Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Pay there
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? It is time for a classic episode of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. This episode originally published on June first, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: and it is titled SSH How Soundproofing Works. And Noel
Speaker 1: Brown now an incredible executive producer, a host of ridiculous history,
Speaker 1: a host of stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: Back then he was a producer, but like a supervising producer.
Speaker 1: Now he wears so many hats which we get to
Speaker 1: see whenever he's on one of our all hands meetings.
Speaker 1: He joined the show to talk about how soundproofing works.
Speaker 1: So enjoy this classic episode. So one of the things
Speaker 1: I like to do on the show is at the
Speaker 1: end of every episode, I invite you guys to send
Speaker 1: me requests, ideas topics for future episodes. And today's episode
Speaker 1: is due to that. So I'm going to read a
Speaker 1: little bit of listener. May dude, we used to have
Speaker 1: a whole Clackson all right, here he goes, Hey you
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. First off, I want to thank you for
Speaker 1: putting out your content as I'm a huge fan of
Speaker 1: this casual learning movement. Might need a better term for that.
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you'd be able to do an
Speaker 1: episode on acoustics and sound dampening for studios, like how
Speaker 1: they're measured, tuned, made, et cetera. It would be awesome
Speaker 1: and spectacular as I would be able to harness the
Speaker 1: power to put together a kick ass setup. Thanks again
Speaker 1: for what you do. Dubnosis well dubbed, We're going to
Speaker 1: do that for you. And that's really the reason why
Speaker 1: I asked Noel to come in here, because Noel, as
Speaker 1: a producer and sound engineer type person, has had real
Speaker 1: world experience with this, and so we're going to rely
Speaker 1: heavily upon his perspective some of the stories he has
Speaker 1: to tell about the process of trying to make a
Speaker 1: room more soundproof or tuning a room so that you're
Speaker 1: getting the sound you want while you're recording, Because, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, sound is a pretty tricky thing when
Speaker 1: you boil it down. Sound is vibration, right, It's just
Speaker 1: particles banging together. It is a thing you gotta wrangle.
Speaker 1: We often consider sound to just be this thing we
Speaker 1: perceive with our ears. But what's really happening is a
Speaker 1: little more granular than that. Sound is particles that are vibrating.
Speaker 1: Typically we're hearing things that are coming through over the air,
Speaker 1: like actual air around us. So you listening to this
Speaker 1: right now, you can hear my voice. Well, what's actually
Speaker 1: happening is that some are vibrating some air molecules, and
Speaker 1: that is compressing and decompressing those molecules. It's changing the pressure,
Speaker 1: increasing and then decreasing the pressure at frequencies and amplitudes
Speaker 1: that your ears pick up and then you perceive a sound.
Speaker 1: So this is happening through all sorts of media, not
Speaker 1: just air. It can pass through solid matter, it can
Speaker 1: pass through liquid and depending on how the particles are
Speaker 1: packed and the space between them, sound may move better
Speaker 1: through one medium than through another. Now, knowing that sound
Speaker 1: can travel through different media, you also need to know
Speaker 1: that it can transfer from one medium to another medium. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if I'm shouting really really loudly in a
Speaker 1: little room, some of that sound when it makes contact
Speaker 1: with the wall, actually causes the wall to move. Now,
Speaker 1: it's not causing the wall to move a lot, but
Speaker 1: it is making the wall vibrate a little bit, those
Speaker 1: vibrations get transferred through the wall to the other side,
Speaker 1: and that's why if you're in a place that has
Speaker 1: flimsy walls, you can hear someone in another room. The
Speaker 1: sound is actually transferring through.
Speaker 2: Not to mention in the room itself, that sound is
Speaker 2: actually reflecting back at you. And the quality of the
Speaker 2: sound can depend can vary greatly depending on the material
Speaker 2: that the room is built out of or treated with.
Speaker 1: Right right, So some of the sounds getting transferred through
Speaker 1: the material, some of the sound is being bounced back
Speaker 1: from the material towards you, and a lot of that
Speaker 1: depends upon the hardness of the material, Like a really
Speaker 1: hard material is going to bounce a lot more sound
Speaker 1: back at you, which is why if you are in
Speaker 1: a large room with a lot of hard surfaces you
Speaker 1: get that echoe sound. Or if you're out someplace like
Speaker 1: at a canyon and you do a shout and you
Speaker 1: get that echo back, it's because the sound is going
Speaker 1: out hitting the walls of the canyon, bouncing back to you,
Speaker 1: and that's when you get to experience that effect. Well, obviously,
Speaker 1: this means that if you want to create a place
Speaker 1: where the sound can't escape or leak into and a
Speaker 1: lot of recording studios, you want both of those things right.
Speaker 1: You don't want the sound from the studio to leak outward,
Speaker 1: but you also definitely don't want outside sound to leak
Speaker 1: in to the stereovery important then you have to figure out, well,
Speaker 1: how do we limit how do we work within the
Speaker 1: physical constraints of the way sound works, so that we
Speaker 1: can limit that as much as possible and try to
Speaker 1: have the purest experience as we can. So one thing
Speaker 1: you can remember is that sound, because it's a physical
Speaker 1: activity and because it relies on energy, the way it
Speaker 1: works is that you've got a source of the sound.
Speaker 1: Sound waves travel outward concentrically outward from that source, and
Speaker 1: they get weaker as they travel out that that energy
Speaker 1: starts to dissipate. You can think of it kind of
Speaker 1: like you know, each each time of part article has
Speaker 1: to bang up against another one to move it, some
Speaker 1: of that energy ends up getting lost. So the further
Speaker 1: way you are from a source of sound, the quieter
Speaker 1: it is. That's why that happens. So one way you
Speaker 1: can limit the way sound comes out of a room
Speaker 1: is you make an enormous room, like you have a
Speaker 1: little room in a really big room. But that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily the most practical approach.
Speaker 2: Actually, there's a studio I used to intern in Athens,
Speaker 2: Georgia called Chase Park Transduction, and they essentially built their
Speaker 2: studio inside of a larger warehouse space. So they're renting
Speaker 2: a space in the strip of big, giant, very high
Speaker 2: ceilin warehouse spaces. But when you go into the studio,
Speaker 2: you're in the warehouse. But then there's a smaller basically
Speaker 2: building inside that warehouse that is the one that receives
Speaker 2: all the acoustic treatments. But it's like you said, I
Speaker 2: mean that is one way of dealing with it is air.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the room within a room approach is often how
Speaker 1: it's referred to, and sometimes it is not as obvious
Speaker 1: that like it may be that it looks like the
Speaker 1: room you're walking into. It might be like it's it's
Speaker 1: in a little alcover hallway, but that hallway is actually
Speaker 1: showing where the walls are where there's an air gap
Speaker 1: between the two walls to mitigate any sound coming into
Speaker 1: the space.
Speaker 2: Sure, even this glass window that we have in the
Speaker 2: booth that we're recording in right now, it's a double
Speaker 2: paned window. So in between these two relatively thick pieces
Speaker 2: of glass is a little layer of air, which in
Speaker 2: and of itself acts as a bit of a sound
Speaker 2: dampening insulation device.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, So some other little elements of sound that
Speaker 1: we need to remember. There are two main components to
Speaker 1: a sound wave that are important to keep in mind.
Speaker 1: One is amplitude or volume. So if you are looking
Speaker 1: at the way we typically show a sound wave which
Speaker 1: is on like an X versus y graph, you know
Speaker 1: those those sine wave style graphs, the height and depth
Speaker 1: of the troughs that represents the amplitude how out the
Speaker 1: sound is. Then you have the frequency of sound, the
Speaker 1: number of times sound cycles within a second. That determines
Speaker 1: the pitch of a sound.
