HACKER Q&A
📣 the_italian_job

How to effectively jam audio speakers?


My family lives in a medium sized Italian city, just in front of a cafe that has recently been bought by two guys that are notoriously part of mafia.

They turned the cafe in a wild night club, playing music _very_ loudly all night long.

Police and all sorts of organizations has been contacted without any success. One of the owners even hit a policeman without any consequences as everyone is scared of them.

The club is in a densely populated urban area, with families with kids that now are having very hard time to sleep.

In asking HN: is there any device/technique that I can use to jam their audio speakers to, hopefully, make them stop with this?

Honestly I don't know what else to do.

The apartment of my family is about 30-60 meters from the speakers.


  👤 Freak_NL Accepted Answer ✓
Stop looking for a technological solution to a people problem; move.

There is nothing you can personally do to make them stop legally, and anything you do illegally comes with a risk to your personal safety. So if the police won't uphold the law for these guys, your best bet is to simply get out. Improve the quality of your life by living somewhere else.

Other option: just wait it out and see if the problem doesn't go away on its own. This may fail though.


👤 iasay
Having dealt with a similar situation with an antisocial family, I would recommend just moving as soon as possible. It's not worth spending your time and energy on something which you can't change.

Let them chase everyone away and the local land and building owners will suffer. Eventually some knee caps will go missing thanks to someone even less reputable than the local mafia...


👤 superchroma
Investing in insulation and triple glazing is a sensible thing to do with benefits regardless of whether there is loud music playing outside or not. Good luck all the same.

👤 andyjohnson0
Directed RF interference oriented at the speakers might work, and could be physically concealed, but will almost certainly be illegal - as well as posing a risk to people with e.g pacemakers and maybe self-driving vehicles. And traceable with an RF spectrum analyser.

Counterphase directed audio? Probably impractical due to range and visible speaker pods.

But obviously the main problem is that you'd be going up against an adversary that is potentially able to use intimidation and violence, and it appears that you don't have recourse to a properly functioning legal system. There are no technological countermeasures against that.


👤 game-of-throws
You have two choices:

1. Build an EMP generator

2. Move your family away from the mafia

Option 1 may be more fun, but I recommend you just get out of there. Life is too short.


👤 btbuildem
I was very excited to see what the comments were going to be, but the mafia angle is a real bummer. There doesn't seem to be a way to mount a counter-measure without being detected.

A microwave generator combined with a parabolic dish? Not sure your apartment provides enough power to knock out electronic equipment with this, plus it's a super dangerous contraption, you could accidentally cook people alive from the inside out. It would also be pretty conspicuous.

I don't think a tech approach would be effective here. It's still violence (in the sense that you're forcing your will over that of others'), and they (the mafia) have a long history of being very good at violence. I'd steer away from any plays from their book.

Maybe a social engineering angle? You mention many other neighbours are affected -- perhaps band together to find a solution? Maybe target the demographic that attends the club. A social media campaign? I have no idea what the social norms are in Italy, could you organize a local protest and shame them out? Petition the don to order his underlings to cease?

I'm really sorry about your predicament, it's difficult when your home is intruded on like that. There's no easy solution here.


👤 Nextgrid
I've read a Reddit post a long time ago where someone used powerful amateur radio equipment to blow up a speaker wirelessly. Maybe look into this?

👤 kposehn
…interesting.

So, looking at technical solutions, one thought is using active noise cancelling. Basically, use a microphone (or several) to cause destructive interference of the sound and reduce the amplitude in your home. While this would not solve the issue for others, it would potentially help you.

I could see it being done using a measurement or other high quality calibrated microphone (miniDSP umik as an example) hooked up to a raspberry pi, which then outputs sound to another amp and some full range speakers. It may help with the more annoying sounds, but is unlikely to drown out lower frequencies and resonances in the building proper.

While I’m not an audio engineer (just an amateur speaker builder and audiophile) I am quite curious to see if there is a solution.


👤 lodovic
You could try a pair of noise cancelling speakers - not sure if that's enough to cancel out the speakers from a club though. On the other hand, if they already assaulted a policeman, be assured that the police will eventually be back.

👤 0xbeefeed
1. Make bomb threats.

2. Occassionally call in SWAT for suspected sex trafficking or drug dealing.

3. Smear their entrance with literal dogshit covertly.

4. Destroy cars of the visitors. Start by simple scratching.

5. Leave bad reviews on Google.

6. Threaten families of owners.

7. Burn down the building.


👤 jimmyc_
Are the speakers wirelesS? Listen intently for Bluetooth link up sounds.

👤 stuaxo
Old school phones getting text messages always seemed to I interfere with audio equipment not sure why.

👤 hatware
Do you think this club is using wireless speakers...?

👤 ethbr0
1) Find a local electrical engineer (EE).

2) Ask them this question.

They'll give you all the answers you might want in about 15 minutes. EEs love speaker design.


👤 h2odragon
Go into the club and poke holes in any speakers you see. All the audio links are probably wired or could be if needed so "jamming" radio mics aint likely to help for long. Destroying speakers will at least require some effort to replace.

Perhaps organize the neighbors to block the doors or otherwise make the neighborhood unwelcoming to club patrons.

If its that kinda fight; admit that you're in a fight that civil government will not help you with, and take direct action against the neighbors that are offending you. Broken bones speak louder than words.