Removal of repeating sound in sound space

Question

I'm not entirely sure if this is the right place to ask, but here goes.

From my bedroom window I can hear a faint repeating beeping. Always the same beep, always the same period apart. Sometimes I notice it less because of other noices, but it's always there.

My question is whether or not it is possible (or feasible) to make a recording of this sound and invert it, and then have a small speaker in the window repeat this inverted beep to sort of cancel out the sound. Like a sort of faux active noice cancelling.

Answer 1

To be honest, it would take longer & be more effort to attempt to get your playback exactly out of phase with the beep than it would to take a large hammer & go find where it's coming from;-)

Seriously - it's theoretically possible, but highly impractical.

Answer 2

Tetsujin has a good point with the hammer idea. Phase cancellation sounds like a cool idea in theory, but it doesn't really work in practice because sound is so chaotic once it propagates. If your cancellation signal is even slightly wrong, then it's just going to add to the annoying noise.

If the sound is really annoying to you, try a white noise generator. If the beep isn't too loud, you can mask it with white noise, which is much less irritating because of the way your ear habituates to it.