Speaker 1: How any extraordinaries. Today, we're pulling back the dKu curtin
Speaker 1: a bit. We're gonna see how the sausage is made,
Speaker 1: as it were. So Daniel and I write pretty darn
Speaker 1: detailed outlines before we record an episode, but often something
Speaker 1: happens that totally derails our outline conversation, and that's good.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the derailment happens because something I thought was kind
Speaker 1: of obvious turns out to not be so obvious, and
Speaker 1: Daniel will ask clarifying questions that forced me to come
Speaker 1: up with different, better explanations on the fly. Or Daniel
Speaker 1: will be working through his outline and I'll think of
Speaker 1: some tangentially related topic that I now really want to
Speaker 1: know about, and Daniel will hop online to do a
Speaker 1: quick bit of research, and then we'll record a completely
Speaker 1: unplanned segment. In each of these cases, our answers are
Speaker 1: way less polished than we'd like, Lots of false starts,
Speaker 1: lots of basically lots of stuff that the audience definitely
Speaker 1: doesn't want to have to sit through. And then Daniel
Speaker 1: and I have unexpected noises that intrude upon the audio.
Speaker 1: In today's episode, I learned that my microphone actually does
Speaker 1: pick up the sounds my goats make when they're trying
Speaker 1: to get my attention, and sometimes Daniel apparently records from
Speaker 1: the inside of a grocery store. More on that later. Anyway,
Speaker 1: these are only a handful of the many challenges that
Speaker 1: we throw at Matt Kesselman, the audio wizard who makes
Speaker 1: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe sound so good. So today
Speaker 1: we're bringing Matt on the show to talk about sound
Speaker 1: and how he goes about fixing hours so that your
Speaker 1: listening experience is so much better that it would be
Speaker 1: if you were a fly on the wall while Daniel
Speaker 1: and I record. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Edited Universe. Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and I like thinking
Speaker 2: about aliens, and I've often been told I have a
Speaker 2: face for radio.
Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Kelly leader Smith. I study parasites in space.
Speaker 1: I often make jokes about having a face for radio.
Speaker 1: But I think actually Daniel and I are but quite
Speaker 1: attractive human beings. Oh yes, and Daniel has a great
Speaker 1: voice for radio, So let's focus on the positive.
Speaker 2: As do you, Kelly. I think our voices work really
Speaker 2: well together.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. But I will note that when we
Speaker 1: transitioned from Jorge on the show to Kelly on the Show,
Speaker 1: we did get a fair number of folks writing in
Speaker 1: to complain about the sound of my voice. But here
Speaker 1: I am over one hundred episodes later. Kiss my butt, loosers.
Speaker 1: I'm not going anywhere hater's gonna hate.
Speaker 2: But we also got a lot of comments from people
Speaker 2: who love your voice. And I think it's just a
Speaker 2: subjective thing, you know, And it's a big part of
Speaker 2: finding a podcast you'd like listening to. Is are the
Speaker 2: voices pleasant and soothing? And that's very personal?
Speaker 1: You know, That's right. But the good news is you
Speaker 1: and I have Matt Kesselman to help us whenever our
Speaker 1: voices are sounding less than their best.
Speaker 2: That's right. And I want my voice to be smooth,
Speaker 2: because a lot of folks write in and tell me
Speaker 2: they like to fall asleep to my voice, and hey,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't want to disturb anybody's slumber. No.
Speaker 1: I wonder what my Calkuli laughed as to their dreams.
Speaker 1: I dream of witches. But today we decided that we
Speaker 1: were going to invite Matt Kesselman, who is just an
Speaker 1: absolutely amazing audio engineer who, thankfully for us, spends a
Speaker 1: lot of time working on our show. And part of
Speaker 1: why we decided to invite him is because anyone who
Speaker 1: submits a question that ends up on our Listener Questions
Speaker 1: episode gets a raw audio file of Daniel and I
Speaker 1: having our conversation, and we send it to them before
Speaker 1: it goes to Matt, our audio engineer, so that they
Speaker 1: have a chance to record themselves asking the question and
Speaker 1: record themselves responding to our response to their question, and
Speaker 1: then we can send all of that to Matt and
Speaker 1: he can edit it all at once. And people often
Speaker 1: respond to us and say, wow, your audio engineer has
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 2: Of work to do, but not just that. Also they
Speaker 2: say that it's really interesting to hear the unedited version
Speaker 2: of the conversation because they can hear our side conversations
Speaker 2: or when we pause to do research, or when we
Speaker 2: back up to say something again, so they get like
Speaker 2: a little glimpse behind the curtain. And so we want
Speaker 2: to provide that to all of you today.
Speaker 1: That's right, and so in the second segment of the show,
Speaker 1: Matt is going to come on and talk to you
Speaker 1: about the magic that he works on our episode, and
Speaker 1: he'll play a couple raw clips so you'll get a
Speaker 1: peek behind the curtain and see how Daniel and I
Speaker 1: sound before Matt steps in. And Matt sent a question
Speaker 1: for us to share with the listeners, and the question
Speaker 1: was what kind of sound do humans hear best? So
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and hear what the extraordinaries to say.
Speaker 3: Maybe like the middle sounds like not super high or
Speaker 3: super low.
Speaker 1: That's what I was gonna say. But the humans are
Speaker 1: in the middle.
Speaker 2: I don't know what middle of what though, depending on
Speaker 2: their gender, Like women would hear babies crying the best,
Speaker 2: because I've heard stories that they often are moiasily working
Speaker 2: up by that related to our size, Larger animals can
Speaker 2: hear sounds with longer wavelengths. Smaller animals can hear sounds
Speaker 2: with shorter wavelength high beach that sounds. Females tend to
Speaker 2: hear higher frequencies better, possibly to help them hear their
Speaker 2: offspring when they're crying or something similar.
Speaker 1: Sounds that already stand out from the background and from
Speaker 1: each other.
Speaker 2: As a new mom, I want to say a baby crying.
Speaker 2: These are great guesses and hilarious stories. Thank you very
Speaker 2: much exterdinaries, and they're basically what I would have guessed.
Speaker 2: You know that there's some range we can hear and
Speaker 2: obviously ranges we can't hear, and that's going to be
Speaker 2: tuned to our survival.
Speaker 1: Yes, biology is the answer, and that's great. That's how
Speaker 1: we know that. It's an interesting question.
Speaker 2: No, it's a harmonious blend of biology and physics. It's
Speaker 2: biology taking advantage of.
Speaker 1: Physics, biophysics biofirst, but yes, biophysics.
Speaker 2: You know, I think if biophysics means biology, it's modifying physics.
Speaker 2: So it's at its core physics.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, you and I could be at this
Speaker 1: all day, and so we thought before we invited Matt
Speaker 1: onto the show, we would let Daniel do a little
Speaker 1: bit of his physics magic and talk about the physics
Speaker 1: of sound. So we're going to dig into that a
Speaker 1: little bit, and then we are going to bring Matt on. So, Daniel,
Speaker 1: what is sound?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so sound is not a thing. It's like an
Speaker 2: arrangement of stuff. It's a traveling pattern of pressure changes
Speaker 2: in matter. So if something is vibrating like a guitar string,
Speaker 2: it's going to push and pull on nearby molecules creating
Speaker 2: regions of compression and the regions when things are less dense,
Speaker 2: and so those pressure changes then move through the medium.
Speaker 2: Like if you slap your hand on the table, you're
Speaker 2: creating momentary high pressure in the molecules on that table,
Speaker 2: and they push on the ones next to it, and
Speaker 2: they push on the ones next to it, so that
Speaker 2: pressure wave travels right. And so this is a wave
Speaker 2: that needs a medium. It moves through a medium. It's
Speaker 2: a rearrangement through time of the relationship between the molecules
Speaker 2: in the medium.
Speaker 1: So I'm feeling even more amazed now by the microphone
Speaker 1: that's sitting on my desk. How does those like squishiness
Speaker 1: of the air get transferred into something my microphone can
Speaker 1: play back to you.
