Unbelievable Noise Cancellation Experiment

In this video I show you how noise cancellation works and give you a real life example that you can experiment with on your own!
Credit to myurgil for inspiring the ideas in this video many years earlier:
• Noise Cancelling Heaph...
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*Any experiment you try is at YOUR OWN RISK. The Action Lab assumes no responsibility for any injury if you attempt anything you see in this video or on The Action Lab channel.

[@TheActionLab]

Hi everyone! The experiment clip starts at 4:34

[@namra6793]

Thanks

[@dannysg3229]

This is amazing...

[@SToXC_.]

Hi

[@yuvalperry6688]

It reminds me of 13 reasons why lol

[@r3Dw0Lf369]

You could also turn mono on Windows 10

[@curiosity_saved_the_cat]

This must bee why I have trouble making decisions sometimes, my left hemisphere cancels out my right hemisphere and I end up taking a nap.

[@dmdplayz]

💀💀💀🤣🤣

[@AshrZ]

Left frontal lobes cancels out your right frontal lobes*

[@creeperthekingcreeper8234]

🤣

[@curiosity_saved_the_cat]

@Adrian Kelter You got it! It wasp.

[@omsingharjit]

Awesome comment

[@inuka6969]

Fun Fact : If you delete your audio file, you can't hear anything.

[@zeyad544]

‎

[@cheesemanofficial9986]

OMG so right

[@notsure6834]

Hey! My dog is barking.

[@GiveMeBread1]

How-عمرو

[@aakasha8438]

Why didn't you still get a nobel

[@jpe1]

Every time he says “audio file” I hear “audiophile.”

[@padkirsch]

You must love FLAC files! ✅💟👍🎶

[@kenshiromilesvt.7037]

padkirsch wav is still better haha

[@padkirsch]

@@kenshiromilesvt.7037 interesting perspective. Care to expand on that? I'd like to know your perspective on that. Why do you think it's better? In what way? Audio quality, file size, accessibility. I would really like to know?

[@kenshiromilesvt.7037]

padkirsch dont get me wrong FLAC is good. Its just not as wide spread as wav and wav work on more platforms. The quality is actually better because it doesn’t compress anything whereas FLAC does compress somethings, but it takes a really good ear to tell the difference (I can tell the difference, I’m lucky to be blessed with those ears haha, as I am sure you are too. Its file size is bigger, but if you need small files, convert to highest bitrate AAC with Audacity, the difference is almost unnoticeable actually, and the file size is pretty small too.

[@moicanostrondass]

@@kenshiromilesvt.7037 i aways convert into AAC i don't know why

[@CoolDudeClem]

Wish I could do this to my neighbors music!

[@DCRhythms]

Same here!!!

[@SToXC_.]

actually you can lol, active noise cancelling headphones, they have a microphone, it just inverts waves of everything reaching it and sending it to yout ears immediately, so you hear nothing

[@gulagwarlord]

You CAN! You just need a fast enough circuit to record/flip phase and play it back at them!!!

[@voidex136]

Shotgun will do the job.

[@jhonx1420]

If you cant stop, you can join

[@nikhedoniac]

5:00 - That external hard-drive, perched perilously at the edge of table, is stressing me out!

[@coolguy284_2]

I'm pretty sure that's a modem, not a hard drive. (You're referring to the thing with blue lights on the left side of the table, right?)

[@nikhedoniac]

@@coolguy284_2 Yeah, perhaps it's a modem. Either way! :)

[@coolguy284_2]

@@nikhedoniac It's just less of an emotionally scarring event if the modem drops than if a hard disk drive drops.

[@AlvinCwk]

so can I copyright claim other people's silences in their videos for using my digital audio cancelation sample?

[@LeprechaunJackson]

… 200 IQ! 🤣

[@jimmysyar889]

Real question tho

[@Hyzt-]

Sadly, thats not how the copyrighted music recognition works

[@LeprechaunJackson]

Hyzt aww c’mon no need to be a buzzkill lmao it’s only a joke 🤣

@@Hyzt- Might just be. It would explain a lot!

