60 Years of Active Noise and Vibration Control - a Tentative Balance

It was in the fifties of the last century when first experimental studies in active noise and vibration control were to launch intensive investigations in exploring the physical and conceptual nature of this fascinating approach. Driven by realistic hopes to overcome any constraints in computational power in the foreseeable future, these efforts caused euphoric expectations and promises which, in turn, were able to raise substantial funding for research and development.Today, the overall result of sixty years of respective work allows us to reliably figure out the practical potential of controlling sound and vibrations by superposition of additional sound and vibration fields. While the physical concepts and mechanisms are well understood and the signal processing capabilities exceed most of the real time requirements, actuator performance and economic feasibility still limit the area of application to acoustically simple fields and/or very specific cases. Based on a short review of the historic development, the paper will summarize and demonstrate the practical potential of active noise and vibration control by successful implementations.