Speaker 2: Yes, so a speaker and a microphone are basically the
Speaker 2: inverse of each other, right, So let's do a speaker first.
Speaker 2: A speaker creates the sound. So there's something inside the speaker,
Speaker 2: like a cone that moves back and forth. It's literally
Speaker 2: physically mechanically moving at the frequent you want to create.
Speaker 2: So we think about sound in terms of frequencies the
Speaker 2: same way we think about light in terms of frequencies
Speaker 2: you can have like red light and blue light or
Speaker 2: green light. They are all vibrations of the electromagnetic field
Speaker 2: at different frequencies. Sound has frequencies also, you can have
Speaker 2: low frequencies and high frequencies, Daniel frequencies and Kelly frequencies exactly.
Speaker 2: And so a speaker can make these by shaking effectively
Speaker 2: a drum or a cone at that frequency. So if
Speaker 2: you shake the cone at four hundred and forty hertz,
Speaker 2: it's going to create four hundred and forty hertz sound,
Speaker 2: just the same way that like a radio antenna oscillates
Speaker 2: electrons at a certain frequency and creates photons or electromagnetic
Speaker 2: waves at that frequency. So you have mechanical vibration. In
Speaker 2: the case of sound transmits pressure waves to the air.
Speaker 2: The microphone is essentially inverse pressure waves in the air
Speaker 2: vibrates something sensitive, So you're converting pressure waves in the
Speaker 2: air to physical vibrations of something, and then you just
Speaker 2: need a divide that's going to record those vibrations. For example,
Speaker 2: you could transmit them onto vinyl, or you could digitize
Speaker 2: them and store them on a computer. So a microphone
Speaker 2: or a speaker essentially inverses of each other.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm still amazed that we figured out how to
Speaker 1: do that. That's that is pretty cool.
Speaker 2: It is pretty cool. And there's a lot of really
Speaker 2: fascinating physics of sound, like how the speed of sound
Speaker 2: depends on how stiff and dense the material is. So,
Speaker 2: in air, sound travels about three hundred and forty meters
Speaker 2: per second. In water, it's faster because water is denser
Speaker 2: and so molecules are closer together they could push up
Speaker 2: against each other easier. It's like fifteen hundred meters per second,
Speaker 2: and stel it's several kilometers per second.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: So sound travels faster through the ground. So you know
Speaker 2: those scenes where somebody's like putting their ear on the
Speaker 2: ground to hear if the buffalo are coming, Like, there's
Speaker 2: real physics there.
Speaker 1: WHOA, that's real.
Speaker 2: That's real exactly. And so the things to understand about
Speaker 2: sound is that there's frequencies, right, so hind ones and
Speaker 2: low ones. There's also amplitude, right, is it loud or
Speaker 2: is it quiet? Those are the crucial things to understand.
Speaker 2: But musical sounds or voices are much more complicated than
Speaker 2: just like a single frequency. Right, If you ask somebody
Speaker 2: with a violin to play a certain note that's going
Speaker 2: to correspond to a certain frequency, but a violin doesn't
Speaker 2: produce sound that exactly one frequency. So if you want
Speaker 2: to play four hundred and forty hertz, then a violin's
Speaker 2: also going to play a harmonic which means eight hundred
Speaker 2: and eighty hertz, which sounds like another version of the
Speaker 2: same note. You know how somebody plays like the low
Speaker 2: e and a high e and a guitar. They sound
Speaker 2: nice together because they beat together, they're not shifted, but
Speaker 2: there are different notes, and so a violin doesn't just
Speaker 2: play the four to forty. It also plays the eight
Speaker 2: eighty and the thirteen twenty and the seventeen sixty. And
Speaker 2: if you play a guitar or a trombone with the
Speaker 2: same note, it has a different relationship with those harmonics.
Speaker 2: So you can hear a violin is different from a
Speaker 2: trombone even when they're playing the same note. Why is
Speaker 2: that Because they have a different set of frequencies that
Speaker 2: they're playing. It's not a single pure frequency. And this
Speaker 2: is what we call timber. This is why, like my
Speaker 2: voice sounds different from somebody else's voice, even if it
Speaker 2: was at the same frequency, like if you took Kelly's
Speaker 2: voice and you shifted it down to Daniel range, oh no,
Speaker 2: it would not sound like Daniels.
Speaker 1: And that this was all new to me like forty
Speaker 1: minutes ago when we talked to Matt, and so like
Speaker 1: you know, heads up, Matt is going to mention this
Speaker 1: a little bit and how he can see that in
Speaker 1: the software that he uses, and that totally blew my mind.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that you were getting like harmonics of
Speaker 1: people's voices and anyway, very cool, but.
Speaker 2: There's also lots of fascinating biology here, like how the
Speaker 2: human voice is actually generated. Right, you don't have like
Speaker 2: a little violin in your throat, but you do have
Speaker 2: things that vibrate. You have the vocal chords, or sometimes
Speaker 2: called the vocal folds. They're not like guitar strings. They're
Speaker 2: more like vibrating valves in an airflow and faster vibration.
Speaker 2: It's a higher pitch, and so like adult male voices
Speaker 2: are lower because they have longer, thicker vocal folds that
Speaker 2: vibrate more slowly. And so this is why also two
Speaker 2: people sing the same note but sound.
Speaker 1: Different, and birds are somehow able to make at least
Speaker 1: two noises at the same time, some birds, not all birds,
Speaker 1: which is just absolutely like if you you should really
Speaker 1: pay attention to the next time you hear a bird
Speaker 1: song and try to figure out, like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: am I actually hearing that bird make two different notes
Speaker 1: at the same time? And it's able to do that,
Speaker 1: and anyway, sound is incredible and.
Speaker 2: Some humans can do that too, right, this is this
Speaker 2: like Himalayan dual note singing thing.
Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't know that. I know that birds have
Speaker 1: a very different like voice box than we do, so
Speaker 1: that they can do that, and so now I need
Speaker 1: to know what happens with the Himalayan people.
Speaker 2: It's very hard to do, but you can train yourself
Speaker 2: apparently to do that. And sound is much more complicated
Speaker 2: than just like generate sound. Here a sound, you can
Speaker 2: have interference effects because sound is a wave, and so
Speaker 2: places where the pressure waves are in the same direction
Speaker 2: will be louder, that's constructive interference, and places where they're
Speaker 2: pushing in opposite directions it'll be weaker. And this is
Speaker 2: how like noise cancelation works. Right, you play the opposite sound,
Speaker 2: the one that's beating down when the other sound is
Speaker 2: beating up and it cancels it out. So for example,
Speaker 2: my daughter has air pods in and I say, hey, Hazel,
Speaker 2: will you take out the trash? And her AirPod plays
Speaker 2: the opposite of Hey Hazel, will you take out the trash?
Speaker 2: And she hears nothing right, which is why she doesn't
Speaker 2: take up the trash. Perfectly hypothetical example.
Speaker 1: However, I would like to note that Matt mentions later
Speaker 1: in the episode that noise canceling headphones don't necessarily cancel
Speaker 1: out people talking to you. Yeah, I don't want to
Speaker 1: get Hazel in trouble, but I'm wondering if maybe Hazel's
Speaker 1: just not listening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there may be a few effects going on here.
Speaker 2: But this goes into like the design of concert right,
Speaker 2: because sound reflects and it can cancel out. So you
Speaker 2: can have like dead spots in a room where you
Speaker 2: can't hear someone from across the room, or places where
Speaker 2: the sound all balances really really well. And this makes
Speaker 2: a big difference between like a bad concert hall and
Speaker 2: a good concert hall where like every seat sounds good
Speaker 2: or more seats sound really good. You could also have
Speaker 2: beating sounds, like if you have two sounds, they're very
Speaker 2: similar to each other very close, but not quite on
Speaker 2: top of each other. Like if you play your guitar
Speaker 2: tuner at e and then you play your guitar but
Speaker 2: it's not quite in tune. You'll hear this, Like, those
Speaker 2: are the waves drifting out of alignment, right, you'll hear
Speaker 2: them because they're not beating in sync harmonic like for
Speaker 2: forty and a eighty. They have the down moments at
Speaker 2: the same time, and so they sound nice.