[@lonzodaman]

I discovered this noise cancelling effect about 35 years ago when I accidentally connected half of my speakers with reversed polarity to my car stereo. The sound didn't disappear completely but was very "thin". Should have claimed a patent for this. ;)

[@DevinSnuckel]

Demn

[@zonk9343]

Lonzo Apparently a man named Dr. Lawrence Jerome Fogel submitted patents about active noise cancellation in the 1950’s. Sorry man ;-;

[@ayahuascagaming9399]

This is the equivalent of i discovered something new but it's already been discovered

[@billi706]

You mean pondered upon?

[@anandsuralkar2947]

@@ayahuascagaming9399 except it probably wasn't 36years ago i guess

[@UnreadRez]

Cool lol i was about to turn the volume 😂

[@eggdogispog]

me too

[@sprite4492]

@@tthung8668 LMAO i did the opposite of what you did i turned my volume down😂

[@ScooterPS]

'If you cant Hear me right now, dont adjust your volume' Every single person: spams volume up button

[@portalj]

My ears hate me now

[@adelemarie80]

I did that then i read it

[@ethanblount668]

I was close to hitting that up button

[@ranecE]

I just turend up my volume to see if there wasn't some kind of static left over.

[@flop3869]

I have nothing to reply so check out this doggo vibin kzbin.info/www/bejne/moLaZapvjMyLmbM

[@biggusmunkusthegreat]

I compose music on a DAW. It's kind of fun to go back and invert previous versions of tracks to hear the difference in what I've added/removed put together. I do this from time to time :)

[@DrMarlowski]

Dude that's really smart. Never thought of using it that way 😃

[@inthefade]

I've done this to demonstrate to people what mp3s do to a song.,

[@nyancat7486]

Deaf : Drake disapproves Noise Cancelling™ : Drake approves

[@mrkitty777]

The Stasi not hearing us just draws attention!

[@swervings]

normies don’t get this

[@breny07tubby64]

Nyan cat TM

[@Zetsuha88]

You again

[@himsim9425]

See you in 5 years when this will be recommended yet again

[@ritutiwari9716]

Unoriginal

[@jamesbizs]

This joke hasn’t been made on every single popular video ever. Nope. Definitely not

[@realcygnus]

God forbid you might be interested in actually learning some things about reality as opposed to just watching piano kitty for the millionth time or whatever else sort of nonsensical things you do on here.

[@gamer_222]

It's recommend in 5 hours

[@constent5394]

See you then!

[@vicnie1]

People with mono audio: is this a prank?

[@dmdplayz]

0:00 Lol I swear I thought I heard you saying that in a very tiny voice in my head, but i realized i just read it in ur voice after I put the speaker close to my ears.

[@rgerber]

Same I could swear that I heard his voice little bit

[@gamer_222]

Same

[@Zanthron]

its your brain making up for it becuase it can read the subtitles and basically say them in your head

[@dmdplayz]

@@Zanthron The weird part is I didn't have subtitles on at all lol. I guess it's just because I'm used to hearing him so much when he opens his mouth 😂

[@Anklejbiter]

I just recently had to deal with something similar, I needed two left and right tracks to be different for something so i just copy and pasted the mono track and inverted it. Sounded fine to me, but when i tried showing it to someone over a speaker it wasn't there anymore.

[@mrkitty777]

It's a criminal offence to not let government hear you. Penalty is exceptional.

[@coolmonkey619]

What was the solution

[@Anklejbiter]

@@coolmonkey619 i uninverted it and aded a delay of about 0.0003 seconds.

[@Anklejbiter]

@@mrkitty777 is this a reference to something that I don't get?

[@Starkl3t]

What was the point of inverting it...?

[@NewbyTon]

Tip: if you want to mute audio in a track in a video editor, just delete parts of the audio track that you want to be muted instead of adding a negative sound track

[@pumpkinwarrior]

hahahhaha anyway its just physics

[@atsuchiya624]

Is it just me or does the inverted sound clip sound “feel” different to anyone else In your ears?