Speaker 2: So a low frequency, obviously would be a perceived as
Speaker 2: a lower deeper note or tone, and a high frequency,
Speaker 2: with those peaks and troughs moving gradually more closer together,
Speaker 2: is going to be perceived.
Speaker 3: As a higher pitch.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: A good way to think about this too, is if
Speaker 2: anyone's familiar with the instrument the theremon. There are two
Speaker 2: controls on a theremin. One is the antenna that goes upward,
Speaker 2: and there's an antenna on the side. The antentna on
Speaker 2: the side, you use your hand by moving it closer
Speaker 2: to or farther away, you are changing the amplitude, and
Speaker 2: that's perceived as a change in volume. The antenna going up.
Speaker 2: As you move your hand closer to it or farther away,
Speaker 2: you are changing the frequency. So with those two controls
Speaker 2: you can basically shape the way the sound is.
Speaker 1: Perceived, right, And it's important to remember these things because,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, different approaches to sell proofing are
Speaker 1: effective for different frequencies.
Speaker 3: Definitely, right, So there might be one.
Speaker 1: That you're like, oh, this is this is perfect. I
Speaker 1: can't hear my neighbors anymore. But then it turns out
Speaker 1: that when your neighbors put on an album that has
Speaker 1: a lot of base in it, it comes right through.
Speaker 3: Or start yelling at each other for whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if the amplitude is loud enough, it may be
Speaker 1: that your soundproofing isn't going to be us.
Speaker 3: When people yell, sometimes they tend to raise.
Speaker 1: The pitch all right, right right, the pitch goes up
Speaker 1: enough that I got you. Yeah, So these are things
Speaker 1: that you have to take into consideration if you're trying
Speaker 1: to soundproof, and obviously what you are trying to accomplish,
Speaker 1: like the reason why you're soundproofing, that'll play into it
Speaker 1: as well, because if all you're trying to do is
Speaker 1: just make it quieter so that you know, you don't
Speaker 1: have like you're designing a building, maybe it's a hotel,
Speaker 1: and you want to make sure that the people talking
Speaker 1: in one room doesn't bleed over into other rooms. That's
Speaker 1: one type of soundproofing. If you're trying to make a
Speaker 1: professional recording studio, that's another type.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: From a construction standpoint, like the base level soundproofing is drywall,
Speaker 2: so you have drywall, and that is where if you're
Speaker 2: in a hotel that only uses drywall, people are gonna
Speaker 2: be able to hear every single thing that's going on
Speaker 2: next door.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's when you start basically stuffing that drywall with other
Speaker 2: denser materials or you know, highly rated soundproofing materials, that's
Speaker 2: when you can really cut down on that transfer between
Speaker 2: the rooms.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And also there are some other techniques you could use
Speaker 1: as well that I'll get into that, and it's all
Speaker 1: about how do you make it harder for the sound
Speaker 1: to travel from one place to another, because sound is
Speaker 1: going to travel no matter what. It's not like we
Speaker 1: have created a material that just sucks up sound totally.
Speaker 1: We've got a lot of materials that resist vibration and
Speaker 1: that means that they don't transfer sound very well. But
Speaker 1: and in fact the studio has some of that around us.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's other stuff you have to take
Speaker 1: into consideration as well. Now, there are four general elements
Speaker 1: to soundproofing, and we've we've kind of touched on a
Speaker 1: few of them, but one of the big ones is
Speaker 1: called decoupling. Now, decoupling is a construction term. When you're
Speaker 1: talking about decoupling, you're talking about the way the walls
Speaker 1: of the soundproofed area are actually constructed. So you were
Speaker 1: just talking about dry wall. The typical way a wall
Speaker 1: is constructed is you've got studs and attached to the
Speaker 1: studs are the anchor points for the dry wall. And
Speaker 1: in a typical wall, the studs are connected on either
Speaker 1: side by drywall for one side of the wall and
Speaker 1: dry wall for the other side of the wall. So
Speaker 1: if you can think of it like the interior wall
Speaker 1: versus the exterior wall of a room, The problem with
Speaker 1: that is that when sound hits the dry wall, then
Speaker 1: sound can travel through the dry wall through the studs,
Speaker 1: which transmits sound. They're a pretty good conductor for sound
Speaker 1: to the other side of the drywall, and then you
Speaker 1: get sound bleeding out or you have sound bleeding in
Speaker 1: from the outside. So decoupling is a process where you
Speaker 1: would build a wall so that the studs don't touch
Speaker 1: both sides of.
Speaker 3: The wall exactly.
Speaker 1: You would have a series of studs that one side
Speaker 1: the interior wall are attached to, and a different series
Speaker 1: of studs that the exterior wall are attached to. They
Speaker 1: both extend well into the gap between the two walls,
Speaker 1: but they don't touch the other side.
Speaker 2: So one side could be receiving sound waves and potentially
Speaker 2: transfer those but since they're not touching, it's much more
Speaker 2: difficult for that to happen.
Speaker 1: Right, because air is not as good a conductor of
Speaker 1: sound as a solid object is, which is weird.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't think that because I mean, here we are
Speaker 2: in a room talking to each other, right, and the
Speaker 2: air is basically what's connecting us.
Speaker 1: But the interesting thing though, is that the way you
Speaker 1: can tell this, it's very easy way to tell it's
Speaker 1: the old kid game of a telephone where you get
Speaker 1: two cans in a string, right, you punch holes in
Speaker 1: the bottom of the cans, you run the string through
Speaker 1: the holes, you stretch it taut, and then you can
Speaker 1: whisper into one can and hear it on the other side.
Speaker 1: But if you whisper that same volume across the room,
Speaker 1: you can't hear it. So again, that shows that the
Speaker 1: physical media is actually more or medium i should say,
Speaker 1: is actually more efficient at transferring the sound than air is.
Speaker 1: So air pockets are actually really important when you're soundproofing,
Speaker 1: you know, designing a soundproof room. Typically you would pair
Speaker 1: decoupling with some of the other elements, and I'll go
Speaker 1: ahead and mention what those elements are, and then we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about how you would put it all together.
Speaker 1: So you've got absorption another important element. This is obviously
Speaker 1: using a material that slows down sound. It absorbs some
Speaker 1: of the sounds, so that sound essentially loses some of
Speaker 1: its energy and it thus is quieter. It doesn't it
Speaker 1: doesn't leak out as much because the amplitude gets reduced
Speaker 1: as a result. So absorption you achieve usually through using
Speaker 1: some sort of insulation material like I mean, fiberglass is
Speaker 1: a simple example where you would put that in the wall,
Speaker 1: in the gap between the two sides of the wall
Speaker 1: to two pieces of drywall.
Speaker 3: I saw one even saying denim.
Speaker 2: You can use different like fabric type materials, the cotton
Speaker 2: or something like that.
Speaker 1: The important thing is that whatever you use, you cannot
Speaker 1: pack too densely exactly, because if it's too dense, that's
Speaker 1: going to transfer sound and you're back to the same
Speaker 1: problem you were at before. And you also want to
Speaker 1: still have some air gap there too. You don't want
Speaker 1: the material to make contact completely through the gap. You
Speaker 1: would pack kind of like half of the gap, a
Speaker 1: little more than half of the gap. Typically with insulating
Speaker 1: material you leave an air gap, and that really creates
Speaker 1: a great cushion for sound. We'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about how that can go wrong, though. The coupling
Speaker 1: in particular can make certain things a little more difficult.