Speaker 1: I miss that. Could you make that sound again?
Speaker 2: Mac can make that your ring toney for you if
Speaker 2: you like.
Speaker 1: That would be great.
Speaker 2: And then there's a lot of work that needs to
Speaker 2: be done when you're like doing noise removal. And Matt's
Speaker 2: gonna tell us all about that when he gets here.
Speaker 1: All right, so let us delay no longer, actually quick
Speaker 1: delay we're gonna do. We're gonna do a commercial break,
Speaker 1: and then when we come back, we will bring Matt
Speaker 1: on the show.
Speaker 2: The Great Matt Kesselman.
Speaker 1: Matt Kesselman is an audio engineer and producer with over
Speaker 1: two decades of multidisciplinary experience in the fields of film production,
Speaker 1: audio post production, and music. Matt has worked with artists
Speaker 1: and broadcasters like Netflix, the BBC, Lionsgate, Walk Off the Earth,
Speaker 1: Ill Scarlet and many others. He developed software tools for
Speaker 1: audio engineers through his company Oslot Audio. He brings over
Speaker 1: a decade of teaching and communication experience to the table
Speaker 1: as a college professor at Metalworks Institute, where he is
Speaker 1: currently and before that at Durham College. He's also the
Speaker 1: amazing audio engineer and sound designer behind dk EU. He's
Speaker 1: the guy who makes us sound not horrible. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us, Matt.
Speaker 2: He's also the guy who has a shocking amount of
Speaker 2: blackmail material on both of us.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's all true. I'm a little nervous. I
Speaker 3: feel like am I the first guest that doesn't have
Speaker 3: a PhD? Oh not even in like chemistry.
Speaker 2: Wow, I didn't realize we were gate keeping the guests.
Speaker 1: That's right, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: I mean you folks try to find the secrets to
Speaker 3: life and how to better all of humankind. And I
Speaker 3: once produced a song called Candy g String. So we're
Speaker 3: a little different. So I'll try to cold man of
Speaker 3: the bargain and make this entertaining.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what makes us a harmonious collaboration. Everybody brings
Speaker 2: their strengths.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe we should start actually by telling the story
Speaker 2: of how we got connected to you, Matt, how you
Speaker 2: ended up being the audio engineer for the pod.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how indeed. Well, I was a fan for a
Speaker 3: long time, and I think, like all the other Extraordinaries,
Speaker 3: I was listening before we were even called the Extraordinaries.
Speaker 3: But I always have questions and I always want to
Speaker 3: know how things work. And a lot of popular science.
Speaker 3: I can only consume popular science because I am not
Speaker 3: smart enough, but a lot of it, you know, I
Speaker 3: don't believe. That leaves me wanting and I feel like
Speaker 3: there's something missing, and then there's conflicting things in different
Speaker 3: popular science publications. And then I found you guys, and
Speaker 3: you break it down and that was really enjoyable. And
Speaker 3: then I thought, why don't I just tell them that
Speaker 3: I can make them sound even better?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got an email out of the blue from
Speaker 2: you saying, hey, I have notes on your audio engineering,
Speaker 2: and we dug into it with you, and then eventually
Speaker 2: we were like, hey, why do you come make the
Speaker 2: show better?
Speaker 1: And we haven't looked back yet, and so one of
Speaker 1: the reasons we're super excited to have you on the
Speaker 1: show is because after Daniel and I do a listener
Speaker 1: questions episode, we always send the raw audio file export
Speaker 1: it from riverside out to the listeners so that they
Speaker 1: have plenty of time to listen to our conversation and
Speaker 1: send us an audio file responding. And almost every single
Speaker 1: one of them is like, Wow, this sounds awful. Your
Speaker 1: audio guy must do so much work, and so we
Speaker 1: thought that it would be great to have you on
Speaker 1: the show to like pull back the curtain and talk
Speaker 1: about like when Kelly forgets to turn off her air conditioner,
Speaker 1: how do you remove that sound, and like all of
Speaker 1: the work that you have to do to make us
Speaker 1: sound good. Where does that start?
Speaker 3: Okay? Well, first of all, I want to point out
Speaker 3: that there are different kinds of podcasts that have different needs. Right,
Speaker 3: everybody's familiar with the comedians just talking with no editing,
Speaker 3: with no nothing, and they leave all the mistakes in
Speaker 3: and that's part of the charm. They're also narrative podcast
Speaker 3: that tell a story kind of like a movie, and
Speaker 3: our very own network has a few examples of that,
Speaker 3: like Red Elvis and the buzz Aldrin Show. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you've heard that one, but then there's also
Speaker 3: the informative kind where you're basically enjoying a lecture. And
Speaker 3: I feel like this is kind of like a lecture
Speaker 3: mixed in with some lighthearted comedy. And the thing about
Speaker 3: lectures is that they take a lot of time to prepare,
Speaker 3: and you two do something that very few people can do,
Speaker 3: and that is that you basically deliver two lectures a week,
Speaker 3: often on topics that you're not specialized in. And it's
Speaker 3: no surprise that sometimes you need to write on the fly.
Speaker 3: I mean, otherwise, it's just not possible for any person
Speaker 3: to deliver that much information without having to stop and
Speaker 3: sort of rewind and think back on it. And I
Speaker 3: think we all sort of treat it that way, where
Speaker 3: you have your outline and you have your idea, and
Speaker 3: sometimes you come up with a new idea while we record,
Speaker 3: and then you try it out a few times until
Speaker 3: you get it right, and when you send it off
Speaker 3: and you hope that I put it together, I feel like.
Speaker 1: You really you get me, Matt, you get me. And
Speaker 1: I want to start describing the podcast now as lectures
Speaker 1: with light comedy, because I feel like that's actually that's
Speaker 1: a pretty good description.
Speaker 3: That's really what it is, right, It's like, yeah, weird
Speaker 3: things that are very hard to understand, sometimes broken down
Speaker 3: into small, bite sized, understandable pieces with some pro lapse jokes,
Speaker 3: which is my favorite type of entertainment.
Speaker 2: We need constant goat updates. You know, people are curious.
Speaker 1: Well, she's kept her outsides on the inside recently, so
Speaker 1: that's nice, wonderful. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, from my perspective, I lean heavily into this editing
Speaker 2: because I know that we can go back and fix
Speaker 2: something or say something a better way I speak to
Speaker 2: friendly than I do in person, or if I'm like
Speaker 2: lecturing to a class, I'm lecturing to a class. I
Speaker 2: don't often back up and say things another way and
Speaker 2: just go with it. So I think the listeners are
Speaker 2: hearing a very unusual slice of our speaking, you know,
Speaker 2: the intended for editing but unedited version, which is not
Speaker 2: how like we have a conversation.
Speaker 3: Normally, Right, And if the listeners want some inside baseball,
Speaker 3: I always send you the finished episode or a draft
Speaker 3: of the episode, and then you listen intently and go, oh,
Speaker 3: actually that detail is technically right, but there's a better
Speaker 3: way to say it, And then you send me a
Speaker 3: pickup because you're perfectionists and you want everything to be
Speaker 3: correct and true, and that's very admirable as well, and you're.
Speaker 1: Always a really good sport when we're like, oh, I
Speaker 1: actually thank you so much for editing all of that,
Speaker 1: but I'd like to do it again.
Speaker 2: So let's make this concrete. Can you show us some
Speaker 2: examples of what you get and then what you send
Speaker 2: us back. Show us the raw, unedited Daniel and Kelly
Speaker 2: craziness and then the smooth Matt output.