[@zazonf1832]

It’s just you i think

[@tarun.starboy]

It feels normal to me

[@5hape5hift3r]

Yes

[@5hape5hift3r]

a p sound sends out a compressive wave But if you invert that sound you get a decompressive wave sound of pushing out vs pulling away

[@erwinmulder1338]

It feels different for me too.

[@anizan1004]

I am a music producer and knowing about noise cancellation beforehand made me feel smart

[@jamesbizs]

Anizan lol. Beforehead. So smart

[@zt3853]

j p hahahahaha

[@anizan1004]

@@jamesbizs woopsie. I'm not native so accidentally made a mistake

[@ABaumstumpf]

Calling it noise-cancelation is wrong in this regards - there was no "noise" to begin with, only the original sound, and then he set that to 0.

[@arsridi6096]

Watching a video like this weeks ago made me feel smart

[@DCTGoddess]

I discovered, accidentally when I was having a problem with a headphone jack, if I positioned it the right way I could hear the music in both channels with some parts of the mix phased out. Depending on how a song was mixed, and where instrumentation and vocals were placed in the stereo image, i ended up with stripped-down versions, or karaoke quality songs. I could hear edit points, and riffs that normally would be buried in the mix. I started trying it in Audacity, and ended up with a really interesting play list!

[@itsmitko7]

Same

[@hxhdfjifzirstc894]

DCTGoddess Goodie!

[@VincentVanJoYT]

yeah sometimes with crappy earbuds i hear the inst and vocals only

[@dr_nyt4041]

What I find shocking is how you can work on a table that small 6:56

[@brettcameratraveler]

This works pretty well in a open area with two ultrasonic speakers as well. You might love experimenting with US speakers. They are hyper directional and give the listener the feeling like someone is talking in their head. You can also turn air into haptic shapes, levitate things, etc

[@MichaelJONeill333]

.. .. ... . .... . ... .. ..... . ...! Oh sorry, I had noise cancelling on. I was saying "Awesome video Action Lab!"

[@mpcastrodudes525]

Should have done it on the April fools day!! 😂 99% people would have been fooled by that!!! 🙃😉

[@onon128]

MPC Astro dudes no they wouldn’t . They would think he didn’t put any sound

[@jamesbizs]

Would have been a stupid prank, nor would it be being fooled.

[@alles_banane_4033]

There’s something I always wondered if it would work: when the stepper motors of a 3D printer move, they create a characteristic sound depending on the speed I think. Thats why there are videos on KZbin where whole songs just with stepper motors are created. I always wondered if it is possible to cancel most of the sound of the stepper with inverted sounds playing. Theoretically you can create the inverted sound file before even starting the print, because you know every movement of the printer from its print file (gcode). Also the loudest noise of the stepper Motors aren’t like random sounds but real notes with more or less constant waves I think

[@fernandogajo8800]

You must have heard of headphones with noise cancelation technology. They use this principle. But I think it can't work very well in a room, where sound is diffused around. There would be points where the noise is canceled, but the waves go through each other, and as they bounce the walls and other irregular surfaces of the room (the people in it, included) the scattering would create zones with CONSTRUCTIVE interference, rather then Destructive interference, cause the opposite result of the one desired.

[@alles_banane_4033]

@@fernandogajo8800 Makes sense. Thank you!

[@Nevir202]

@@fernandogajo8800 Would work pretty well by just attaching the speakers directly to the motors they are canceling, as he was saying, having both sound sources as close to on top of one another as possible makes for pretty effective cancelation

[@fernandogajo8800]

@@Nevir202 interesting idea

[@puspamadak]

I had also done this experiment while learning about waves in class 11. It was really interesting. But your idea of doing this with an audio file was just amazing.

[@infinix2003]

even i did it in 11th while learning waves

[@nakulankurmullam2982]

This guy finds bugs in universe's code

[@ryanyanko3547]

So... If two people say the exact same thing at the same time, you might hear nothing?

[@ZLGaming140]

If that one person speak in invert and their sound wave hit each other. Yes you might hear nothing

[@plush9519]

Speaking generates complex waveforms with immense variations in wavelengths/frequency. Complete cancellation is possible and quite easy with perfect sine waves, but the most you could get with two different people speaking is a slight reduction of volume among a handfull of frequencies, and it would be negligible at that.