Speaker 1: There's also damping sound dampening. This is where you use
Speaker 1: some sort of material that resists vibration. So like the
Speaker 1: foam we have here, there's some we've got some dampening
Speaker 1: foam in here, but the typically you look at a
Speaker 1: lot of things like adhesives that are used to dampen sound.
Speaker 1: One of the ones I keep hearing about over and
Speaker 1: over is green glue. Green glue is yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: very popular, particularly apparently in Canada, but it's popular along
Speaker 1: among soundproofing technicians. It is considered to be one of
Speaker 1: the most effective for the least amount of money solutions
Speaker 1: for sound damping material. But typically this would be a
Speaker 1: layer that would also be part of your wall that
Speaker 1: resists the vibration of sound and so it won't transfer
Speaker 1: sound as well. It's again something that you would apply
Speaker 1: between two constrained layers, so it's not like it's not
Speaker 1: like you would coat this on the interior wall. That
Speaker 1: would be a bad idea. It would be on the
Speaker 1: backside of the interior wall.
Speaker 2: It might even be something you could use as an
Speaker 2: adhesive for other sound dampening material exact acoustic Follmer tile.
Speaker 1: And then the last element is really the simplest is mass.
Speaker 1: It's just that heavier things are harder to move than
Speaker 1: lighter things, right, It's just the basic idea, like if
Speaker 1: you had a cart filled with concrete blocks, it would
Speaker 1: be a little heavy to push. But if you had
Speaker 1: that same cart and it was filled with feathers. It's
Speaker 1: easy to.
Speaker 3: Push, So I've got something for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it uses all of those elements in a pretty
Speaker 2: perfect example, one of the more perfect examples of soundproofing
Speaker 2: that we can see in the real world. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure I think Microsoft has maybe outdone them at this point,
Speaker 2: but there is a place in Minneapolis, Minnesota called ore
Speaker 2: Field Laboratories and it contains what was I believe again
Speaker 2: until recently, the world's most silent room.
Speaker 3: Yes, world record for the most silent room.
Speaker 2: It is ninety nine point nine to nine percent sound absorbent,
Speaker 2: and in order to accomplish this, it uses a combination
Speaker 2: of very very very heavy materials. It's got concrete walls,
Speaker 2: steel reinforcement, and then on the inside of the room,
Speaker 2: I'm looking at a picture right now, it has these
Speaker 2: alternating sort of thin looking things. So you've got like
Speaker 2: three and then going from left to right, and then
Speaker 2: three right next to it, going vertically, and they alternate
Speaker 2: throughout every panel in this room and then even on
Speaker 2: the floor. And what you stand on is a metal
Speaker 2: grate that goes on top of another series of these
Speaker 2: alternating little units, and.
Speaker 3: Apparently The longest anyone has been able.
Speaker 2: To stand being in this room alone with the lights
Speaker 2: out is forty five minutes, because people start to hallucinate
Speaker 2: right this level of silence.
Speaker 1: I've heard such things. It's the sort of thing every
Speaker 1: time I hear it, I have the reaction that I
Speaker 1: think ninety nine percent of people have, which is I
Speaker 1: bet I could go longer. Sure, And of course I'd
Speaker 1: probably be in there for like three minutes and be
Speaker 1: convinced I'd been in there for three hours, because once
Speaker 1: you get to a point where or something that you
Speaker 1: have taken for granted, you know, just the ambient sounds
Speaker 1: that you can hear once that's gone, that really does
Speaker 1: make a big difference, and it is a psychologically powerful experience.
Speaker 1: But I still kind of want.
Speaker 3: To do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great way of kind of summing up
Speaker 1: all of these elements. Now, if you want to really
Speaker 1: sound proof of room, the best thing to do is
Speaker 1: to incorporate as many of those as you possibly can,
Speaker 1: because they're different. Ones are good for different parts of
Speaker 1: that frequency range we're talking about, So some of them
Speaker 1: are really good for those mid to high range frequencies.
Speaker 1: Some of them are a little better at the low frequencies.
Speaker 1: So obviously you want to have a good combination otherwise
Speaker 1: you're gonna have certain sounds come through even if you've
Speaker 1: perfectly blocked the room for other ones, and that can
Speaker 1: be really frustrating.
Speaker 2: There's literally a cutoff or a threshold where if you
Speaker 2: looked on a graph that can show you what frequencies
Speaker 2: are happening, you could literally track okay, at this frequency,
Speaker 2: now I can hear it.
Speaker 1: Noel and I will be back to talk more about
Speaker 1: how soundproofing works after this quick break. So kind of
Speaker 1: going back to decoupling a little bit, the size of
Speaker 1: the air cavity between the two sides of the decoupled
Speaker 1: wall determines something called the resonant frequency of that So
Speaker 1: here's one of the problems with decoupling. That air cavity
Speaker 1: ends up acting kind of like a spring, right, So
Speaker 1: springs actually have a resonant frequency, and if you end
Speaker 1: up vibrating something at the resonant frequency, it causes that
Speaker 1: thing to vibrate very very easily.
Speaker 3: Sure, the big example of this.
Speaker 1: That everyone is familiar with is the crystal glass. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: the opera singer hitting that note, that's the resonant frequency
Speaker 1: for it you can actually see the last to form
Speaker 1: and ultimately break.
Speaker 3: Now or even someone that can play those glasses where
Speaker 3: they fill it up with water and run their finger
Speaker 3: around the rim.
Speaker 2: In order for it to start making that tone, it
Speaker 2: has to reach that resonant frequency exactly, So basically self
Speaker 2: oscillate exactly.
Speaker 1: So here's the problem with the decoupled walls is that
Speaker 1: that air gap, because it's acting like a spring and
Speaker 1: because it can resonate if it's not at the proper
Speaker 1: thickness for the air gap, that resonant frequency may be
Speaker 1: within the range of sounds that you're going to generate
Speaker 1: either inside or outside the room, within the range of
Speaker 1: human hearing, which means they're going to impact that sound
Speaker 1: proofing it. If something actually is played at that frequency,
Speaker 1: it'll go Not only will it go through the wall,
Speaker 1: it'll go through the wall more easily than it would
Speaker 1: have if you hadn't decoupled the wall because that resonance.
Speaker 1: So that is one of the things you actually have
Speaker 1: to take into account. And one of the solutions to
Speaker 1: that is don't make it too thin of an air gap.
Speaker 1: So another way of experimenting this with this yourself, if
Speaker 1: you want to just have some fun, And by fun,
Speaker 1: I mean like you know, mister Wizard style fun. You
Speaker 1: get a bottle and you know, if you blow across
Speaker 1: the opening of the bottle, it produces a tone. Well,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how hard you blow, it's always going
Speaker 1: to play that one tone. But if you add water
Speaker 1: to the bottle, you have decreased the volume of air
Speaker 1: the bottle can hold and that changes the tone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, back to the glasses.
Speaker 2: They could have, you know, the same size glasses, but
Speaker 2: they generate different tones from each one by putting a
Speaker 2: different amount of water in each way.
Speaker 1: Right, right, it's not just the size of the glass,
Speaker 1: but how much liquid is in the glass. So what
Speaker 1: you would like to do is make sure that your
Speaker 1: soundproofing technique was going to take care of those maybe
Speaker 1: mid to high range frequencies, and then make sure that
Speaker 1: the air gap would push would resonate at one of
Speaker 1: those frequencies so that the other elements of your soundproofing
Speaker 1: take care of it and it doesn't pass through. If
Speaker 1: your resonant frequency is too low and you didn't really
Speaker 1: protect against that, it's going to pass right on in.