Speaker 3: Sure, I have two separate kinds of examples. Here's a
Speaker 3: couple where the noise reduction was already done, and we're
Speaker 3: going to focus on your writing on the fly, if
Speaker 3: you will, so take a close listen to. We'll start
Speaker 3: with with Kelly trying to communicate this idea, backing up
Speaker 3: a couple of times, a couple of uhs and ums,
Speaker 3: and then after we'll listen to the cut up version.
Speaker 1: And I have no idea what file met pick. So
Speaker 1: I'm on the edge of my seat, and we don't
Speaker 1: really have a good framework yet for predicting. Like if
Speaker 1: you took you know X, and say you decided you
Speaker 1: were going to take what's a say you were going
Speaker 1: to take lions and domesticate them.
Speaker 3: Okay, so there's that. Here's here's the edited version.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, And we don't really have a good framework
Speaker 1: yet for predicting, like say you were going to take
Speaker 1: lions and domesticate them. I'm being ridiculous, right, But like
Speaker 1: say you decided.
Speaker 2: To Really that sounds awesome. I would love to have
Speaker 2: a house lion. Hey, whatever happened to the house lion
Speaker 2: I requested?
Speaker 1: Anyway, I need a few more years.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, I mean you can see that you got
Speaker 3: this idea of comparing it to lines and it came
Speaker 3: on the fly, so you just needed to work through it,
Speaker 3: which is great because I think everybody would rather hear
Speaker 3: what you intend for them to hear and not for
Speaker 3: you to sort of back away and just say something
Speaker 3: that's easier to say.
Speaker 2: And I think that these on the fly moments are
Speaker 2: what make our conversations really fun because it is a conversation.
Speaker 2: You're thinking on the fly, you're coming up with new ideas,
Speaker 2: you're responding to questions. Also, we could never pull off
Speaker 2: a scripted podcast twice a week. That's just so much
Speaker 2: more work. And on top of that, I'm a terrible actor,
Speaker 2: So if I had to read a scriptive podcast, it
Speaker 2: would sound really stilted. The only way for this to
Speaker 2: work is for it to be a natural conversation.
Speaker 1: I massively appreciate that I can like stumble and start
Speaker 1: over many, many, many times and know Mad is going
Speaker 1: to listen to all of that and pick out the
Speaker 1: bits that make sense. And you're amazing.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Sometimes you do put a lot of faith
Speaker 3: in me. And just to be clear, what I mean
Speaker 3: by that is that you'll have a great first half
Speaker 3: of an idea, and then you might write on the
Speaker 3: fly and work out the second half of the idea,
Speaker 3: and then when I put them together, sometimes they could
Speaker 3: sound a little bit disjointed, kind of like a milder
Speaker 3: version of this real segment that really aired on TV.
Speaker 2: An idea, but what we do, we would not be
Speaker 2: good at what we do, would we We would be sloppy?
Speaker 2: You calling it sloppy.
Speaker 3: I don't want your recordings to sound like that, even
Speaker 3: though it's completely normal for speech cadence to change over time,
Speaker 3: but when you put it all together and remove the
Speaker 3: gaps in the middle, it becomes more noticeable. So sometimes
Speaker 3: I have to do things like tune your voice on
Speaker 3: certain words, or look around and find other times when
Speaker 3: you said that word in the episode or in other episodes. Wow,
Speaker 3: use it to help build one cohesive sentence. And just
Speaker 3: to be clear, I never change what you've said. I
Speaker 3: might just change how it sounds, but the ideas are
Speaker 3: purely yours.
Speaker 1: How often does it do we do that to you?
Speaker 1: I'm feeling really bad right now.
Speaker 3: It's not something you do to me, but it probably
Speaker 3: happens more often than you think.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no.
Speaker 3: Which is completely normal. You're focused on educating the masses.
Speaker 3: I'm focused on making it sound smooth without anybody noticing
Speaker 3: anything was done at all.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for making this sound so good and
Speaker 2: making it sound like you haven't done anything. That's the
Speaker 2: most flattering part.
Speaker 3: You want to hear one of you, Daniel, Yes and no,
Speaker 3: let's do it. Okay, here we go before and after,
Speaker 3: For Daniel.
Speaker 2: Had that one piece of data argue that the Earth
Speaker 2: could be a flat disc that was perfectly that was
Speaker 2: perfectly aligned to make a circular shadow. Yes, oh boy, that's.
Speaker 3: Real for some reason, like were you at because you
Speaker 3: hear that in the Listen again.
Speaker 2: And that one piece of data argue that the Earth
Speaker 2: could be a flat to hear that where Yeah, I
Speaker 2: was not buying a can of olives or something at
Speaker 2: the same time as recording the podcast. I've no idea
Speaker 2: where that comes from. So here's the after Yeah, that
Speaker 2: one piece of data argue that the Earth could be
Speaker 2: a flat disc that was perfectly aligned to make a
Speaker 2: circular shadow. Yes, I sound great afterwards, thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again, like you said, you don't talk like
Speaker 3: that in person. It's just that you're trying to communicate
Speaker 3: things that are new to you in some way and
Speaker 3: in a way that fits for broadcast.
Speaker 1: Okay, So when I listened to the audio files after
Speaker 1: I send them to you, I'm like, oh, shoot, I
Speaker 1: left my air conditioner on. Or Daniel was trying to
Speaker 1: explain general relativity at the grocery store, like how do
Speaker 1: you remove like the beeps and the background noises? Like
Speaker 1: how hard is that?
Speaker 3: So there are many different types of noises in many
Speaker 3: different solutions. Some are automated, some are not. So if
Speaker 3: it's here, I have some examples. Here is some unprocessed Daniel,
Speaker 3: let me know if you can hear that background noise.
Speaker 2: So Bell's paradox involves length contraction, the fact that when
Speaker 2: things move fast, they look short. So relativity tells us
Speaker 2: two things, moving clocks run slow and moving objects look short.
Speaker 3: So that kind of noise is probably the easiest because
Speaker 3: it's consistent.
Speaker 2: It sounds like I'm crinkling paper or something.
Speaker 3: That's a different thing. That's mouth clicks, and that's a
Speaker 3: normal thing that happens when you put a microphone really
Speaker 3: close to the human mouth. It's weird how it doesn't
Speaker 3: happen in person, but it does on micro For that
Speaker 3: kind of noise, it's because it's consistent. We have software
Speaker 3: that we basically tell the software look at this, as
Speaker 3: long as there's no talking, look at this piece of noise,
Speaker 3: identify it as noise, and from now on remove any
Speaker 3: time you encounter that. And they be come more and
Speaker 3: more sophisticated over the years to the point where they're
Speaker 3: quite transparent at it. It's still in many cases if
Speaker 3: you go too hard, things start to sound watery and
Speaker 3: sort of weird, so you have to be careful with that.
Speaker 3: But dig into that a little bit more in detail,
Speaker 3: because what you're saying is it's consistent, so you can
Speaker 3: measure it when the person's not speaking, and then you'll
Speaker 3: have a template to remove it. But still it's varying.
Speaker 3: So is an average removal. It's a statistical removal because
Speaker 3: it can't remove the exact noise moment to moment, because
Speaker 3: there is variation.
Speaker 2: We heard it.
Speaker 3: There is variation, but it's fairly predictable. Like an air conditioner,
Speaker 3: unless the air conditioner is changing temperatures, is going to
Speaker 3: give or take make the same droney noise throughout the recording.
Speaker 3: But yes, sometimes I do catch that throughout the recording.
Speaker 3: Sometimes the air conditioner change gears and then it's no
Speaker 3: longer being recognized and I have to compensate for that.
Speaker 3: There are settings where it's supposed to follow the noise itself.
Speaker 3: I don't find those to be very good yet, but
Speaker 3: tuch changes all the time. Maybe tomorrow there'll be a
Speaker 3: good one. And is this noise removable? Because it's at
Speaker 3: a different frequency than the voice, so you can identify
Speaker 3: it when I'm not speaking, and then you know exactly
Speaker 3: how to remove it. And you can remove it without
Speaker 3: removing the voice or does it overlap of the voice
Speaker 3: and so you are affecting the actual voice as well?