[@marciostavares]

It seems that KZbin auto generated subtitles is affected by this as well. There is no subtitles in the beginning.

[@blueocean_123]

Superb !! This works in both stereo & in mono. Wow

[@PhantasmXYZ]

This reminds me I once had a defective MP3 player that had inverted polarity on the right audio channel. The bass and other centered sounds on stereo music were weak; it was horrible to listen to. The seller denied the issue existed and refused refund or repair. 😠

[@PhantasmXYZ]

Oh, and the seller and some even tried to tout the "unique, wide soundstage" presentation when it was just the out-of-phase speakers effect you're hearing. 🙄

[@ChristinaKilgore]

omg... listening to this on a 2.1 speaker system is the weirdest most uncomfortable thing >_>

[@god5926]

Legit, I first learned this in talking Tom and friends on Netflix, I thought it was fake, but now, I know it’s not. And that’s cool

[@Leandro-vy7nj]

This is great! Thumbs up for the home-experiment.

[@aabsc]

4:34 On my 5.1 surround sound system this part actually comes out of the rear speakers only, it's very rare for sound to come only from the rear. I just put my receiver in stereo mode and it just sounds really weird, it's hard to explain, almost like an echo but not an echo.

[@ZFanz]

Yes same. Like its coming out from inside of your skull

[@LucasTheBot]

I'm loving these last few videos!

[@25style24]

After 4:34 wearing earphones at 1x speed I can hear you clearly, though at 2x it sounds strange. *Why is it so?* I am guessing because of KZbin's speeding algorithms.

[@stonehead4775]

It sounda weird in a lot of songs too

[@ShawnComposer]

2:54 there is a very faint lighter gray outline of his face, not completely nothing.

[@EssentiallyFalse]

This is actually really nice

[@RobertEnterprises]

I love that you come up with simple and yet so interesting concepts and experiments for a video. This makes you learn about the topic at hand much easier, because you can visually, or in this case audibly hear the difference and do some experimenting on your own. Fantastic job as always :)

[@MammaOVlogs]

wow that is amazing! l loved it! Way to go son!

[@emerysteele]

I know some photographers like to paint their editing rooms grey. Maybe there's something to that?

[@guilherme6818]

Wat

[@harshvirdi8585]

At the start I set the volume to full and then you know what blasted through my headphones......

[@destroyishere4655]

For some reason I actually heard you in my head during the start of the video. This was probably because whenever your video starts you always say the phrase "Hey everyone". Also reading the captions probably reassured my brain that you were actually saying that. But after the phrase I noticed that something wasn't right.

[@b12virus63]

3:08 see carefully, you can see little bit of the image in the middle !

[@MeHighLo]

That was cool. I listened to it with small stereo speakers, and it was exactly as you said. And putting them right against each other almost muted the sound. As I once said, you are the one and only "science troller extraordinaire".

[@erwinmulder1338]

You can also do the opposite: take a mono sound clip and subtract random values from each sample and put it in the right channel and the remainder I the left channel. People with stereo systems will hear something similar to white noise, but people with a mono set-up will hear the sound clip normally.

[@LewLaps]

With the demonstration using the video instead of sound, what would happen if I took both videos, inverted one and the untouched one, put them side by side and crossed my eyes to focus on the two together? Like the 3d illusion you can find online? Would I just see nothing??

[@everythingexpert4795]

Lewis Bourne nope, because light behaves different than sound

[@GraveUypo]

nah you'd still see what your dominant eye sees, mostly. that's actually the only way you're able to see some colors. like yellow-tinted blue, or green-tinted red (no, it's not green and orange. they look different and a bit weird)

[@satsumagt5284]

Very true. Audible in my iPad Air 2, muted in my Galaxy S7 edge. 10/10

[@SA-ux7xb]

There are 2 kind of people: who raised up the volume at the beginning, and who lies

[@guilherme6818]

I lie

[@sugaryskies14]

who lies

[@guilherme6818]

@@sugaryskies14 i lie

[@bmilano1580]

And the ones that waited just to be sure👑

[@reeck771]

S A i lie

[@electronresonator8882]

Mehdi already prove that the best noise cancellation is making louder noise than whatever noise that you want to cancel talking in a loud concert is is how you cancel your own voice to the listener

[@tropentine]

I tried this on my wife, didn't work, amplified the sound. But the dog pen isn't too bad.