Speaker 1: So there's also something called the triple leaf effect. And
Speaker 1: I had to look this up in a couple different
Speaker 1: locations to find out what the triple leaf effect is
Speaker 1: because I don't know if you know this, NOL. I
Speaker 1: haven't built any houses recently, that's fair. So the triple
Speaker 1: leaf effect is all about a construction of a wall,
Speaker 1: like a dry wall, and they refer to each sheet
Speaker 1: of drywall as a leaf. Sure, so you've got the
Speaker 1: interior wall that is one leaf. You've got the exterior
Speaker 1: wall that is a second leaf. In a triple leaf approach,
Speaker 1: you actually have a third sheet of a dry wall
Speaker 1: that's in between the two. It's inside the wall.
Speaker 2: It's further compartmentalizing it essentially, right, And you might do
Speaker 2: this and think, oh, well, that's going to end up
Speaker 2: protecting against sound even better.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily, it actually can cause a problem because it
Speaker 1: can create if the air cavity between the middle leaf
Speaker 1: and one side is too small, it can create those
Speaker 1: resonance problems. So people actually refer to as the triple
Speaker 1: leaf problem.
Speaker 2: So this is not necessarily a technique you want to
Speaker 2: go for. This is describing a problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there are some proof technicians who say, if
Speaker 1: you have a triple leaf wall, and you're having these
Speaker 1: resonant issues. The solution is actually to tear open the wall,
Speaker 1: remove that triple leaf, that third sheet of dry wall,
Speaker 1: the one that's in between the other two. Take that out,
Speaker 1: and then it'll create a thicker air gap between the
Speaker 1: two sides, and that will end up changing the resonance problem.
Speaker 3: I guess I could see that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it does introduce more of a variable into
Speaker 2: the equation, and as opposed to just having two having
Speaker 2: a third one there there is more ways the sound
Speaker 2: could potentially bounce around or catch that resonant frequency.
Speaker 1: Right, And you know we talked the bit about echo
Speaker 1: and about how sound can bounce off of hard surfaces.
Speaker 3: We talk about the Bunnymen.
Speaker 1: No, we didn't talk about the Bunnymen.
Speaker 3: You know they're playing in Atlanta soon, are they really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh wow? I would much prefer to see them than
Speaker 1: insane clown posse.
Speaker 3: But you already missed insane clowns.
Speaker 1: I know they played earlier this week, yesterday, day before yesterday. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually wanted to invite them over so we could
Speaker 1: explain how magnets work. But that's that's neither here nor there.
Speaker 3: No no in their heart.
Speaker 1: I hope so well, you know, they get made a
Speaker 1: whole video about it. But the echoes can be an
Speaker 1: issue obviously in recording studios things like that, you don't
Speaker 1: want there to be If there's going to be any echo,
Speaker 1: you wanted to be there on purpose, not because of
Speaker 1: just that's the way the room was built. Same here
Speaker 1: for our studio. We don't want too much echo here.
Speaker 1: And we are in a building that's made out of concrete.
Speaker 1: Now that in some ways that's good because it helps
Speaker 1: dampen sound from other areas. Unless something is making direct
Speaker 1: contact with the concrete, then we can all hear it everywhere.
Speaker 1: Like whenever there's construction going on, you can hear it
Speaker 1: move through the concrete coll and floors and ceilings.
Speaker 3: Gremlin.
Speaker 1: It is disturbing.
Speaker 3: They're very strange.
Speaker 1: We play the game what construction equipment? Do you think
Speaker 1: that is?
Speaker 2: Sometimes you just don't know because the sound can mutate
Speaker 2: based on what it's vibrating too, you know, right, it
Speaker 2: might be a little drill that's vibrating a giant piece
Speaker 2: of metal, and then that's vibrating something else, and the
Speaker 2: time we gets to us, it sounds like there's a
Speaker 2: giant playing hopscotch ups there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it could be a little distracting. Fortunately, most of
Speaker 1: the spaces in the building we're in now have been
Speaker 1: built out because when we moved into this building we
Speaker 1: were one of the first offices here.
Speaker 3: It was bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that just meant that we had construction noises
Speaker 1: pretty much consistently throughout the whole experience. So that has
Speaker 1: been reduced dramatically over time. But one of the other
Speaker 1: things is that you know, we when since we have
Speaker 1: all this concrete, we have to figure out how to
Speaker 1: eliminate that echo. And the way you do that is
Speaker 1: typically by putting softer material on top of the harder
Speaker 1: material and that that again dampens the echo. So you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you have a castle, you probably are
Speaker 1: hanging tapestries for a couple of reasons. One, it acts
Speaker 1: like an insulator so you don't lose as much heat
Speaker 1: in those cold winters, and do when you're screaming at
Speaker 1: your servants because your food isn't on the table when
Speaker 1: the bad guys are attacking your castles. Mutton, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: want you don't want that to echo throughout the castle
Speaker 1: unless you're a villain, and which I know.
Speaker 2: When I'm decorating my castle, I tend to go with
Speaker 2: tapestry I do.
Speaker 1: I did too. I'm tapestry heavy when I do that,
Speaker 1: But it's it's sort of stuff you can do inside
Speaker 1: like a home studio too. You can hang fabric heavy
Speaker 1: fabric to help, kind.
Speaker 2: Of like the theater style curtain is excellent not only
Speaker 2: because of its of what it's the denseness of it.
Speaker 2: It bunches up like so you can kind of squeeze
Speaker 2: it together where it creates these natural kind of ripples
Speaker 2: which not only absorb the sound, they sort of diffuse
Speaker 2: it a little bit in the same way what I
Speaker 2: was describing with that World's Quiet Room. These alternating patterns
Speaker 2: of material that have little spaces in between them, they
Speaker 2: act as a diffuser for the sound.
Speaker 1: Right. And there's one other thing that we can talk about,
Speaker 1: or i'll briefly mention, which is sound cancelation. It's a
Speaker 1: little different from soundproofing. Actually in a way, it's the opposite,
Speaker 1: because you actually have to create sound with sound cancelation.
Speaker 1: The way sound cancelation works is if you were to
Speaker 1: look at that graphic representation of a sound wave, let's
Speaker 1: say it's a steady tone because that's the easiest way.
Speaker 3: To imagine it.
Speaker 1: So it's a stay tone that I don't know, three
Speaker 1: hundred herts and you're looking at a three hundred hertz
Speaker 1: sine wave, and you see where the peaks and troughs are.
Speaker 1: If you were to create a complementary sine wave where
Speaker 1: it is out of phase, so the peaks and troughs
Speaker 1: match up with the troughs and peaks, then they cancel
Speaker 1: each other out. That's the crazy thing about sound because
Speaker 1: you typically think if you add more sound to sound,
Speaker 1: it just gets louder. Like if you've ever been in
Speaker 1: a restaurant that has lots of hard surfaces, it becomes
Speaker 1: really difficult to have a conversation if it's a busy
Speaker 1: night because everyone everyone starts to talk over everyone else
Speaker 1: and it just kind of echoes. Well, it turns out
Speaker 1: that if you do add sound to sound, but you
Speaker 1: make sure it's out of phase, it cancels it and
Speaker 1: then it's as if there's no sound at all. And
Speaker 1: that's what noise canceling headphones do. They create a sound,
Speaker 1: they detect the incoming sound waves, they create complimentary sound
Speaker 1: waves that phase that out, and then you get silence
Speaker 1: as a result.