Speaker 3: Oh okay, that's a great question, you really want to
Speaker 3: look under the hood. So the way it really works
Speaker 3: is that the recording is divided into smaller bands of frequencies,
Speaker 3: and each frequency is given what's called a gate or
Speaker 3: an expander, where if a lot of volume hits that area,
Speaker 3: it's allowed to pass through, so speech, for example. But
Speaker 3: if there's a quieter moment, it enhances the quiet moment
Speaker 3: and makes it even quieter. So if you really listen closely,
Speaker 3: you may be able to notice that there are moments
Speaker 3: of noise when you talk. But because you're talking and
Speaker 3: then noise is only present as you're talking, it's not perceptible.
Speaker 3: A lot of this is about magic tricks and not
Speaker 3: actually about doing what you think we're doing.
Speaker 2: By magic tricks, you mean distracting people and understanding how works.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I mean real real magic, not magic
Speaker 3: magic were slide of hand and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: I love what you call that real magic. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: Okay, So then how would you remove something like the
Speaker 1: grocery store.
Speaker 2: I was not at a grocery store. I want that
Speaker 2: on their front.
Speaker 3: I think you were.
Speaker 1: I saw it.
Speaker 3: I saw it. So for a noise like that or
Speaker 3: like goats, Kelly oh yeah, their goats. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3: Oh no, it's totally it's not your fault that they're goats.
Speaker 3: They do goaty things, uh, for things like that. For
Speaker 3: for noises that are not consistent or predictable, which, by
Speaker 3: the way, let me back up one second. Noise canceling
Speaker 3: headphones work on the same principle, So noise can headphones
Speaker 3: can cancel predictable noise once they recognize that noise. However,
Speaker 3: if somebody's talking to you or there's a dog barking,
Speaker 3: you may notice that your noise canceling headphones don't work
Speaker 3: for this very same reason. So if there is a
Speaker 3: dog barking or a goat. Luckily, we live at a
Speaker 3: time where I can just open it up in a
Speaker 3: spectrol graph and I can actually see all the sound.
Speaker 3: It looks like splotches, and I can see the goat
Speaker 3: bleed to an extent, and I can dry it out
Speaker 3: like an photoshop.
Speaker 2: WHOA, So what you're looking at is the amplitude versus frequency.
Speaker 3: Yeah, time is the x frequency is the y axis,
Speaker 3: and then amplitude is color. Oh bright orange means it's
Speaker 3: very loud. So I can actually see all the harmonics
Speaker 3: of the goat or a door being slammed, or a
Speaker 3: plane flying by, And sometimes it's hard to draw them
Speaker 3: out because there's other stuff happening there. But in most
Speaker 3: cases it just takes time. You have to stop, capture
Speaker 3: that piece and follow the goat and remove it.
Speaker 1: How does Daniel's voice show up different than mine? Go
Speaker 1: So Daniel has a very deep voice. What does his
Speaker 1: look like relative to mine?
Speaker 3: Well, too bad. This is not a visual show. So
Speaker 3: what you would see for any human is just a
Speaker 3: series of lines on top of each other most sounds, really,
Speaker 3: and the lowest line is the actual note that Daniel
Speaker 3: or Kelly are saying. And then all the lines the
Speaker 3: notes above that are harmonics that we don't perceive as
Speaker 3: individual notes, but they're the sort of fingerprint that make
Speaker 3: Daniel and Kelly sound different. Even if you sing the
Speaker 3: same note, for example, is just a different combination of
Speaker 3: those harmonics, huh.
Speaker 2: Like, for the same reason that like, a guitar and
Speaker 2: a violin sound different when they're playing the same note,
Speaker 2: because there's a range of frequencies that gives you the
Speaker 2: mental fingerprint to identify it exactly.
Speaker 1: That's all it is, all right, Well, let's take a break,
Speaker 1: and when we get back, we're going to chat with
Speaker 1: Matt about how software is making his life easier or
Speaker 1: maybe not.
Speaker 2: And whether or not he's actually an AI.
Speaker 1: And we're back and we've got Mat in the hot
Speaker 1: seat today we are quizzing him about how he makes
Speaker 1: us sound not horrible, because we sound pretty bad in
Speaker 1: the raw audio that we send him at So AI
Speaker 1: is like everywhere now, so could you like tell AI? Hey?
Speaker 1: Here is an interview from two people for Starters. Cut
Speaker 1: out every time they say and remove all the background
Speaker 1: noise like are we there where that could happen? Or yeah,
Speaker 1: where are we with AI?
Speaker 3: Now? Uh, We're not there. We might be there. I
Speaker 3: have no idea what's going to happen. Maybe next month
Speaker 3: none of us will have jobs. I know this. People
Speaker 3: have very strong beliefs about what's going to happen. I
Speaker 3: think nobody knows, and we may hit a wall or
Speaker 3: it may never stop. See. The thing is, there are
Speaker 3: tools that can do things like that, but then they
Speaker 3: require adult supervision where you check whether it did and
Speaker 3: then you find that it deleted a very important question
Speaker 3: or you know, things like that. So it doesn't help
Speaker 3: me It's still faster for me to do it all
Speaker 3: myself because I work pretty fast, and you know, I
Speaker 3: don't have to go back and try to find what's missing.
Speaker 3: The tools I use the most with AI are for
Speaker 3: noise cleanup. That's also another option if I don't draw
Speaker 3: it out with a pencil tool. Is There are AIS
Speaker 3: that are pretty good at being able to tell what
Speaker 3: noise is, and they sort of split into two categories.
Speaker 3: One is it removes the noise on its own using
Speaker 3: all kinds of cool phasing algorithms, and then there's one
Speaker 3: that recognizes your voice and then resynthesizes your voice completely
Speaker 3: from scratch. Wow wow, which is a little weird, scary scary. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I had a listener wright to me once that
Speaker 2: they heard an AI generated podcast and that one of
Speaker 2: the hosts on that podcast sounded a lot like me,
Speaker 2: and I was like what, So then I listened to
Speaker 2: it and I was like, that does kind of sound
Speaker 2: like me, And then I realized there are hundreds of
Speaker 2: hours of my voice out there for anybody to train
Speaker 2: an AI to make an AI Daniel.
Speaker 3: And you only need five seconds now. And by the way, PSA,
Speaker 3: I don't know about your bank but my bank has
Speaker 3: this voice print identification if you call them, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: asked them to turn that off. Yeah, because it's incredibly easy,
Speaker 3: especially for anyone that has their voice out there, for
Speaker 3: anybody to fake your voice. So that is no longer
Speaker 3: safe if you have that enabled at your bank.
Speaker 2: And I'm not endorsing it, but I did find this
Speaker 2: AI generated podcast to be pretty good. And I did
Speaker 2: a little experiment where I took one of Katrina's latest
Speaker 2: papers and I ran it through and I had produced
Speaker 2: a fifteen minute podcast about it. Then I sent it
Speaker 2: to her and didn't tell her it was AI generated.
Speaker 2: I said, hey, I heard this podcast about your latest paper.
Speaker 2: And she listened to it. She was really excited and
Speaker 2: she shared it with her laugh.
Speaker 3: Huh, that is weird.
Speaker 2: It was surprisingly good. It's pretty compelling stuff.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, Well, so, I think you should be flattered that
Speaker 1: out of all the voices they could have picked, they
Speaker 1: decided to scrape your voice. Daniels a good voice.
Speaker 2: I don't know that they did, you know, just generic
Speaker 2: podcast dude with a deep voice, I guess. But no
Speaker 2: AI is out there making goat jokes, Kelly, So you
Speaker 2: are unique?
Speaker 1: Yes, Oh that's great. I'm so glad, So Matt. Even
Speaker 1: with the help of software, we send you about an hour,
Speaker 1: an hour or twenty minutes of audio, it gets compressed
Speaker 1: to about an hour of podcast. How many hours go
Speaker 1: into editing? Uh?