[@Oakeyy]

Just before he said, "Don't turn up your volume" I turned it up...

[@SopanKotbagi]

I used to play around with my headphones doing these noise-cancelling experiments in my school after learning about the double-slit experiment one day. Good times...

[@menna6144]

I was turning up the volume just one second into the video. You got me lol

[@rafee9442]

Also, on headphones, since one channel is inverted it sound like the sound is coming straight from my skull

[@user-fo9fe2mc2d]

Thank you so much omg when i turn off my mono audio its so easy now to know where's my enemy is..... its hard to know if my enemy are in the right or to the left side and its much fun to listen to asmr

[@anonymousmafia3197]

Him : *Don't adjust your volume* Me : *Why do I listen to him?*

[@CuriousGoose]

It didn't work for me, sounded completely normal. Edit: it doesn't work with Dolby Atmos. Worked perfectly when I turned it off.

[@anindabanerjee1136]

Great Man Following you since 5k subs 😍

[@rhomis]

This happened to me by accident. I was using AUDACITY last year and thought there was a glitch when I was trying to separate "noise" for a tutorial video.

[@Pa-1]

I wonder if this can be used to silence the sound of vehicles near an hospital or school or even near a residential area...

[@notlatif6214]

Pa -1 No

[@ArtsyFbShirose]

Can I do this with a particular instrument in the music?

[@anuragsub]

In techniques like hemispheric sync or binaural beats, the two different waves ( waves with slightly different frequencies ) used in left and right channels/ears get resolved by the brain hemispheres itself and do not necessarily need to physically crash with each other to produce the superimposed beat effect. But in this case, its kind of strange to know that the two hemispheres of the brain do not resolve the opposite phase waves by itself. You always have to make the waves of opposite phase physically meet to cancel them out.

[@sangramjitchakraborty7845]

That's probably because the brain can interpret the frequency but not the phase.

[@Panchu800]

80 dislikes do not have ears 😂

[@robinrai4973]

That's how active noise cancelling works, right?

[@ABaumstumpf]

Kinda - active noise cancellation works by picking up the noise (with microphones) and repeating it with the inverted signal - and doing so with as close to a matching phase as possible, taking into consideration the distance from the microphones to the speakers as well as the time it takes processing, as well as the acoustic characteristics of the headphones. But this here... he just set the sound to 0 before exporting (that is what he actually did with adding the track onto it self - the exported video has no sound-information what so ever at those parts so there is no cancelation)

[@sef2273]

This isn’t noise cancellation . This is telling your speaker not to make sound vs here’s a sound present in the room and we’re going to combat that.

[@jamestsai6826]

This is literally "sound of the silence". Lol

[@tiktokvideocompilation2322]

Hey action lab please read this make a web fluid with nylon 6,10 with a little "na23545.3valaxipirin I'm a retired chemist and I don't know where to buy

[@Kaxlon]

Love it! This phenomenon also happens if your swap + and - on just one loudspeaker, it's called out of phase. Another cool audio phenomenon is to attach both + speaker outputs to one loudspeaker. It removes the center image, i.e. the vocals. If you do this on the speaker output remember to keep the volume low. A better solution is to do this mod on a external cable attached to your line/CD in.

[@abhishekpatnaik144]

Cause the total phase of 2 waves will be cancelling and that equals zero simple ..🤣

[@5tegosaurus150]

Now we just need to find a way to apply this noise cancellation in a way that allows us to play hentai on speakers in max volume without the sound escaping out of the room.

[@padkirsch]

😂😂😂 stop it... LOL

[@Natsu-kd1lk]

I like your videos! With you, i am always learning new things🔥

[@gilberttheregular8553]

It literally removed the sound on my phone.