Speaker 2: So an example of that phenomenon that you don't want
Speaker 2: that actually has to be corrected. If you're in a
Speaker 2: recording studio and let's say you're recording an acoustic guitar
Speaker 2: and you want to mic it in two places. So
Speaker 2: you might put a mic on the soundhole of the
Speaker 2: acoustic guitar. Then you might want to put a mic
Speaker 2: a little further up on the neck somewhere. If those mics,
Speaker 2: since they're recording the same signal essentially, but they're spaced apart,
Speaker 2: there is the potential for phase issues between those two mics.
Speaker 2: So while it's not going to straight up cancel out
Speaker 2: the sound, it's going to change the quality.
Speaker 3: Of the sound in a way that you might not like.
Speaker 2: It might make it tinnier, or it might give it
Speaker 2: almost like one of those phaser kind of a jet
Speaker 2: engine psychedelic guitar types.
Speaker 3: Sound, you know, right, you know where it's filtered through
Speaker 3: that sound.
Speaker 2: So what you have to do is you can correct
Speaker 2: this after the fact, But there are devices that you
Speaker 2: actually can test the phase at the point you're recording
Speaker 2: and then space the mics apart accordingly. And there's even
Speaker 2: ways to like adjust the phase using these devices. So
Speaker 2: it's interesting how you're describing as sort of a practical
Speaker 2: use of this phenomenon. And then there are also versions
Speaker 2: of that happen in a recording situation that you actually
Speaker 2: have to be careful.
Speaker 1: Right, you have to correct for Yeah. So for soundproofing,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of different measuring systems to determine
Speaker 1: how soundproofed a room is, and they may or may
Speaker 1: not be useful to you if you are trying to
Speaker 1: do something like create a recording studio. So, for example,
Speaker 1: in the United States, we typically use something called the
Speaker 1: sound transmission class to explain how soundproofed a room is,
Speaker 1: and that's really a measurement of how well sound within
Speaker 1: the ranges of human voices travels through walls. So sounds
Speaker 1: outside of those frequencies, sound transmission class isn't concerned with them,
Speaker 1: because it's really more about building walls so that sound
Speaker 1: doesn't pass or walls and floors and ceilings, not just walls,
Speaker 1: but all the surfaces so that sound does not pass
Speaker 1: easily through one and into another. This would be like
Speaker 1: what hotels would be really concerned with, or people who
Speaker 1: are building homes that range by the way is about
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty five herts to four thousand herts
Speaker 1: or four killer herts. That's the typical range of frequencies
Speaker 1: of the human voice. So that's really what sound transmission
Speaker 1: class is concerned with. And it's designated by a number,
Speaker 1: and in general, the higher the number, the better the
Speaker 1: quality of soundproofing is. So if you were in a
Speaker 1: room that has like a really kind of lousy dry
Speaker 1: wall partition, it doesn't have a whole lot of you know,
Speaker 1: like it doesn't have that absorption insulation or anything like that,
Speaker 1: the number might be somewhere around twenty. But let's say
Speaker 1: you're in a high end hotel that has taken great
Speaker 1: pains to create decoupled walls with good absorption insulation, maybe
Speaker 1: some dampening material in there too, that might be closer
Speaker 1: to sixty. And so the higher number designates that it's
Speaker 1: more sound proofed than the other one. But again for
Speaker 1: that given range of frequencies, the stuff outside of that
Speaker 1: maybe not so much. Outside of the United States, people
Speaker 1: tend to use what was called the Sound reduction Index.
Speaker 1: It's the SRI. So that rating tells you how many
Speaker 1: decibels in reduction the material will provide. So if a
Speaker 1: sound is a certain amplitude a certain amount of decibels, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, is not a it's a logarithmics, so
Speaker 1: it's pretty complicated, but it'll tell you how many decibels
Speaker 1: it will reduce a sound that is generated from one
Speaker 1: space and into an adjoining space. It's dependent also upon
Speaker 1: frequencies because some are designed to it. It's something that's
Speaker 1: specifically designed to cut out those mid to high range frequencies,
Speaker 1: but it won't necessarily like that material won't necessarily cut
Speaker 1: out low frequencies. So if you get this SRI number,
Speaker 1: you have to also ask, well, what range of frequencies
Speaker 1: is that for, because it's not a blanket statement. It's
Speaker 1: not saying that any sound at any decibel will be
Speaker 1: reduced this amount. Then you finally have noise reduction coefficient.
Speaker 1: So this tells you how much sound a material can
Speaker 1: absorb versus reflect. It's expressed as a percentage, so really
Speaker 1: the percentage that you're looking at is the percentage of
Speaker 1: sound absorbed by that material. A carpet with a rubber
Speaker 1: underlay might have a point for rating. For example, that
Speaker 1: means it would absorb forty percent of the sound that
Speaker 1: hits it, reflecting back sixty percent. Like a hard concrete
Speaker 1: wall might be a point oh five, meaning it absorbs
Speaker 1: only five percent of the sound that hits it and
Speaker 1: ninety five percent gets reflected back. So those are those
Speaker 1: are how you would you know, that's like the metrics
Speaker 1: you would use. You would use actual instrumentation to detect
Speaker 1: how the sound is reverberating in the room. And you would,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously use things like microphones and stuff outside
Speaker 1: of a room to detect if there's any sound leaking out.
Speaker 1: There are also some things you got to take into account,
Speaker 1: some natural weak spots. If the room has a vent
Speaker 1: in it, which you kind of hope it will because
Speaker 1: otherwise things get real stuffy, real fast. The vent also
Speaker 1: may need to be treated. Ideally the vent will be
Speaker 1: treated with some of this material to dampen some of
Speaker 1: the sound. Otherwise it's just a conduit for sound to
Speaker 1: travel through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the room we're recording in right now, it
Speaker 2: was built out for us with some of these specs
Speaker 2: in mind. We would shows the material based on the rating,
Speaker 2: and we went with obviously a higher number. And then
Speaker 2: this glass window that I was telling about earlier that's
Speaker 2: specifically designed for a studio type environment.
Speaker 3: And what we have on the walls in here are.
Speaker 2: Similar to the layout of that World's quite as room
Speaker 2: I was talking about, except these are acoustic tiles that
Speaker 2: are made up of their squares, and they're made up
Speaker 2: of strips in a single direction, but the panels are alternating,
Speaker 2: So we have one where they're facing up and down,
Speaker 2: the one next to it they're going left to right,
Speaker 2: et cetera, and they alternate, and that helps break up
Speaker 2: the sound and make it a more dampened sound within
Speaker 2: the room and keep the sound from escaping as well.
Speaker 3: But we actually do have event in this room, and
Speaker 3: it's not particularly well treated.
Speaker 2: So what I actually end up having to do is
Speaker 2: use a very nifty bundle of software to take a
Speaker 2: print of the room tone, so you can there's a
Speaker 2: base level where if Jonathan and I were quiet right now,
Speaker 2: you probably and we sent this out without running.
Speaker 3: This process, you would hear base level room tone, air
Speaker 3: conditioning sound, whatever.
Speaker 2: So what I can do with the software is analyze
Speaker 2: thirty seconds a minute, the longer the better of that
Speaker 2: baseline sound. Then the computer analyzes that and then I
Speaker 2: apply it to the whole audio file and it gets
Speaker 2: rid of it and right, no artifacting at all, I
Speaker 2: want to say artifacting, I mean there's no digital debris
Speaker 2: leftover where you can hear. Oh, here's the sound of
Speaker 2: the effect working. It's completely transparent. And this sweet software
Speaker 2: is about two thousand dollars, so right, they're a really
Speaker 2: good job.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of software packages out there that
Speaker 1: attempt to do something similar to that, like a Audacity
Speaker 1: has the noise Removal tool, which is a very similar thing.