Speaker 3: Anywhere from five to ten wow, depending depending on physics
Speaker 3: or bio subject matter. Yes, yes, Well, look if it's
Speaker 3: if it's about particle accelerators, Daniel already has all that
Speaker 3: stuff memorized and it's easy to do. Or if we're
Speaker 3: talking about killie fish or something like that. But if
Speaker 3: somebody just throws you a curveball question that you had
Speaker 3: to look up, then it could take a bit longer.
Speaker 3: If there's a guest, it usually takes longer because you
Speaker 3: have a rapport and a banter that you're used to,
Speaker 3: and then if somebody else comes in, they may not
Speaker 3: have that same vibe and it takes a bit of time.
Speaker 3: And I want to point out that five to ten
Speaker 3: hours may sound like a lot, but it's not a
Speaker 3: lot or unusual at all if you think about it.
Speaker 3: It's usually roughly about an hour and a half of
Speaker 3: raw audio that I get. I have to listen to
Speaker 3: it at least one time, so that's already an hour
Speaker 3: and a half. Then I need to do some noise reduction,
Speaker 3: which can take thirty to fifty minutes, depending on the
Speaker 3: type of noise there is. And then from there, every
Speaker 3: edit that I make, I have to first hear it, stop,
Speaker 3: listen to it one more time to make sure there
Speaker 3: is a problem, do the edit, which takes between a
Speaker 3: few seconds and a few minutes depending on the edit,
Speaker 3: and then listen back. And these little things all add up,
Speaker 3: and before you know it, you're easily crossing the five
Speaker 3: hour mark. By the way, one other thing that I
Speaker 3: forgot to mention is there's the editing sort of to
Speaker 3: help everything feel smooth and makes sense. But then there's
Speaker 3: also the issue of comedic timing over web conferencing. There's
Speaker 3: a delay, whether you like it or not, and it's
Speaker 3: not something as easy as shifting one voice back. Because
Speaker 3: Kelly would say something funny, Daniel would accidentally talk over
Speaker 3: Kelly because he's been waiting because there's a delay, then
Speaker 3: realize that was funny, laugh at that. Kelly also hears
Speaker 3: a delay, so she's already trying to damage control Daniel
Speaker 3: not laughing, and it becomes this mess where I'm like,
Speaker 3: there's a very funny joke here, and both laughed at
Speaker 3: the joke, but because of that delay, it sounds a
Speaker 3: little bit train wreckage. So that's another thing that.
Speaker 2: I know, Wow, what a review?
Speaker 3: Well, because I know that in person you both would
Speaker 3: have this banter and laugh and it would be so
Speaker 3: I'm sort of time traveling in a way to put
Speaker 3: you where you wanted to be, at least where I
Speaker 3: perceive you want it to be, so that that's also
Speaker 3: part of it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for making us funny.
Speaker 3: No, you're the funny ones. I just undo the damage
Speaker 3: the internet causes.
Speaker 1: So why does my voice sound so much better in
Speaker 1: my head? So like when I listened to the file
Speaker 1: you send me, I think, wow, this sounds way better
Speaker 1: than when I actually was like talking to Daniel in
Speaker 1: this version, Daniel left at my joke right away, but
Speaker 1: I still I still cringe because I don't love the
Speaker 1: sound of my voice when I hear it back to me.
Speaker 1: But when I'm saying it, it doesn't sound so bad.
Speaker 1: So why is there that disconnect?
Speaker 2: I think you have a great voice, Kelly. I love
Speaker 2: hearing it.
Speaker 3: Thanks Daniel the great great voice.
Speaker 1: Thanks guys.
Speaker 3: Otherwise people wouldn't be listening as interesting as you are.
Speaker 3: If you had bad voice, as people would move on.
Speaker 3: It's a matter of perspective. So we hear everything else
Speaker 3: and everyone else through our ear canals. Right, there's air outside,
Speaker 3: and that air vibrates and that goes into our ear canals.
Speaker 3: Will hear it for ourselves. A big chunk of our
Speaker 3: voice travels through conduction into our ear from the inside,
Speaker 3: and that's what people call the inner ear. There's no
Speaker 3: actual inner ear. I used to think there was when
Speaker 3: I was a kid, like a third ear in your throat.
Speaker 3: There isn't one. You're basically hearing sort of a muffled
Speaker 3: version of yourself because it's traveling through soft tissue and bone,
Speaker 3: and then you're also hearing a little bit of yourself
Speaker 3: through the air going back into your ear, so it's
Speaker 3: a different sort of like I don't know. When I
Speaker 3: look in the mirror, I'm gorgeous. When I look at
Speaker 3: a photo, I look like a crescent moon. I noticed
Speaker 3: that my face is curved, and I never noticed that
Speaker 3: in the mirror because it's just a perspective I'm not
Speaker 3: used to. And I think that's exactly what happens with
Speaker 3: your voices. You're used to hearing it a certain way,
Speaker 3: and no matter how the recording sounds, you'll think it
Speaker 3: sounds worse because you're just not used to it.
Speaker 2: So somebody was to put their cheek up against Kelly
Speaker 2: while she was speaking, so that her voice traveled like
Speaker 2: through their soft tissue, would they hear Kelly's internal version
Speaker 2: of her voice?
Speaker 3: If you were somehow able to model Kelly's innards from
Speaker 3: her throat all the way up to the top of
Speaker 3: her skull and put that between the other person, yes,
Speaker 3: it would be very strange.
Speaker 1: But yes, I'd just like to put on record that
Speaker 1: when I see you, I never think Crescent.
Speaker 3: Moved, but I will now I have to tell myself
Speaker 3: the same thing is that that tiny lack of symmetry
Speaker 3: which every human has is just accentuated because I never
Speaker 3: see it from that angle. And I feel like most
Speaker 3: people when they look at a photo compared to the mirror,
Speaker 3: they're like, oh, what is that? What happened?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So you mentioned earlier about real magic and how big
Speaker 2: part of this is knowing how it's going to be
Speaker 2: received by people. Tell us more about that, about how
Speaker 2: understanding the way sound is actually perceived and the way
Speaker 2: people pay attention changes how you do your editing and
Speaker 2: tell us about psychoacoustics.
Speaker 3: So, Daniel, you're gonna be proud of me. Before I
Speaker 3: even knew who you were. I've talked to my students
Speaker 3: about aliens a.
Speaker 2: Lot plus ten points.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The reason I do that is I always in
Speaker 3: the first class. I tell them this is a class
Speaker 3: for human beings in Earth's atmosphere, because, first of all,
Speaker 3: sound behaves differently through different materials, and second, humans have
Speaker 3: evolved to process their senses in ways that are useful
Speaker 3: to them, which is another way of saying that what
Speaker 3: we hear and see and feel is not reality, but
Speaker 3: our useful version of reality, and sound is no exception
Speaker 3: to that. I think we may not realize how much
Speaker 3: of a role it plays. My theory is because there
Speaker 3: are no earlids go on. With sight, you have these
Speaker 3: eyelids where you can close them and not see and
Speaker 3: get an idea of what it's like to not have
Speaker 3: that sense. You also have to directly look at the
Speaker 3: thing that you're looking at to perceive it, and with sound,
Speaker 3: you hear everything around you. You don't have to look
Speaker 3: at it with your ear, and you've never closed your ears.
Speaker 3: Your earballs are always exposed. So it's a sense that's
Speaker 3: so enveloping and so much part of our lives that
Speaker 3: we sort of take it for granted and not understand
Speaker 3: how much information we're constantly getting from our surroundings through sound.
Speaker 2: And we don't even have the language for it, right,
Speaker 2: you have to adapt the language from eyes. Like you said,
Speaker 2: look at it with your ear instead of hear at
Speaker 2: it with your ear, because that makes no sense, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we think there's just this baseline of nothing,
Speaker 3: but in reality, you know the size of the room
Speaker 3: you're in and what the walls are made out of
Speaker 3: before you look and tap them. Walls, you know from
Speaker 3: how sound reflects in that room.