[@basseldahdouh8736]

Instructions weren’t clean, I adjusted my volume

[@arham-abbas]

Hello Organisms, We have looked into this issue and are working on to fix the bug. The issue will be fixed in the next EARTH 2.0.152 update. By that time keep LIVING on. Your very own, GOD (Head Developer)

[@mystcat3]

And thats how Demucs work, basically is making instrumentals of any song using an AI

[@eniklisnihm4565]

Used to transmit signals on radio this way over long distances, then at the other end invert the wave form of one, and all the noise that was introduced to the line during the time it took to get to the destination you end up with a crystal clear transmission, so sad this isn't used in hour radios now :(

[@eniklisnihm4565]

ON two way simultaneous you invert the opsite signal on one side, and you completely kill all feedback!

[@SuBuYt]

Me wearing air pods pro with noise cancellation turned on Nd listening to a noise cancelled audio 🤨🤨🤨🤨

[@Ender_Onryo]

Video start: You're going to be doing some experiments.

[@Ender_Onryo]

And I forgot that Ctrl + Enter hits reply instead of going down a line. Oops.

[@Pot4t0]

This is pretty amazing, and got me thinking: What if you put a youtube video with a copyrighted song in the background, but make the song inverted? Will it recognize the song? Would you even be allowed to use it? Because technically it is literally the opposite of the copyrighted song?

[@ep1phany62]

I did it with ear buds, holding them near each other and pointing them towards me at about 45 degrees from each other and it works. It’s not perfect, but the clip is significantly muted compared to the other audio in the video.

[@jojonath1563]

does anyone else feel odd in their ears after watching 4:34 multiple times in a row? the feeling I am experiencing is not pain but it's ... uncomfortable.

[@vaporinsider]

It feels as if the sound is pressing on the skull from the inside

[@bryand9689]

Anyone else stick their ear up to their phone speaker to see if you could hear anything at all and then he started talking and you almost blew an eardrum and shit yourself?

[@Owen_loves_Butters]

When you shift the balance in either direction for iPhones, it is louder

[@ladindustries1570]

Amazing video. I have been wanting to mess with noise cancelation myself. Does anyone know what audio editor is being used?

[@justablank1184]

Another method of experimentation for you guys if you have two devices: set one device at 0:13 set the other device at 0:40 watch the magic :0 (make sure you got to play them at the same time and same volume)

[@Electronieks]

You can do this by switch cables of one speaker in a stereo setup with mono audio

[@markuspl4y]

Dam noice canceling headphones at its limit

[@jonathanschenck8154]

A strange faint Clicking sound seems to occur in stereo sound cancelling out.

[@tanaykewalramani7292]

I broke my headphones thanks to your flexing and bending. YOU HAVE TO PAY ME NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW!!!

[@id104335409]

If your next video has a thumbnail with two speakers and a mellon sitting between them - IM NOT WATCHING THAT VIDEO!

[@babajaiy8246]

Wrong. You didn't cancel the audio coming out of my speakers. You cancelled the audio before it came out of my speakers; even before the data got to my computer over the net. That's why I didn't hear it.

[@suryapulya2195]

If you can try sticking your superconductor to a wall in a metal thermos and hover the whole thing on the giant magnet (maybe putting more liquid nitrogen in it to stay cool), can we achieve Levitation forever?

[@id104335409]

Too late, I maxed out my volume!

[@marktaylor8659]

So, if you suffer from tinnitus, could you invert the sound you hear, play it through headphones (or hearing aids) and it would cancel the hissing or ringing sound out?

[@pipitsartana5804]

0:00 I think my earphone its brocken

[@vishva8kumara]

4:45 This sounds weird in an inexplicable way, like you are talking from the behind.

[@Ghozer]

I used to use this method to make acapellas from full tracks, if I could source the original backing only (instrumental) you could invert that, and overlay on the full track, and be left with vocals only! :D It's an age-old method xD

[@blgamey992]

Are you Einstein's son? Btw I love your video, I learn so many things that are useful in school...