Speaker 1: It's looking at specific frequencies and then it looks through
Speaker 1: the entire track or those frequencies to remove those. Problem is,
Speaker 1: of course, that if you have other stuff laid on
Speaker 1: top of it, Audacity doesn't necessarily it's not necessarily able
Speaker 1: to go in and remove just the stuff that you
Speaker 1: want removed and leave everything else untouched.
Speaker 2: So well, my experience with things like this has always been,
Speaker 2: now it doesn't work, you can always tell, you can
Speaker 2: always hear it kicking in or whatever, but just in
Speaker 2: case it evens interested in. The software I'm talking about
Speaker 2: is by a company called Isotope, and it's a package
Speaker 2: called RX Advance, and it's a suite that has multiple
Speaker 2: little modules that can do different things like let's say
Speaker 2: you're picking up a hum or some kind of radio interference.
Speaker 3: It can isolate things like that.
Speaker 2: But the one I always use to give it to
Speaker 2: that air conditioning noise is it's called d noiser and
Speaker 2: it's it's fantastic cool.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that you have to worry about
Speaker 1: besides the vents are obviously doors. You want to have
Speaker 1: make sure that your doors have proper ceiling all around it, ceiling,
Speaker 1: sea l that kind of seal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like in a recording studio control room, you might
Speaker 2: see a door that has a heavy rubber strip on
Speaker 2: the bottom of it that when you close it, it
Speaker 2: literally makes a seal between the door jam and the
Speaker 2: bottom of the door, right, so it's air tight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because otherwise sound will just travel underneath.
Speaker 3: Right underneath it. Yeah, the gap.
Speaker 2: You've done all the other work and then you have
Speaker 2: a gap in the bottom of your door.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you might as well have done nothing right.
Speaker 1: It's it's not gonna it's not gonna give you the
Speaker 1: results you want. So Noel, you know we were talking
Speaker 1: before we start recording that you know, the concept of
Speaker 1: making sure the sound within a room sounds right, and
Speaker 1: this goes beyond soundproofing, but it was also part of
Speaker 1: the question sent in to us. We'll be back with
Speaker 1: more about soundproofing after this quick break, So walk us
Speaker 1: through kind of the process. If you were setting up,
Speaker 1: say a recording studio for music that would be obviously
Speaker 1: you would want to make sure that everything is just
Speaker 1: right to capture the music as the artist intended. You know,
Speaker 1: you might do some alteration on it on the back end,
Speaker 1: but you want it captured as pure as possible at the.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this goes into kind of recording philosophy in some ways.
Speaker 2: Some people might want more of a live room that
Speaker 2: has some character, some nice acoustics or something like that,
Speaker 2: and for certain things, like say recording a vocal, you
Speaker 2: might want a room with as little character as possible.
Speaker 2: So you're just getting the quality of that voice through
Speaker 2: that really nice microphone and microphone pre amplifier which is
Speaker 2: what you plug a microphone in that kind of boosts
Speaker 2: that signal and makes it audible and makes it at
Speaker 2: a level that can then be recorded into the computer
Speaker 2: or a tape machine or what have you. So that's
Speaker 2: one way of looking at it. Like for a quiet room,
Speaker 2: like a completely dead sound booth. Let's say, then you
Speaker 2: might have different little tricks you can do. So at
Speaker 2: a drum room, for example, there are ways you can
Speaker 2: use panels of wood on the floor. You might take
Speaker 2: a strip of wood and place it right underneath the
Speaker 2: kick drum the bass drum, and have a microphone kind
Speaker 2: of at the end of that, so you're the sound
Speaker 2: of the drum are sort of reflecting off of that
Speaker 2: wood and creating kind of a cool diffuse room sound.
Speaker 2: So when you mike drums, you're micing them up close.
Speaker 2: You're putting a microphone right up on the tom tom
Speaker 2: or the snare or the kick, and then a lot
Speaker 2: of times people will mix in the sound of the room,
Speaker 2: which is the whole kit, and then kind of blend
Speaker 2: those signals together, so you get that direct sound, but
Speaker 2: you also get this nice roomy tone. So in that situation,
Speaker 2: you might want a little character in your room, and
Speaker 2: you might use things like I'm talking with these strips
Speaker 2: or what have you to achieve some sort of character.
Speaker 3: Now, let's say we're talking about.
Speaker 2: A control room, which is where you're going to be
Speaker 2: mixing your music. So you have really high end, very
Speaker 2: nice high fidelities studio monitors which gives you your playback,
Speaker 2: and you know, the best studio monitors are considered to
Speaker 2: be very flat, that's the word that's used, where the
Speaker 2: frequency response isn't particularly it's.
Speaker 3: Not messed with on the speaker side.
Speaker 2: So everything that's coming out of there, you know, is
Speaker 2: to be accurate based on what you're doing, what you're
Speaker 2: putting into it, the frequencies you're adjusting on your mixing
Speaker 2: console or in your computer. The monitors themselves aren't imparting
Speaker 2: any tone or quality beyond what you're doing to it.
Speaker 1: Right, They're just neutral and only presenting the stuff that
Speaker 1: you've told it to you.
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of times they're referred to as
Speaker 2: reference monitors because the idea is, and it's not always
Speaker 2: the case that the way it sounds on those monitors,
Speaker 2: it's going to sound like.
Speaker 3: That anywhere you play it.
Speaker 2: Obviously, there are things that happen after you finish a
Speaker 2: record called mastering, where you kind of adjust to account
Speaker 2: for different types of systems that it might be played
Speaker 2: on to make sure it sounds as good as possible
Speaker 2: on any system. Sure, but in a control room when
Speaker 2: you're playing back your music you don't want bad reflections.
Speaker 2: You don't want that sound coming out of the speakers
Speaker 2: to bounce back at you in a way that changes
Speaker 2: the quality of that sound. You want it to be
Speaker 2: as flat and clean as possible. So there are little
Speaker 2: extra touches you could put in a control room that
Speaker 2: absorb certain frequencies. Like with you said, certain materials will
Speaker 2: absorb certain frequencies better. There are things you might put
Speaker 2: in the back corners of the room that fill up
Speaker 2: a corner where two walls meet, called base traps, and
Speaker 2: they are these kind of tall they can be round
Speaker 2: or squared off, and they're made of kind of dense
Speaker 2: fiberglass material covered in a particular type of fabric, and
Speaker 2: those absorb some of those base frequencies so that it's
Speaker 2: not bouncing back at you and muddying up your mix.
Speaker 3: Right. Then, you might have a lot of times you'll.
Speaker 2: See in a recording studio in the control room where
Speaker 2: you have your big mixing console, and then directly behind
Speaker 2: it against the wall, out of times there's a couch,
Speaker 2: and then above that couch there might be a weird
Speaker 2: looking wooden panel that has smaller arrays of these alternating little.
Speaker 3: Tiles sort of like what I described we.
Speaker 2: Have in our room here, but smaller and a little
Speaker 2: more dense, and those are designed to do different things
Speaker 2: to other frequencies like the mid range or the high
Speaker 2: Another thing that's really important in these control room settings
Speaker 2: is where the monitors speakers are placed. So what you
Speaker 2: might do is have an engineer that specializes in you know,
Speaker 2: building out recording studios and tuning room as what they
Speaker 2: call it, go in there and use a device that
Speaker 2: measures the way frequencies bounce around the room, and you
Speaker 2: would generate what's called a test tone or some white
Speaker 2: noise even which.