Speaker 2: I have a question about that because I've been told
Speaker 2: many times to record in a room that doesn't have
Speaker 2: auditory reflections, right, like surround yourself with laundry or something,
Speaker 2: because nobody wants to hear the room that you're in.
Speaker 2: So isn't that weird for people to hear audio that
Speaker 2: sounds sort of like disembodied or de rumified.
Speaker 3: No, because it's far from disembodied and de rumified unless
Speaker 3: you've been to an anichoid chamber. You have never heard
Speaker 3: silence in your life. It's a have you been to one?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: I highly recommend it. It's weird.
Speaker 2: Sounds like a torture device, you know what.
Speaker 3: People say that there's a rumor that no one has
Speaker 3: ever lasted more than forty five minutes. Not true. I've
Speaker 3: been there for hours. But you can hear blood rushing
Speaker 3: through your ears. You can hear everything. And not only that,
Speaker 3: if you're there with a buddy and they turn around
Speaker 3: and talk and speak the other way, you can barely
Speaker 3: hear them. We don't realize, wow, or we take for
Speaker 3: granted how much of what we hear is actually reflections
Speaker 3: of the source and not the source itself. So I
Speaker 3: mean an example of some important psychoacoustics that engineers have
Speaker 3: to keep in mind. And also the answer to the
Speaker 3: listener question, what do you think what is the type
Speaker 3: of sound or sound that humans hear?
Speaker 2: Best? I would have guessed that there's something similar to
Speaker 2: our visual arrange, where there's a whole spectrum of frequencies
Speaker 2: and we can see something in the middle. Where in
Speaker 2: the middle basically means where we can hear, which makes
Speaker 2: it kind of a non.
Speaker 3: Answer, right, Well, that's actually that's a good comparison with sound.
Speaker 3: You can see red just as well as you can
Speaker 3: see blue with sight, but with sound it doesn't work
Speaker 3: that way. With sound, we can hear frequencies from twenty
Speaker 3: vibrations per second twenty hurts to twenty thousand vibrations per
Speaker 3: second twenty killer hurts, but out of those we don't
Speaker 3: hear them all equally. The frequency range we hear best
Speaker 3: is between one and five killer hurts, and that is
Speaker 3: the range of leaves rustling and breaking.
Speaker 2: And jaguar is creeping up on you so that.
Speaker 3: Predators don't creep up on you. It's also the range
Speaker 3: of a baby crying. You can hear a baby cry
Speaker 3: from way farther away than I don't know a car
Speaker 3: engine reving at the same distance, same volume.
Speaker 2: It's also the sound of a candy bar wrapper, isn't
Speaker 2: it That is?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, it is, and we've been using that. For example.
Speaker 3: Police sirens are tuned to that frequency range, and that's
Speaker 3: why you may have found yourself sitting in your car
Speaker 3: or walking hearing a siren looking around being like, I
Speaker 3: don't see the police anywhere. Where are they? It's because
Speaker 3: we're so good at hearing those frequencies that we can
Speaker 3: hear them from so far away that we can't even
Speaker 3: see the source of the sound yet.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So then how does all of this shape your editing?
Speaker 2: Are you trying to push my voice up to police
Speaker 2: siren frequencies?
Speaker 3: Well, I definitely have to make sure that intelligibility is
Speaker 3: there and that is in those frequencies. But there's a
Speaker 3: challenge here because we hear those frequencies so well, they
Speaker 3: become annoying very quickly too, because we're acutely tuned to them.
Speaker 3: So there's a balancing act where if there's not enough
Speaker 3: it sounds I can show you. Do you want me
Speaker 3: to show you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, please?
Speaker 3: So here let me play process Daniel here.
Speaker 2: So Bell's paradox involves length contraction, the fact that when
Speaker 2: things move fast, they look short. So relativity tells us
Speaker 2: two things, moving clocks run slow and moving objects look short.
Speaker 3: So now I'm going to take out that frequency range
Speaker 3: that I was just talking about, and you'll notice so
Speaker 3: you can still hear Daniel. He's loud, but the part
Speaker 3: that makes him human loud, I mean loud is the
Speaker 3: volume I made him. Not because Daniel is a loud person,
Speaker 3: but the intelligibility is just not there. Take a listen.
Speaker 2: So Bell's paradox involves length contraction, the fact that when
Speaker 2: things move fast, they look short. So relativity tells us
Speaker 2: two things, moving clocks run slow and moving objects look short.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 3: And now I'll exaggerate those frequencies and you'll see that
Speaker 3: it'll kind of hurt your ears.
Speaker 2: So Bell's paradox involves length contraction, the fact that when
Speaker 2: things move fast they look short.
Speaker 3: Ooh right, So I have to find a happy medium,
Speaker 3: and that is sometimes something that has to be done temporally.
Speaker 3: So I have to make sure that some words don't
Speaker 3: have too much of those frequencies and others do. That's
Speaker 3: just one of many ways in which I have to
Speaker 3: look at the waveforms and understand the science and then
Speaker 3: also understand the psychoacoustics, the psychology of how humans perceive
Speaker 3: this stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, you're doing a great job, because I sometimes meet
Speaker 2: listeners in real life and they'll say to me, oh
Speaker 2: my gosh, it's so weird. You sound just like you
Speaker 2: do on the podcast. So you are reproducing this faithfully.
Speaker 3: I did it, woo.
Speaker 1: So how much physics did you have to learn to
Speaker 1: be this good? At your job.
Speaker 3: I see what you're saying. Yes, audio engineers are real engineers.
Speaker 3: We're like the dentists of the audio profession.
Speaker 2: She's just trying to sus that if you're on the
Speaker 2: physics camp or the biology camp, she's wondering if you're biased.
Speaker 3: See, I'm stuck right in the middle between physics and
Speaker 3: biology exactly.
Speaker 1: It's a good place to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a very fun place to be because
Speaker 3: who cares about physics if it's not for how it
Speaker 3: affects sentient beings?
Speaker 1: Amen?
Speaker 2: Amen, hmmm, I have thoughts of that.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad we got you. You know, Matt, you
Speaker 1: should be on the show every week.
Speaker 2: I see, Kelly just wants to invite people on the
Speaker 2: show who will disagree with me gang up on me.
Speaker 3: So let me tell you another psycho acoustic phenomenon called masking.
Speaker 3: The way this works and this probably like we can't
Speaker 3: ask evolution, right, but it looks like we've developed this
Speaker 3: property to u curb over stimulation. What happens is if
Speaker 3: there are certain and it's very predictable, if there are
Speaker 3: certain frequencies present, we are deaf to certain other frequencies
Speaker 3: in those moments. It's just like a blind spot in
Speaker 3: the car, Like, no matter what mirror you look at,
Speaker 3: you will not see the car right next to you
Speaker 3: if they're in your blind spot. So we have these
Speaker 3: blind spots that are constantly, very quickly changing as different
Speaker 3: sounds are present, and very smart programmers mapped out the
Speaker 3: exact way we have these blind spots and figured out,
Speaker 3: you know what, we can save a lot of space
Speaker 3: and audio files if we just throw that stuff away.
Speaker 3: Oh oh wow. And that is how the MP three
Speaker 3: file format was born. It does throw away a lot
Speaker 3: of things, but it throws away only things you would
Speaker 3: not perceive anyway. And so if you've ever had this
Speaker 3: debate with some or just heard someone claim that MP
Speaker 3: three's just don't sound like waves, man, there's just something missing.
Speaker 3: Not necessarily, if it was a well encoded MP three,
Speaker 3: you will never hear what is missing. Wow, Because you're human.
Speaker 3: Our imperfect hearing has really helped us on file sizes. However,
Speaker 3: if an alien came and you went, here's a wavefile,
Speaker 3: like here's a recording, and then here's my MP three
Speaker 3: of that recording to that alien, it might sound completely
Speaker 3: different and upsetting because they don't have our same perception.
