, and also a relative scale like percentages are. A change of 87% is about nine decibels. If earplugs need to be 30+ decibels that makes me wonder if nine decibels is enough to have a significant impact (but another comment suggests it does)




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