Speaker 3: Is just like you know, static kind of sound.
Speaker 2: And then you can use this device, this handheld device,
Speaker 2: it might be cooked up to a computer. There's lots
Speaker 2: of different ones that will then take a print and analyze, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is what the sound's doing. This is where this
Speaker 2: room needs some work, where we need to move the monitors.
Speaker 3: A little further away or a little closer to the wall,
Speaker 3: et cetera.
Speaker 2: So that's just a few of the ways that you
Speaker 2: can affect how the sound is actually heard within a
Speaker 2: room for different situations, whether you're recording, whether you're mixing,
Speaker 2: and listening. It's all about there are different scenarios that
Speaker 2: require different.
Speaker 1: Sure, and anyone who's listened to you know, live albums
Speaker 1: versus studio albums, or for me, even just with classical music,
Speaker 1: Like if you ever listen to classical piece that was
Speaker 1: recorded in a big sound studio where you know they
Speaker 1: got the whole orchestra in there, it can sound really amazing.
Speaker 1: But then if you hear the same sort of thing
Speaker 1: but it's played in a concert hall even without an audience,
Speaker 1: the effect is measurably different. You get that character you
Speaker 1: were talking about of the space, and different spaces have
Speaker 1: very different characters. Just as musicians may have a favorite
Speaker 1: type of amplifier that they like to use because of
Speaker 1: the tone that it helps, the tones that accentuates versus
Speaker 1: the ones that it doesn't accentuate as much, you have
Speaker 1: the same sort of stuff with these rooms. Now, Noel,
Speaker 1: let me ask you this. Let's say that some of
Speaker 1: our listeners out there are wanting to set up like
Speaker 1: a little home recording area. Maybe they want to do podcasts,
Speaker 1: maybe they want to record some acoustic music, nothing too complicated.
Speaker 1: What would be some general guidelines you would give somebody
Speaker 1: who wants to set up a space in their house
Speaker 1: meant for recording, like were what would just be some
Speaker 1: general tips, not like the super like you're gonna go
Speaker 1: and remodel your home kind of approach, but more simple
Speaker 1: ways that you can at least limit problems with sound
Speaker 1: from exterior sources or interference with the sound that you're
Speaker 1: creating in the room. What are some of your tips
Speaker 1: you would give.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot of different ways that you
Speaker 2: can make spaces in your home work, and all depends
Speaker 2: on what kind of music you're trying to record, So
Speaker 2: the choice of microphone would make a big difference. For example,
Speaker 2: So the microphones that we use in the podcast studio
Speaker 2: are what are called dynamic microphones, and then we've talked
Speaker 2: about this in the past episode. I believe they tend
Speaker 2: to record best things that are very close to them
Speaker 2: and don't necessarily pick up as much ambient sound as
Speaker 2: what's called a condenser microphone would. Now some might say
Speaker 2: that a condenser microphone gives a richer, bigger sound, but
Speaker 2: it also depends on how you use it. So I
Speaker 2: might recommend for recording vocals trying to go with like
Speaker 2: get a really nice dynamic microphone, like one of these
Speaker 2: sure SM seven B microphones we use.
Speaker 3: And they're you know, they're about three hundred bucks.
Speaker 2: They're not cheap, but they allow you to record much
Speaker 2: closer proximity. So if you're recording a guitar, for example,
Speaker 2: through an amplifier, you'd put it right up next to
Speaker 2: that amplifier and crank it so that it's not recording
Speaker 2: the signal to noise ratio is what it's called, is
Speaker 2: in favor.
Speaker 3: Of the signal.
Speaker 2: So the sound of the amplifier is the main concern.
Speaker 2: There's really no worry about recording any room tone, and
Speaker 2: you don't even have to crank up that high because
Speaker 2: the mic is so close. But in terms of little
Speaker 2: things you can do for dampening, I mean, get a
Speaker 2: pack of egg crate or like some acoustic tiles from orlex,
Speaker 2: you know, and.
Speaker 3: It's not cheap either.
Speaker 2: But then just make some little clusters, you know, make
Speaker 2: a few little squares on your wall if you can,
Speaker 2: like if you have a closet door, maybe put three
Speaker 2: or four panels and then record facing that.
Speaker 3: You know, there are also these shields you.
Speaker 2: Can get you can attach to your mic stand and
Speaker 2: basically is like a almost like a half moon shaped
Speaker 2: shield that goes behind the microphone so you're facing it,
Speaker 2: and that cuts down on reflections. There are lots of
Speaker 2: little tricks like that that you can do, but at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, it's just about how you
Speaker 2: use the stuff that you have for podcasting. Definitely go
Speaker 2: with a dynamic microphone. Talk very close to it, Cealy,
Speaker 2: it's only getting your voice and it's not recording your
Speaker 2: cat or the sound of your air conditioning.
Speaker 3: Things like that. The lower you can turn up.
Speaker 2: The mic and still get a really good signal, the
Speaker 2: better off you are, because if you have to crank
Speaker 2: it up really high, you're really far away from the mic.
Speaker 2: You're going to be picking up a whole lot of
Speaker 2: that room sounds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can tell you from experience. I record a
Speaker 1: couple of shows from home just for fun that that
Speaker 1: aren't work related, and I used to use a condenser
Speaker 1: mic because they were easy. I had a USB condencer mic,
Speaker 1: and there's nothing wrong with the mics. I'll even tell
Speaker 1: you I had a blue Snowball for a while, and
Speaker 1: we have one here. Sure, we've used it occasionally, mostly
Speaker 1: to connect through Skype or whatever. We don't record through it,
Speaker 1: but we use it to pick up our voices so
Speaker 1: people on the other end can hear us. And I
Speaker 1: also had a blue Yetti microphone. Both of them are great.
Speaker 1: I love them, but for podcasting, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: they pick up pretty much everything. And in fact, if
Speaker 1: you were to go back and listen to some of
Speaker 1: those podcasts I did, you would hear, like, what's that
Speaker 1: weird clicking noise and hearing in the background, And that
Speaker 1: clicking noise would have been my dog's toenails clicking against
Speaker 1: the hardwood floor, as as he just ran across the
Speaker 1: floor and he wasn't making any other noise.
Speaker 3: It's just click click, click, click click.
Speaker 1: But that condenser mic picked up everything.
Speaker 2: And it all comes back to what we talked about
Speaker 2: sound being sort of this organic thing that moves. I mean,
Speaker 2: you're never going to completely get rid of every bit
Speaker 2: of room noise unless you are going above and beyond.
Speaker 1: Do you going to that crazy world's most silent room approach?
Speaker 2: But you can mitigate how much of the sounds you
Speaker 2: don't want are recorded based on where you set up
Speaker 2: the mic. You want to be as far away from
Speaker 2: any noisy sources as possible. You certainly wouldn't want to
Speaker 2: record a podcast right next to your fridge.
Speaker 1: If you have an option, if you have an internal
Speaker 1: room where it doesn't share an external wall, that would
Speaker 1: be a good choice, Like like the place where my
Speaker 1: microphone is set up. I don't have a room that's into.
Speaker 1: All of my rooms face outward one way or the other,
Speaker 1: so I don't have a room that I can that
Speaker 1: is that is isolated where I could record from. So
Speaker 1: my mine is not ideal because I also live across
Speaker 1: the street from railroad tracks and marta tracks and a
Speaker 1: busy road. So I'm just fortunate that when my house
Speaker 1: was being built they built it with that in mind.