Speaker 2: Those aliens who listen to the podcast might be really
Speaker 2: sensitive to those frequencies that our audience, our human audience,
Speaker 2: can't hear.
Speaker 3: As far as we know, when we listen to an
Speaker 3: MP three, our pets are suffering. They don't seem to
Speaker 3: be complaining, but they're definitely not hearing what we hear
Speaker 3: when we listen to the original recording the way that
Speaker 3: humans do.
Speaker 2: So this is like the moral equivalent of masking out
Speaker 2: the ultraviolet off of a painting, and a bee might
Speaker 2: see a painting very very differently, whereas a human would
Speaker 2: be totally unaware.
Speaker 3: Kind of It's like if humans, when you see yellow,
Speaker 3: you're temporarily blind to purple.
Speaker 1: Weird, Why why why does that happen?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I haven't asked God yet, but I
Speaker 3: think probably because of the overstimulation thing. I think if
Speaker 3: we were to hear everything all at once, our brains
Speaker 3: would explode. I think it's just too much information.
Speaker 1: So people who get over stimulated, do they hear some
Speaker 1: of that or is that just a different thing?
Speaker 3: You know, that's a great question. That might be part
Speaker 3: of it, That might be part of it that they
Speaker 3: don't experience masking the same way. But the interesting is
Speaker 3: that it's very predictable, this masking and how it happens.
Speaker 3: It's very specific, and it's the same for children and
Speaker 3: for women and for men and for everybody. I don't
Speaker 3: know that there's a group of people to whom MP
Speaker 3: three's don't sound right objectively, like a blind test. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so yeah, I don't know. Maybe some people do experience
Speaker 3: less masking. Maybe that's part of it.
Speaker 1: So, Matt, I imagine you have loads of fun stories,
Speaker 1: in part because like Daniel and I always hit record
Speaker 1: and then we're like, we totally forgot. We hit record,
Speaker 1: and we have conversations about the most personal things happening
Speaker 1: in our lives, and then we send it to you,
Speaker 1: and so you it's a very asymmetrical relationship. I think
Speaker 1: you know a lot about the things that are going
Speaker 1: wrong in my life. I don't know nearly as much
Speaker 1: about what's going on in your life.
Speaker 3: I can make you a list if you want to
Speaker 3: even the playing field.
Speaker 1: I mean that lay it on me. But but so
Speaker 1: I imagine that one you know a lot of secrets
Speaker 1: from people and tell us some weird, funny stories from
Speaker 1: from life as an audio engineer.
Speaker 3: Uh, there are many inappropriate stories. Uh there's okay, here's
Speaker 3: one that is right in the middle between science and
Speaker 3: and some biology and perception, so mostly physics. So I
Speaker 3: was in the Santa Monica, which is uh is it
Speaker 3: a part of LA or is it outside of La
Speaker 3: boy Daniel, California.
Speaker 2: You should know this. I don't know. It's well, you know,
Speaker 2: there's the affective LA which is a big blob of
Speaker 2: urbanized area, then there's La County, then there's LA City,
Speaker 2: and I don't know the distinctions between all of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't understand how that's a municipality because when
Speaker 3: I was working there, they were shuttle us around from
Speaker 3: location to location, and the names of the neighborhoods and
Speaker 3: how things fit into the municipalities didn't make any sense. Anyway,
Speaker 3: I was in Santa Monica filming with Smokey Robinson, Wow
Speaker 3: for a very interesting documentary by the way, called Paid
Speaker 3: in Full on the BBC and CBC wherever you are,
Speaker 3: about the unfair treatment of black musicians throughout history. In
Speaker 3: any case, I was there with Smokey Robinson and they
Speaker 3: rented a special villa just for him. You know. The
Speaker 3: VIP treatment, and there's always this air of when a
Speaker 3: really important person comes in, no one stops the recording
Speaker 3: for any reason. Right, do your job be quiet. We
Speaker 3: have a very limited amount of time with this person.
Speaker 3: So I'm sitting there, I'm set up, I have my
Speaker 3: computer open, I've miked him up, I have a mic
Speaker 3: on him, I have a mic above him, and I
Speaker 3: have a spectrum analyzer open, just because I didn't really
Speaker 3: need it, but it shows you all the frequencies in
Speaker 3: real time. And suddenly during the interview, I see these
Speaker 3: sort of spikes at like five hurts, which is way
Speaker 3: lower than what humans can hear. And I'm realizing that
Speaker 3: even though the microphone is suspended and they're supposed to
Speaker 3: not pick anything up through the floor, I've created a
Speaker 3: seismometer by accident. Oh and I can see that there's
Speaker 3: an earthquake coming.
Speaker 2: Oh wow wow.
Speaker 3: And so in the middle of this interview, I go, hey,
Speaker 3: excuse me, and the director looks at me, like what
Speaker 3: are you doing, And I'm like, I'm very very sorry.
Speaker 3: I think there's an earthquake coming and we should get
Speaker 3: ready to evacuate or move away from the walls or
Speaker 3: get too though I don't remember what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 3: But we're in California. I expected everyone to know except
Speaker 3: for me, and they're like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: There's nothing happening, you've this is Smokey Robinson. What are
Speaker 3: you doing? I mean, everybody was nice, we're all friends.
Speaker 3: But as that's happening, the lights start to shake. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: and there's a rumble. And luckily it wasn't a big
Speaker 3: earthquake or anything. Everything was fine. But I predicted on an
Speaker 3: earthquake using a microphone and a computer screen.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 3: And I interrupted an important recording.
Speaker 1: And that's magic, right, it's Smokey Robinson is now like
Speaker 1: Matt Kesselman is magic. Everybody knows.
Speaker 3: He was like, that's okay, baby, he's got a very
Speaker 3: very soft voice.
Speaker 2: I love him.
Speaker 1: Well, that is a great story. I don't have any
Speaker 1: comparable stories for warning famous people about impending natural disasters.
Speaker 3: It's a very niche story.
Speaker 2: Market all right, well, thank you for coming on the show,
Speaker 2: and we're telling us all about what happens in the
Speaker 2: background to make us sound so good. Before you go,
Speaker 2: tell people where they can find out more about you
Speaker 2: and what's.
Speaker 3: Up to you. Can find me for everything at Matt
Speaker 3: Kesselman dot com. That's m A T K E S
Speaker 3: E l m N dot com. And if you don't
Speaker 3: like to spell things that are complicated, I just bought
Speaker 3: Thegoshfather dot com and dot cost to my website too,
Speaker 3: so you can use that instead.
Speaker 1: Matt, I appreciate you so much for so many reasons,
Speaker 1: and now I appreciate that you came on the show.
Speaker 1: You're the best.
Speaker 2: There are lots of reasons why the show sounds good
Speaker 2: and it's fun to listen to and easy to listen to,
Speaker 2: and many of those are because of Matt. Thank you
Speaker 2: very much.
Speaker 3: Amen, thank you for having me. This was a lot
Speaker 3: of fun.
Speaker 2: Thanks everybody for listening. Please go and do us a
Speaker 2: favor and rate the show on whatever podcast app you're using.
Speaker 2: It really helps people find us.
Speaker 1: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is edited by the amazing
Speaker 1: Matt Kesselman.
Speaker 2: He really is a wizard. You can also find us
Speaker 2: online on Blue Sky, Instagram, and x d K Universe.
Speaker 2: Come engage with us.
Speaker 1: You can email us I had questions at Dan and
Speaker 1: Kelly dot org. We really do want to hear from you,
Speaker 1: and you.
Speaker 2: Can find our website www dot danieland Kelly dot org,
Speaker 2: where you'll also find an invitation to join our discord
Speaker 2: where everybody comes and talks about the amazing.
Speaker 1: Universe, and we also have the most amazing moderators. This
Speaker 1: is an iHeart podcast. Thanks for joining us.