What's the point of a Spotify Premium subscription if you can't hear your music over the sounds of the subway?

Commuters far and wide have had to deal with the overwhelming noise in subway stations for years.

From the sound of people talking, boomboxes blaring, trains rattling by, and speakers playing barely audible announcements about the latest train delay, it seems like there's no way to find peace and quiet in any subway station.

But what you may not have known is that subway stations are actually designed in such a way that allows for sound to be amplified.

What is known as the 'necessary' architecture of a subway station involves creating an echo chamber of sorts.

What does that mean for us? It means that all of the sounds that occur within a subway station are trapped in there, with none of the sounds escaping to the outside world.

But thankfully, this may all change soon - or soon enough, at least. Better yet, it'll be a part of the highly anticipated Second Avenue subway line.

The Second Ave subway already sounds too good to be true - and now engineers are working to design the Second Avenue subway station in such a way that will reduce the din of every other subway station in the city.

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This feature will be making its official debut not in the first phase of the subways debut - which is set to be up and running in December, but now seems unlikely - but when construction is entirely completed on the expansion. But who knows when that will be?

Engineers have described this feature as making the subway more "acoustically pleasing environment," and we're definitely intrigued by the possibility of such an environment.


Now, this is a matter of actually seeing the Second Avenue line actually become a reality. While it may have recently been added to the official MTA subway map, we still have our doubts that we'll be seeing the extension any time soon.

But one can dream.

Check out Why the East Village Is the Place to Be in NYC Right Now.

[via Wired] [Feature Image Courtesy Wired] 

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