Speaker 1: They were building the external walls so that they would
Speaker 1: dampen that sound as much as possible, because the home
Speaker 1: builders knew, well, we're right next to some train tracks,
Speaker 1: so we have to take that into account when we're
Speaker 1: designing this. Un Fortunately, it doesn't often impact my recording.
Speaker 1: Once in a blue moon, if there's a freight train
Speaker 1: going by blasting its horn, you're gonna hear it, But
Speaker 1: otherwise it doesn't come through.
Speaker 2: So just to wrap up on this whole home podcast
Speaker 2: set up, I can give you a really good practical
Speaker 2: example our show stuff you missed in history class.
Speaker 3: The hosts live in different cities.
Speaker 2: Holly Fry lives here in Atlanta and records in our studios,
Speaker 2: and Tracy Wilson lives in Boston and records from her home,
Speaker 2: And so when she was getting ready to move, we
Speaker 2: had to figure out how we were going to set
Speaker 2: this up. So I kind of looked into it and
Speaker 2: did some research and recommended what to get, and what
Speaker 2: we ultimately went with is she has this.
Speaker 3: It's called the sound.
Speaker 2: Shield, I guess is the best way of referring to it.
Speaker 2: A company called sc Electronics. The product is a reflection
Speaker 2: filter ex portable vocal booth, and the idea is that
Speaker 2: the way it's pitched on Sweetwater, which is the music
Speaker 2: equipment site that I'm looking at, it is a portable
Speaker 2: acoustic treatment to reduce room ambience in untreated recording spaces.
Speaker 2: So it works pretty well as advertised. So it's this
Speaker 2: thing that kind of wraps around the back of the
Speaker 2: microphone connects to the mic stand, so she has one.
Speaker 3: Of those behind her against the wall.
Speaker 2: She has a heavy curtain like we talked about earlier
Speaker 2: as well, and so that helps dampen the sound that way.
Speaker 2: And she's using this SM seven B dynamic. Sure vocal
Speaker 2: mic or microphone doesn't have to be a vocal mic,
Speaker 2: but she.
Speaker 3: Is next to a window.
Speaker 2: So whenever the trash pickup comes, or if there's a
Speaker 2: motorcycle or something like that, you know, we've got to stop. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so you deal with what you have, and I think
Speaker 2: she's a pretty good example of a successful home setup,
Speaker 2: as well as is yours, Johnathan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you listen back to some of the episodes
Speaker 1: that we recorded before we moved to Pont City Market,
Speaker 1: there was a brief period where we were set up
Speaker 1: in an office like an actual It wasn't designed to
Speaker 1: be an audio recording studio, but was an office at
Speaker 1: the old office space and Buckhead that shared a window
Speaker 1: facing Peachtree or near Peachtree. And if you listen carefully
Speaker 1: to some of those old podcasts, not just Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: but all the other ones we record at How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: you might occasionally hear a little high pitched noise and
Speaker 1: wonder what that was, And that was baton Bob.
Speaker 3: There was also sirens. Those were the bane of our existence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sirens. We would stop for like if we heard
Speaker 1: a siren. Baton Bob. Yeah, Baton Bob is a kind
Speaker 1: of a fixture here in Atlanta. He is quite the
Speaker 1: character and often can be seen marching up and down
Speaker 1: the various streets of Atlanta in a tutu and twirling
Speaker 1: a baton and blowing a whistle. And he's a smile ambassador.
Speaker 1: I love Baton Bob, Absolutely love him. Great guy. Uh,
Speaker 1: not fantastic to have to record a podcast when you're
Speaker 1: here he is whistling up and down the street.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And talk about diy setup.
Speaker 2: We had those windows covered over with I made these
Speaker 2: panels out of that pink panther foam insulation for construction. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I nailed them and stapled them to pieces of
Speaker 2: luon and uh then had them attached to the window
Speaker 2: to cover them over. And then on top of that,
Speaker 2: we had this bright red acoustic foam in sheets that
Speaker 2: we you know, stapled on top of that and it
Speaker 2: still didn't block out well and it could high frequencies.
Speaker 1: We couldn't do anything permanent because that that wasn't something
Speaker 1: we were allowed to do in that space. It wasn't
Speaker 1: meant to be a recording studio. So we were just
Speaker 1: doing the best with what we had. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was it was. It was difficult, So it can
Speaker 1: be a challenge, but the stuff is out there. It's
Speaker 1: not like Noel is saying, it's not necessarily cheap. You
Speaker 1: can do some relatively inexpensive things to limit sound issues,
Speaker 1: but obviously you get what you pay for the more
Speaker 1: that you are able to spend on that. But do
Speaker 1: your research. But the more you're able to spend on that,
Speaker 1: the better result you are going to get. In general,
Speaker 1: just make sure that whatever outlet you're going with is
Speaker 1: highly rated, you know. Don't just hire a general contractor
Speaker 1: and go with that, because that's probably not going to
Speaker 1: give you the results you want. But obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: these are things that people in all sorts of jobs
Speaker 1: and positions worry about, whether it's professional recording artists, whether
Speaker 1: it's podcasters like us home podcasters you just want to
Speaker 1: record a demo. I mean, these are the sort of
Speaker 1: things you got to think about. So thank you very
Speaker 1: much for writing in and requesting this episode, and Noel,
Speaker 1: thank you for joining me today. Usually you're on the
Speaker 1: other side of that window we were talking about.
Speaker 3: It's true, it's nice to pass through.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great to be on this side once in
Speaker 1: a while and not stay so long that the room
Speaker 1: gets super stuffy. That's one of the things that this
Speaker 1: room in particular, it does get a little warm. Now
Speaker 1: we fixed the stuff you should know podcast room because
Speaker 1: it used to get blisteringly hot, and now it gets
Speaker 1: very cool there, and now the opposite seems to happen here.
Speaker 1: But I'm afraid to ask for anything because I don't
Speaker 1: want to end up getting gale force winds into the
Speaker 1: podcast studio. Hope you enjoyed that classic episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: Thanks again to Noel for joining the show way back
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen. I need to get him back on
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff. It has been a long time since he's
Speaker 1: been on. I should ask him what topic he would
Speaker 1: love to cover, because that dude has got a deep
Speaker 1: and wide breadth of knowledge, Like it's impressive. If I
Speaker 1: had him on to talk about music, I could just
Speaker 1: sit back and mute my mic. He could give you
Speaker 1: a masterclass in music. It's incredible what he knows. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll have to reach out to him and see if
Speaker 1: there's like a topic he would love to cover in
Speaker 1: a future episode of Text Stuff.
Speaker 3: Y'all.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions of things I should cover and
Speaker 1: tech stuff in the future, reach out to me and
Speaker 1: let me know. The best way to do that is
Speaker 1: to go over to Twitter, assuming that's still a thing,
Speaker 1: and you send me a message with the handle text
Speaker 1: stuff HSW just at tech stuff HSW let me know
Speaker 1: what you would like me to cover, or you can
Speaker 1: download the iHeartRadio app. It's free to download and free
Speaker 1: to use. Navigate over to text Stuff by putting it
Speaker 1: into the search bar, it'll take you to the podcast page.
Speaker 1: If you click on the little microphone icon, you can
Speaker 1: record a message up to thirty seconds in length. Voice message,
Speaker 1: that is, and let me know what you would like
Speaker 1: me to cover, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.